In our creative writing sessions in Marsden Library we have been playing with the idea of list poems, and Francesca Beard’s is a superb example, not least with its title, The poem that was really a list. The more you hear it the more you take from it, and the more you are inspired by it.

You can see Francesca performing it here:

List poems seem easy to do – the poem that is just a list – but it is the choice of what to list (and, thereby, what to leave out) and how it is written that can elevate a list to a poem. After all, although a sonnet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s How do I love Thee? is also a kind of list poem, just as is Hovis Presley’s I Rely on You:

Francesca is my co-tutor on the Arvon/Write Out Loud course for open-mic poets and you can read more about her here: http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/francescabeard - and here: www.francescabeard.com

Elvis McGonnagal is our Wednesday guest tutor at the same Arvon course, and he read a superb version of Adrian Mitchell’s To Whom it May Concern on Radio 4 earlier this year. That too, has a list element to it, a progressive listing, from where it derives much of its power. I await permission to use the clip and will post it here when I can.

And the late, much-laminated, Hovis Presley was a member of Write Out Loud's original found(l)ing committee; all of which is a kind of poetic list; I suppose.

I would love to see some of your list poems on our blogs pages, perhaps pointing out ones that are already on here and renewing our interest in them.

Ok, so what you need to do is… [list]

I have also started a discussion on the topic of list poems to see which are your favourite examples.

Enjoy!

Julian