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Happy Halloween!
It’s October 29th, which means spooky season is just around the corner! To celebrate this creepy time of year, I have gathered some of my favourite petrifying and peculiar poems and poetry collections.
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
Favourite line:
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Why I like it:
Poe’s most famous poem, The Raven, is a haunting story of loss and mourning. There are so many engaging poetic techniques throughout the poem, but I can’t turn away from a classic rhyming scheme that sets up the eerie atmosphere of the poem.
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340) by Emily Dickinson
Favourite line:
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My mind was going numb –
Why I like it:
Dickinson’s use of experimental form as well as the metaphoric use of the “funeral” representing mental anguish and collapse was incredibly innovative for its time.
Song of the Witches: “Double double, toil and trouble” by William Shakespeare
Favourite line:
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Why I like it:
The Witches or the “Weird Sisters” are classic Shakespeare characters, who feature in that Scottish play (coughMacbethcough), and have inspired numerous characters like the Crones in The Witcher, the witches in Stardust, and the Sanderson sisters in Hocus Pocus. Their chant is iconic with its mesmorising rhythm and rhyme pattern, and this section encapsulates the underlying themes of the play, chaos and disaster.
Halloween Party by Kenn Nesbitt
Favourite line:
The other kids stare like I’m some kind of freak—
the Halloween party is not till next week.
Why I like it:
This is THE ultimate universal nightmare for all school-aged students. Turning up to school in costume on THE WRONG DAY! It still sends shivers down my spine!
The Ghost Poetry Project by Nathan Curnow
Why I like it:
Whilst this isn’t a singular poem, it is so exciting to see a collection of poems written by a budding Australian Author! Nathan Curnow’s Ghost Poetry Project has received rave reviews from esteemed authors like Cate Kennedy and Kevin Brophy, congratulating Curnow’s unique artistic approach of spending 10 nights at haunted locations across Australia.
“This book must have the strangest ever provenance of any collection of poetry in Australia. Only a vampire or a Nathan Curnow could have done this… These poems come drenched with the bloody and violent deaths central to history of European occupation in this country. But they are not ghoulish or sensational. They are the real thing, both ‘transparent and completely solid’” – Kevin Brophy
Laura Campbell
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