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is today! Initiated by UNESCO in 1999, the aim is a simple one – to honour and promote poets and poetry around the world, and to recognise poetry as an international language with the ability to unite.

Copyright @ Slideshare.net 2017

Love it or hate it, poetry is an important historical instrument, an invaluable form of expression, which can challenge, heal, humour and change, but above all connect us to our very existence. Here’s this year’s message from Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO:

Poetry is a window onto the breath-taking diversity of humanity

So I want to share one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets with you. Having recently revisited her work, Sylvia Plath is undeniably one of the world’s finest poets and below is one of many reasons why. Plath wrote this poem a month before her separation from Ted Hughes and just six months before her death:

For a Fatherless Son

You will be aware of an absence, presently,
Growing beside you, like a tree,
A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree —-
Balding, gelded by lightning—an illusion,
And a sky like a pig’s backside, an utter lack of attention.
But right now you are dumb.
And I love your stupidity,
The blind mirror of it. I look in
And find no face but my own, and you think that’s funny.
It is good for me
To have you grab my nose, a ladder rung.
One day you may touch what’s wrong —-
The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush.
Till then your smiles are found money.

Copyright @ Sylvia Plath 1962

So I urge you to write, read, speak and share to help celebrate all things poetry, not only on this day, but every day.