Poems for Pride

We're celebrating #liverpoolpride this weekend with some #poemsforpride - check out our recommended reads from LGBTQ+ authors, or those speaking to an aspect of the LGBTQ+ experience.

If you're a Reader Leader, follow this link to the volunteer website to download the full collection.

Otherwise, enjoy the snippets below and let us know what you think @thereaderorg.

‘Chocs’ by Carol Ann Duffy
Into the half pound box of Moonlight
My small hand crept.
There was an electrifying rustle.
There was a dark and glamourous scent.

‘Considering the Snail’ by Thom Gunn
The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

‘Late Love’ by Jackie Kay
How they strut about, people in love,
how tall they grow, pleased with themselves,
their hair, glossy, their skin shining.
They don’t remember who they have been.

‘Love Is Not All’ by Edna St.Vincent Millay
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber not a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

‘The More Loving One’ by W H Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

‘In Those Years’ by Adrienne Rich
In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I

‘Ithica’ by C.P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaca
hope your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery;

‘One Art’ by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster

‘Oh Me! Oh Life!’ by Walt Whitman
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the
foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than
I, and who more faithless?)