By Yemi Adebisi
Poetry specialists at the Southbank Centre have released a long list of 50 modern love poems across the globe, selected from works written over the last 50 years.
The American Angelou was chosen for her lyrical plea, Come, and Be My Baby, in which the poet writes: “you sit wondering / What you’re gonna do. / I got it. / Come. And be my baby”, while Indian author Seth makes the list for the mournful All You Who Sleep Tonight – “Know that you aren’t alone / The whole world shares your tears.”
The poets come from 30 countries, from Saint Lucia to Iraqi Kurdistan, but some well-known British names also make the cut.
The late Adrian Mitchell is included for the short but perfectly formed Celia, Celia – “When I am sad and weary / When I think all hope has gone / When I walk along High Holborn / I think of you with nothing on” – as is Scottish poet Jackie Kay for Her. “I had been told about her,” writes Kay. “How she would always, always. / How she would never, never. / I’d watched and listened / but I still fell for her.”
Michael Donaghy was chosen for The Present.
The poetry team at the Southbank Centre came up with the list through the expertise of its Saison Poetry Library described as “a truly international and stylistically diverse selection of what we see as the best 50 love poems of the past 50 years – from young poets such as the first Young Poet Laureate for London, Warsan Shire, to world greats such as Chinua Achebe and Ted Hughes.”
“It was tough restricting ourselves to just 50 poems, but I think we’ve come up with a wonderfully rich and varied offering of some of the world’s greatest love poems,” said Runcie.
So Achebe’s Love Song (For Anna), in which the Nigerian author writes “Bear with me my love / in the hour of my silence”, nestles alongside Frank O’Hara’s Having a Coke With You, and Ted Hughes’s Lovesong sits beside to Margaret Atwood’s Variations on the Word Love. South Korea’s acclaimed poet Ko Un was selected for Snowfall, Pakistani writer Faiz Ahmed Faiz for Before You Came and Norwegian poet Annabelle Despard for Should You Die First.
The poems will be read on July 20 at what the Southbank Centre with 50 readers, from actors to poets, taking on one poem each from the list. Celia Hewitt, the subject of Mitchell’s Celia, Celia, will read the poem she inspired, and Donaghy’s widow Maddy Paxman will read The Present.
There will be readings in Arabic, Turkish, Macedonian and Tamil, with English translations, while Don Paterson and Linton Kwesi Johnson will read their own poems, My Love and Hurricane Blues.
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