Discover Sky Plough, a poem by Dr Charles Bennett

Today, 21 March, is UNESCO’s World Poetry Day. To celebrate, Dr Charles Bennett, shares a poem from his 11th book, Cloud River.

Held every year on 21 March, World Poetry Day is the occasion to honour poets and revive oral traditions of poetry recitals alongside promoting the reading, writing and teaching of poetry.

This year, Dr Charles Bennett, Programme Leader in Creative Writing and Reader in Poetry at the University of Northampton reads Sky Plough, a poem from his most recent book, Cloud River.

In Cloud River, the poems are a ‘journey down a length of weather-music’. Set in a level environment of corners and lines (on fields, maps, the sky and the page), they generate beautiful surprises. They see a passing plane as ‘the polished arrow of a plough’, and teach us how to read cloud language. Through a fresh appreciation of England’s lowest and newest land, they exemplify how engagement with straight rivers and big skies leads to a balancing of spirit.