World Poetry Day is celebrated on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. Its purpose is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world.

Poem is probably one of the earliest literature forms and is regarded highly in both Western and Eastern literature. There are a lot well-known classic poems such as the Greek epics of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, English poet Milton’s Paradise lost, Shakespeare’s Sonnet, Italian poet Dante’s Divine comedy and many more. If the collection of Shijing was the earliest collection of poems in Chinese then Arabic and Hindi all had their share of poetry in early civilisation.

Modern English poets, such as W H Auden, along with W B Yeats, T S Eliot, influenced 20th century poetry writing. Auden is highly regarded for his poetry of ‘stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content’.  Continue reading →