It’s World Poetry Day today, everybody shout, “Hurray!”

Ok, so it’s not up there with “I wandered lonely as a cloud…”, but it does rhyme! Yes, today is World Poetry Day, first established in 1999 by UNESCO to celebrate the linguistic diversity and creativity that poems can offer.

We’ve got tons in the way of poetry here at UWTSD Swansea. As well as all the poetry books on our shelves, we have online access to thousands of poems via our database Literature Online. Just click the link to access the database and see what you can find!

This year, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is marking World Poetry Day with an online memorial of First World War poems. They’d like members of the public to get involved by recording themselves reading a favourite Word War I poem and sending it in to add to the archive (details on the website ). You can check out other people’s recordings and choices with the hashtag #WWIpoetry on Twitter. If you’re looking for inspiration, take a look at the war poetry on the shelves at Townhill.

Happy birthday Mr Shakespeare!

Shakepeare's Birthplace and garden in Stratford-Upon-Avon
(photo by Hannah Meiklejohn at Townhill Library)

Yes, today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. Well, the 23^rd April is the date traditionally given as his birth. It’s a bit hard to check the records for the 16^th century! We do know that he was baptised on 26^th April 1564, so he’d be 449 this year. Expect to see some special events across the country to mark his 250^th birthday next year! (Incidentally, the 23^rd April is also the day he died, but we won’t dwell on that!) If you’d like to find out more about Shakespeare’s life, our database Oxford Reference Online, where we found this information, is an excellent place to start.

We have lots of books and other resources if you’re a Shakespeare fan, or think you’d like to be. Take a look at our catalogue to see what’s about! You’ll find the bard’s plays mostly on the ground floor of Townhill Library, though there are a few up on the first floor in the Teaching Practice collection too. We’ve even got a few which have been adapted forchildren, so if you fancy Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Henry V or Romeo and Juliet, but you aren’t quite up to the original, give those a go! If you don’t even feel up to that, you could always take a look at our DVDs. (You’ll see Shakespeare in Love in our collection too!)

There are also lots of resources online for you. Our databases Literature Online and JSTOR are excellent places to find journal articles about Shakespeare and his work. You’ll even find online links to his poetry and plays on Literature Online! On the web, you might like to take a look at the RoyalShakespeare Company’s website. There’s a fab section of Education resources where you’ll find material for early years right through to grown-ups!