Readers turn news to verse for National Poetry Day
- Published
The BBC News website is marking National Poetry Day by featuring some of your poems about this week's top news stories.
National Poetry day is celebrated each year in the UK with a range of events involving poets and poetry fans.
To kick off the action, poet Kate Fox delivers a poem on benefits, written for the BBC.
Here is a selection of news poems sent in by BBC News website readers.
Mr Dashwood, Haddenham, Bucks
Cameron gives warning of harsh cuts in his expenses;
In Hungary, the sewage overruns their flood defences.
Liverpool gets purchased by the Boston team Red Sox;
The budget for the military is Labour's fault (says Fox).
Yemen: foreign nationals are subject to attacks;
Here, sources say that soon, all married couples pay less tax.
Boozing while you're pregnant isn't half as bad as feared;
In lighter news, potatoes coloured purple have appeared.
Pursuant to tradition, I will sign off with a thought:
This clearly won't get published, though it just as clearly ought.
'Heathcliff', Oxford
Benefits stir up the nation;
Hastings pier in conflagration.
Cameron in budget friction;
Times Square bomber - life conviction.
Ryder cup is won for Europe;
Holland flood defences shored up
Yemen, Labour, Nobel prizes,
Jobs, cuts, no surprises!
Daniel Ward, London
Daniel Ward is 30 and works in local government.
Here, he reads his poem about the tube strike:
"I think National Poetry Day is a good idea.
Poetry is a good way of communicating real events in a different way.
The news can get the facts across, but it's poetry that conveys feeling."
R Wells, Lichfield, Staffs
The Labour Party, or so we are told,
Spent the country's wealth of gold.
The Tories with excessive zeal,
Have told us all just how they feel,
By budgetting all, (it's Labour's fault),
Cutting corners without a halt.
Millions have been saved! Just think of it!
But in whose pockets do the millions sit
Mr Faulkner, Sheffield
More Yanks' bucks and Kop drama keenly reported
And Gamu the girl singer may be deported.
Child benefit cuts, a right old to-do
And a smoking chimp, dead at the zoo.
Purple spuds being hailed as healthy
Coalition's cuts shouldered by wealthy.
"We're in it together", cries our prime minister,
But CIA secrets are ever more sinister.
Have your say, turn your hand to verse
Of more interest or less perverse?
Jonathan Phillips, Norwich
In Hastings - a fire?
The pier - a pyre!
- Published7 October 2010