Thursday 5 March 2009

Cricket poems

Reading through Tears In The Fence the other day, I found that SJ Litherland's poem was 'about' England batsman Ian Bell (well, he's just been dropped, but I'm sure he'll be back).

Now I know that some readers are going to be immediately turned off by the thought of cricket poems, and given that the game is one of those Marmite-style things that you either love or hate, that's fair enough. But me, I've got a soft spot for them, especially when they're good, as this one is.

Litherland also wrote a whole book of poetry, The Homage, concerned with ex-England captain Nasser Hussain, and it's great. Again, it probably helps if you're a fan of Nasser (I am - I liked him as a player and captain, and like him even more as a hopelessly partisan commentator), but it's the quality of the poetry that really makes it worth a look.

I reckon I've only written four cricket poems myself, the best, I think, being one about Yorkshire left-arm spinners Wilfrid Rhodes and Hedley Verity, but I daresay there'll be more at some stage.

3 comments:

Caroline Gill said...

You might like to read about another cricket-loving poet ...

Padhraig Nolan said...

Interesting too, to hear Conor O'Callaghan described as 'Ireland's leading poet-cricketer' in the latest Poetry mag podcast. I'd forgotten he had that particular claim to fame :-)

Caroline Gill said...

http://tinyurl.com/858fjb

and

http://tinyurl.com/cugffq

for cricket and poetry links ...