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National Poetry Day: writers and readers share their favourite poems

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Jo Bell, Michael Pedersen, Andrew McMillan and more tell us what poetry they are partial to
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National Poetry Day: writers and readers share their favourite poems

Jo Bell, Michael Pedersen, Andrew McMillan and more tell us what poetry they are partial to

Today (Thu 8 Oct) is National Poetry Day, which means that we at The List have spent most of the morning trying to figure out what rhymes with Nantucket, and debating how to transform today's listings into shimmering sonnets. However:

That is hard to do
So instead we turn to you;
We ask in haiku

For your best all time
Poems and verses and rhymes
Or hey, just a line

Now, we wouldn't ask anything of you that we wouldn't do ourselves, so we've picked our staff favourites too.

Yasmin (Editor, Books Editor): Musee des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden
Kirstyn (Music Editor, Research Manager): One Cigarette, Edwin Morgan
Rebecca (Researcher): Errata, Charles Simic
Rowena (Researcher): The Loch Ness Monster's Song, Edwin Morgan
Alex (Researcher): Illuminations, Arthur Rimbaud
Scott (Senior Writer): To A Mouse, Robert Burns
Jess (Sales Support Executive): A Recipe for Whisky, Ron Butlin
Claire (Events and Admin Assistant): Mad Girl's Love Song, Sylvia Plath
And, saving the best for last, Murray (Senior Researcher):

Poor old Brown is dead and gone,
His face you'll see no more;
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4.

Some lovely poetic folk on Twitter have also sent us some recommendations, which you can read below. Feel free to send yours along, because put simply, if you like a poet, we want to know it.

What's your favourite poem? Leave a comment below …

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