Poemhunter’s poem a day keeps bad news at bay

If you were to ask me I would tell you that I’m not the biggest poetry fan. Other than a brief period of interest in Yeats when I was 15 I don’t often indulge in an art form that I have, in the past, mistakenly felt owes more to rhyme than reason.

But I was browsing the App Store when I saw it was the 50th anniversary of Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which was mentioned in the context of some apps to help appreciate her life's work. One of those apps is Poemhunter. I installed it on a whim and the first poem served up was Louis MacNeice's Prayer Before Birth.

After reading this beautiful and well-known poem by the celebrated Northern Irish author, I was hooked. Poemhunter gives you the option of signing up for notifications for a poem of the day or you can search by poet, poem or topic to find one for an occasion, which comes in handy for padding, I mean augmenting, speeches. You can also save favourite poems and share on social media.

Poemhunter is never going to make the list of top essential apps but it’s nice to wake up every morning to a new poem – it briefly diverts from living through the political climate of 2019.