It’s National Poetry Day today (Thursday) and across the country, poets and lovers of poetry are celebrating the day by reading or listening to some of their favourite poems.
The Isle of Wight has been home to many poets over the years and to this day still has a wealth of creative wordsmiths living and performing on the Island.
Ivana Popov
Our current favourite is the beautiful Ivana Popov. Her words and delivery are such a delight to witness.
Don’t be mistaken by her gentle delivery, her observational wit is as sharp as a winter’s morning.
It’s not easy to be thought-provoking and funny, but Ivana pulls it off. If you see her on the bill of any poetry events, we highly recommend you check her out.
Michael Champion
A close second is Michael Champion from 
Isle of Wight music duo, CHAMPS.
We realise that his words are put to music, but we still consider them beautiful pieces of poetry.
You can hear his words on either of the two CHAMPS albums.
From the past
Thanks to OnTheWight reader, Seb, for letting us know that Algernon Swinburne – who lived at East Dene and is buried in Bonchurch’s churchyard – was featured on the most recent episode of BBC R4’s 
Poetry Please, hosted by the delightful Roger McGough.
This week’s Poetry Please theme was ‘Islands’ and there was a reading of Algernon’s “Atalanta in Calydon”.
You can hear the poem being read out by heading over to BBC iPlayer and skipping to five minutes in, but we reckon the whole programme is worth listening to anyway.
Atalanta in Calydon by AC Swinburne
When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamor of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember’d is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
Over her eyebrows, hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
