Author: Gerald Cox
Date: 08/11/20

New Request a poem and In Memoriam features on the site

Listen to Poetry would like to announce two new developments on the site. We now have a ‘Request a poem’ page where anyone can ask to have a specific poem read and recorded. We have also created an ‘In Memoriam’ page where people can dedicate a poem to a loved one, add a message and pick out a particular quote from the poem.

Poetry can so often speak the words for people and situations that they find difficult to put into words for themselves. We understand how important the rituals are that mark the passing of our friends and family. We seek ways to express and give meaning to these painful experiences.

This was not one of Listen to Poetry’s ideas but came from a request we received to read and dedicate two poems to the memory of someone’s parents. This seemed a strange idea at first but as we thought about it we felt that an In Memoriam page could act as a kind of online headstone, another way to express grief and to remember.

It can often be that a particular line from a poem sticks in one’s mind or draws the memory of someone we have loved back into our awareness. Two examples of this are :-

‘The little, nameless acts of unremembered kindness and of love’
from Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth and

‘Love is not love , which alters when it alteration finds’
from Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

We live in very difficult and strange times and the present Covid pandemic is resulting in many people losing those close to them unexpectedly. We hope that for some people poetry can provide some solace.