Poetry is the most powerful way in which humans can use language to convey their deepest and most personal feelings. This is why we turn to poetry – albeit of sometimes variable quality – at those most important and resonant times in our lives, joyful or dark: christening/birth celebrations, weddings, funerals and occasions of state.
Yorkshire poetry – it’s in the genes
From our first nursery rhymes onwards, poetry is a part of our DNA.
Poetry has a deep affinity with music – rhythm, rhyme and alliteration, which can soon extend into song. Music and poetry rely on sound patterns which can work in a powerful, even primeval or subliminal way. Poetry uses the music of speech to convey meaning, to empower.
Yet in our education system poetry is too often marginalised in favour of rote learning of archaic and outmoded formal grammar rules for ever-present, punitive examinations. Such drudgery, based on public school indoctrination, has little practical value in developing a love of language which lies behind any real skills in oracy and literacy.
We live in a deeply philistine age, in which the arts, the imagination – despite the huge wealth-creating power of our creative industries – are ignored by the ignorant who hold power. Successive generations of politicians have allowed the teaching of the arts and humanities, including modern languages and even our own great English literary heritage that defines our nation, to be neglected, underfunded, squeezed out by ever narrower academic syllabuses which in many cases have little practical relevance, even for vocational training.
‘Strong’ men fear the pen
But poetry is deeply subversive. Poetry is about questioning reality and the status quo, about a passion for nature, landscape, other human beings. It is about using image, metaphor to express our deepest feelings, to explore reality and experience. It is about asking questions. It is about exploring our own experiences, different kinds of realities, dreams. It is why poetry is hated by dictators, distrusted by autocrats, pushed to the margins by bureaucrats, ignored by number-crunchers. The imagination cannot be measured.
Nowhere has the power of poetry and the imagination to change perceptions – and with those perceptions, the world – been better articulated than by England’s most radical poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) in his brilliant, still provocative (though unfinished) polemical essay A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821. As Shelley correctly states: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
The poetic bounty of God’s Own County
It’s no coincidence that Yorkshire has produced some of England’s finest poets – Caedmon, Andrew Marvell, Emily Bronte, WH Auden, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, and at the present time, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, from Marsden. All to a lesser or greater extent were inspired by the Yorkshire landscape and culture into which they were born or lived in during adulthood.
We need to celebrate this rich poetic heritage by encouraging young people living in Yorkshire to help shape their own understanding and experience through the power of their own words. The land in which we live, its richness, complexity and natural beauty, its extraordinary and sometimes tragic history, is a powerful source of creative inspiration.
The ‘Yorkshire Day Poetry Challenge’ – let your words be heard
Young people need to be encouraged to leave the insane trivialities of social media behind to look outwards to the real world beyond their doorstep. They need to develop their own skills as poets, and even showcase them in a public arena, in a non-competitive way which encourages them to share their work with others.
Becoming a poet gives a young person power – over their own lives, enabling them to understand themselves, giving them deeper insight, not just into their own psyches, but crucially by developing empathy for others. Reading and especially writing poetry is a hugely educating activity, albeit insufficiently recognised on school or college syllabuses.
That’s a prime reason why as a central, vital part of the first ever ThriddingsFest, the Yorkshire Society is inviting young people from all over Yorkshire to write and to read their own poems as part of the Yorkshire Day Poetry Challenge. The event will take place in a suburban church, on Sunday 3 August, during the weekend after Yorkshire Day (1 August).
The idea of ThriddingsFest comes from the wonderful Welsh Eisteddfods, which have a focus on Welsh culture, music, language and identity, especially involving young people. What the Yorkshire Society hope will be the pilot annual ThriddingsFest – in future years to be held in the days following Yorkshire Day in different locations throughout the region – will be taking place on the afternoons of Saturday 2 August (devoted to music) and Sunday 3 August (devoted to spoken word) in St John’s Church, Ben Rhydding, a suburb of Ilkley. Ilkley is also within Bradford Metropolitan District, which this year is hosting Yorkshire Day as part of Bradford City of Culture 2025.
The poems will have one fundamental focus – on the great Region of Yorkshire itself, its landscape, its natural beauty, its unique Anglo-Viking history, its rich and varied culture, its people, and also the experience of living in Yorkshire in the difficult years of the early 21st century, all within a true sense of place.
Poems can be up to 20 lines long and can be in any poetic form – using rhythm, rhyme, blank or free verse or in whatever form the poet chooses, as long as the work is fresh, original and focuses on any aspect or part of Yorkshire, the region of England in which we go about our daily lives.
There will be two categories of entry – ‘Junior’, up to the age of 12, and ‘Senior’, from 12 to 18. A parent, teacher or guardian will be asked to guarantee that the poem is the poet’s own original work and not the product of any form of AI. Though the Yorkshire Day Poetry Challenge is not a competition – there will be no prizes – the 12 poems chosen for presentation will be read by the poets on 3 August at the ThriddingsFest and then be published on the Yorkshire’s Society’s website. Each young poet will also be offered free Friends for Life membership of the Yorkshire Society.
‘Yorkshire calling …’
The readings and ThriddingsFest itself will follow immediately after ‘Yorkshire Calling’, the inaugural event of the Bradford Live Arena, on Yorkshire Day itself – Friday 1 August. The Bradford Live event will include the first full orchestral performance, by the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra, of ‘Northern Score’. This is a brilliant orchestral setting by gifted composer/conductor Ben Crick of a sequence of highly entertaining poems by leading Yorkshire poet and broadcaster Ian Macmillan, a tribute to 20 great Yorkshire people from Caedmon to Nicola Adams.
It’s all about Yorkshireness. There will also be a solo performance by one of the recent prize-winners of the Leeds Piano Competition and a guest appearance of the Bantams of the Opera, the Bradford City Football Club choir. Tickets for the concert are now on sale via the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra website.
Entry forms and full details of the poetry challenge can be obtained from Vicki Warner at TheThriddingsFestGroup@outlook.com.
