Valentine's Day Poetry

Valentine's Day approaches and poetry websites seem compelled to offer poetry or advice on writing love poetry. At least the American ones do. Both www.poetryfoundation.org and www.poets.org have features relating to the day but the UK Poetry Society website has only a link to a press story. This may change before Saturday of course.

Poetry Foundation has a feature called "Let’s Face It, Nobody in Love is Original" in which four poets, Adrian Blevins, Rebecca Hoogs, Cyrus Cassells, and Craig Arnold, discuss love poetry. They also give examples of their work. The best line in the article is by Adrian Blevins: "Poetry is not about how we feel, of course. It’s about how we feel about how we feel".

Poets.org has a Love Poems page which includes Poetry Valentines allowing you to email or print illustrated excerpts from love poems. It also has full text of a number of love poems by well known and less well-known authors.

So far the only related item on the UK Poetry Society website is the link to this story about most people preferring to say "I Luv U" by text rather than compose a romantic letter or poem to a loved one.

The Poetry Ireland website has a notice about a reading of love poetry in Irish in Whitefriar St Carmelite Church, 56 Aungier St, Dublin 2 at 10.45am on 14 February just prior to 11.00am mass. The poetry will be read by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Liam Ó Muirthile and Colm Breathnach with traditional love songs in Irish sung by Lorcán Mac Mathúna. The poems and songs come from the recently published anthology Filíocht Ghrá na Gaeilge/Love Poems in Irish, edited by Ciarán Mac Murchaidh and published by Cois Life.

Whitefriar Street Church, Dublin is where the remains of St Valentine are kept. Picture of his shrine from this page where you can get the full story.