BOOKMARK News Items

Each month, BOOKMARK visits two Blairgowrie Care Homes to read some poems aloud (and sometimes a resident will join in by reciting the poem by heart!)  They vary from the comic to the serious but are not ever depressing! Here are the poems we’ll be reading in February and one of them is printed in full. Most can be found online, or in the excellent anthology A Poem for Every Winter Day, edited by Allie Esiri (published by Macmillan).

On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan
The ABC by Spike Milligan
Manners by Elizabeth Bishop
The Sounds in the Evening by Eleanor Farjeon
Shrove Tuesday by Celia Warren
Valentine by Wendy Cope
A Red Red Rose by Robert Burns
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

Scaffolding by Seamus Heaney
Scaffolding Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure the planks won’t slip at bust points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and sold stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear.
We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
Seamus Heaney (from his first collection Death of a Naturalist, Faber, 1966)