Famous Grammar School Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Grammar School poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous grammar school poems. These examples illustrate what a famous grammar school poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...
And stare in silence. He was always loyal and
Once when someone from away passed our street
End and called me for my grammar school cap
Jim turned and said, “I go there, too, want to
Make something of it?” the menace of his five
Brothers heavy in the air
29
The Council gave his mam a bigger house
Up in the Fewstons but they couldn’t pay
The bigger rent or fares and came back quick
Enough to chump for Bonfire Night, trailing down
Knowsthorpe for broken branch...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...committee.
Everyday I was in Huddersfield I thought I was in hell and
Sartre was right and so was Jonson - "Hell’s a grammar school
To this" - too (Peter Porter I salute you!) and always I dreamed
Of Leeds and my beautiful gifted ten-year olds and Sheila, my
Genius-child-poet and a head who left me alone to teach poetry
And painting day in, day out and Dave Clark and Diane and I,
In the staffroom discussing phenomenology and daseinanalysis
Applied to Dewey’s theory o...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...n
Who had ended where his breath began.
Many a son and daughter lies
Far from the customary skies,
The Mall and Eades's grammar school,
In London or in Liverpool;
But where is laid the sailor John
That so many lands had known,
Quiet lands or unquiet seas
Where the Indians trade or Japanese?
He never found his rest ashore,
Moping for one voyage more.
Where have they laid the sailor John?
And yesterday the youngest son,
A humorous, unambitious man,
Was buried near the astrologe...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...For Brenda Williams
La lune diminue; divin septembre.
Divine September the moon wanes.
Pierre Jean Jouve
Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce:
This is one September I shall not forget.
The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked
And the floors waxed, but I never shone.
The stripes of the red and black blazer...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ose, ‘Descensus averno’, like Virgil,
I supposed.
Now three years later, in nylons and tight skirt,
She returns from grammar school to make a chaos of my room;
Plaiting a rose in her hair, I remember the words of her poem -
‘For love is wrong/in word, in deed/But you will be mine’
And now her promise to come the last two days of term,
"But not tell them", the diamond bomb exploding
In her eyes, the key left ‘Accidentally’ on my desk
And the faint surprise....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...tinted with a splash of lemon
And a dash of mignonette.
I last saw Sheila circa nineteen sixty seven
Expelled from grammar school wearing a poncho
Hand-made from an army blanket
Working a stall in Kirkgate Market.
Brenda Williams, po?te maudit if ever,
By then installed as muse number three
Grew sadly jealous for the only time
In thirty-seven years: muse number two
Passed into the blue
There is another muse, who makes me chronologically confused.
Barbara, wh...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...18
if you want a revolution attack
symbols not systems - the simple forms
that (blithely) give the truth away
tying down millions to their terms
quietly with no one answering back
where the stage is makes the play
keeps actors (meanings) to those norms
stability requires - change tack
(remove the stage) violent storms
will sweep the old regime away
event...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...all the rest were there,
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air!
The Girls' High School, and Grammar School and colleges of stone
Flew all flags from their walls and towers – all flags except our own!
And down here in the alleys where Premiers never come,
Nor candidate, nor delegate, nor sound of fife and drum,
They packed them on the lorries, seared children of the slum.
Each face seemed soiled and faded, though scrubbed with household soap, ...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
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