Once upon a poetry day...

Today, here in the UK, it's National Poetry Day and with the theme being 'heroes and heroines' and our new poet laureate being Carol Ann Duffy (who also writes brilliant fairy tales and sometimes brilliant poems about fairy tales) I thought I'd celebrate by gathering together lots of links to the fairy tale poetry that's available online.

So a whistle stop tour:

Firstly, the magazines - 
Goblin Fruit - brilliant poetry beautifully presented, as well as the current issue make sure you check out the archive - it's packed with joyously fantastical poetical delights!
Cabinet des Fées - this lovely journal features fairy tale themed poetry in amongst its fiction. 
The Journal of the Mythic Arts Poetry Archive  - sadly JOMA ceased publication in Summer 2008 but their fantastic archives are still available online to be lingered over.
The Journal of Mythic Arts - Sunday Poems - there's so much in these blog posts to be enjoyed!


Then -
Poetry Foundation - this link will take you straight to their large section of Mythology and Folklore inspired poems.
The Poetry Archive  - this link will take you to their selection of fairy tale themed poetry (there's only two there at the moment but maybe one day they'll have more!) 

Another really useful site is SurLaLune, where for each of the forty annotated tales featured there is also a list of the poetry that relates to the tale (just click on Modern Interpretations and then select Poetry), a lot of this is in books but some is out of copyright and available on the SurLaLune website itself, for example click here for the Cinderella poetry.

Of course there's a wealth of fairy tale poetry that's not supposed to be available online as it's still in copyright, for example the brilliant fairy tale poems of Anne Sexton from Transformations - if you hunt around though the texts can usually be found lurking in advert spangled corners of the web...

Now -
for your instant poetry gratification, taken mostly from the sites I've linked to above, here is a small selection of fairy tale poems that are legitimately available online by notable contemporary writers:

'Beauty and the Beast: An anniversary' by Jane Yolen
'Undine' by Jane Yolen
'"Once upon a time," she said' by Jane Yolen
'Fat is not a fairy tale' by Jane Yolen
'Instructions' by Neil Gaiman - also see 'Once upon a Blog's' recent post about the forthcoming illustrated version and to watch a video of the lovely Neil reading the poem.
'Locks' by Neil Gaiman
'Gretel in Darkness' by Louise Glück
'Girl without Hands' by Margaret Atwood
'Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf' by Roald Dahl
'Bone Mother' by Holly Black
'How to Change a Frog into a Prince' by Anna Denise
'Gretel' by Andrea Hollander Budy
'Brother and Sister Duet' by Terri Windling and Barth Andersen

And a few old favourites:
'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti, which you can also listen to on LibriVox
'The Day Dream' by Alfred Lord Tennyson
'Fairy Land' by Edgar Allen Poe
'Modern Elfland' by G. K. Chesterton

And why not celebrate poetry today, wherever you are in the world, by sending one of these beautiful Endicott Studio Poetry Postcards to someone who will appreciate it.

The lovely image above is by Sigrid Jones, a research fellow at the University of Vienna. You can see more of her work along with other interesting images and links on her blog 'word and image'.