Robbie Cheadle reads! Poetry Treasures 2; Relationships

Why I enjoy poetry anthologies

By Robbie Cheadle

I have always enjoyed reading poetry. My love started with nursery rhymes which I read repeatedly when I was a child. I had some personal favourites including The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly, and Who Killed Cock Robin. My enjoyment of nursery rhymes developed rather naturally into a delight in poetry.

When I was at school, we were made to learn certain poems off by heart. This was required for both English, my first language, and Afrikaans, my secondary language.

Astonishingly, some of the poems I learned impacted me so much, I can still recite them. Do you recognise these lines?

            “When you hear it languishing

and hooing and cooing, and sidling through the front teeth,

the Oxford voice

            or worse still

            the would-be Oxford voice

            you don’t even laugh any more, you can’t.”

OR

            “But only a host of phantom listeners  

            That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight  

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,  

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken  

            By the lonely Traveller’s call.”

Over time, my enjoyment of reading poetry evolved into a pleasure in writing poetry. For me, poetry is like a pressure valve, writing it allows me to work through emotions and thoughts that plague me and I use my poems to try to make sense of them. I have poems about corporate life, relationships, poverty in Africa, and lately, the demise of the creatures that populate our beautiful planet, with a focus on South Africa.

When I started blogging in August 2016, I planned to use my blog as a way of sharing my own poetry and thoughts about poetry. I had no idea when I took that initial step that I would be entering a marvellous world of creators. Over the past five and a half years, I’ve met poets, writers, artists, and photographers and entered a world of creative learning beyond anything I’d experienced before.

With specific regard to poetry, I realised that I could learn to see things differently, to appreciate

how other people viewed a picture or prompt and how their thought processes differed from my own. I opened a door to a whole new world of poetry forms.

This, is a nutshell, is why I love poetry anthologies. They are a doorway into the minds, ideas, and poetic thoughts of a spectrum of other creatives. I love discovering new poets and partaking of their work in bite sized chunks and an anthology often leads me to purchase more of selected poets’ work. I enjoy learning from others under the combined artistic endeavour of a poetry anthology.

Today, in celebration of WordCrafter Press’ new anthology, Treasuring Poetry 2: Relationships, I have selected three poems from the book to recite to you.

Firstly, A Jar, by D Avery.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GoQdb1tGANk

Secondly, The Red Petticoat by Elizabeth Merry.

Thirdly, She Lives Yet She is Dead by myself, Robbie Cheadle.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Do you like poetry anthologies? Let me know in the comments.

Purchase Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships

https://books2read.com/u/3kP8aK

About Robbie Cheadle

Robbie Cheadle is a South African children’s author and poet with ten children’s books and two poetry books.

The eight Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.

Robbie has also published two books for older children which incorporate recipes that are relevant to the storylines.

Robbie has two adult novels in the paranormal historical and supernatural fantasy genres published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. She also has short stories, in the horror and paranormal genre, and poems included in several anthologies.

Robbie writes two monthly posts for https://writingtoberead.com called Growing Bookworms and Treasuring Poetry and one monthly post, under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle, called Dark Origins: African Myths and Legends.

Robbie has a blog, https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/ where she shares book reviews, recipes, author interviews, and poetry.

Follow Robbie Cheadle

Website

https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/

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