Today at My Poetic Side we dedicate our news round up to National Poetry Day, here is just a taste of the many things that are going on all over the country.

Appeal Launched to Save Rare Language Poetry

The National Poetry Library has kicked off National Poetry Day with the launch of a project that it hopes will help save works of poetry in many endangered languages. It wants to collect, and preserve, poetry in the thousands of languages that are dying out so that future generations might enjoy them.

UNESCO claims that of the 7000 languages spoken today, over half are endangered, in fact one language dies every week, and by the end of the century it is possible that half of these languages will be lost.

The appeal is looking for well-known poems in any endangered language, the works will be preserved for the archives, together with an English translation.

Jesus Christ Goes Clubbing

Inspired by the Matthew Arnold Bracy Smith painting “The Disrobing (Despoiling) of Christ (after El Greco), the poem “Jesus Christ Goes Clubbing” has won the Art UK and National Poetry Day’s Art Speaks competition. The poem was written by 22-year-old civil servant, Amani Saeed.

Nottingham’s First Young Poet Laureate

To mark National Poetry Day, Nottingham have selected their first Young Poet Laureate. Georgina Wilding who will fill the position for the next year is already heavily involved in the literary world. With a degree in Creative and Professional Writing, Wilding began her poetry career working with Mouthy Poets a Notts-based collective. She has also written and performed poetry on both TV and Radio. She is the founding editor of Mud Press, a poetry publishing house and had even toured with her poetry across the UK.

Famed Poets Join National Poetry Day Celebrations

Hundreds of events are taking place today all over the UK, especially in Hull, UK City of Culture. And poets like John Cooper Clarke and Kate Tempest will be taking part with poetry reading at as many locations as possible.

It seems like poetry is seeing a rise in popularity at the moment, according to the numbers the National Poetry Day organisation says that the sale of poetry book is up 10% since January in comparison to this time last year.

Local Words Feature in Poetry

Earlier on in the year, in preparation for today, BBC local radio asked their listeners to nominate local slang words and terms that would be used to create 12 poems in celebration of the words they felt deserved national recognition.

Amongst the words picked are “cheeselog,” meaning woodlouse, “dimpsy,” meaning twilight, “Bobowler” meaning large moth, and “fam” the street slang word for friend. Hollie McNish, the winner of this years Ted Hughes prize wrote about cheeselog, whilst Liz Berry took on bobowler. Both were in agreement that these dialect words are a real piece of treasure that needs to be preserved and shared, rather than forgotten.

How did you celebrate National Poetry Day?