Reblogged from Kaye Lynne Booth’s Writing to be Read, where Robbie Cheadle invited me to take part in her Treasuring Poetry series, where she also shared her review of my book, Life Lines…

Today, I am delighted to welcome author, poet and amazing blogger, Sue Vincent, to Writing to be Read as my April guest for Treasuring Poetry.

Sue shares a lot of her own poetry on her blog, Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo. Sue also has an amazingly poetic dog, Ani, who has a few books in her own right. This is a link to Sue’s latest Ani link: https://scvincent.com/2020/04/23/the-small-dog-on-guard/.

Sue also writes some more serious poetry and other books which you can find along the right had side of her blog.

Take it away, Sue.

Sue Vincent’s thoughts on poetry

I honestly couldn’t choose a single poem. It all depends on the mood I am in for I love poetry, quite literally, from the sublime to the ridiculous. It is a love affair that started early, with Dr Seuss, Robert Louis Stevenson and Marriott Edgar. It was probably Edgar who inspired my love of history, for after learning his irreverent verses, you really had to get the true story. For example, the Magna Carta is possibly the most important document in English history and one of the earliest legal assertions of human rights. The story as I first learned it from Marriott Edgar had King John signing his name by dipping his pen in the jam and concludes with a verse that is possibly more apt today that it has ever been:

And it’s through that there Magna Charter,
As were signed by the Barons of old,
That in England to-day we can do what we like,
So long as we do what we’re told.

Magna Carta by Marriott Edgar

If I had to choose a single work, it would be the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a series of quatrains written a thousand years ago in Persia. My mother gave me a small, cloth-bound volume that her father had given to her many years earlier. He had carried the book when he fought in the jungles of Burma during the war, so the book itself meant a lot to me and travelled everywhere in my handbag so I would always have something to read. The book began to disintegrate at around the time a digital version could be had. It is now safe at home… and the Rubaiyat was the first thing I ever downloaded.

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