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Famous Balliol Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Balliol poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous balliol poems. These examples illustrate what a famous balliol poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ndering if they’ll survive

The winter, so do I; at fifty-four I must decide

For poetry, my sons educated just, one at Balliol

One at the Royal College, I have cast my lot

With Lady Luck, I own no property but a book.



In Roundhay’s Tropical World Nepalese Trumpets

Glow in red and yellow like mendicant priests,

The waterfall roars like Lodore and I am more

Myself here than anywhere.





11



The morning sun is melting

The dome of Leeds Town Hall,

Frost on ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...ffice job

Didn’t save you

From the drugs

They never gave you.





44



Isaiah, my son,

You made it back

From Balliol to Beeston

At a run via the

Playing fields of Eton.



There is a keening and a honing

And a winnowing in the wind

Winwaed’s water with red bluid blent....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...thee’ and ‘love’, lastingly lilt

From cradle to grave, from backstreet

On the social, our son, beat his way

To Eton, Balliol, to Calcatta’s Shantiniketan

And all the way back to a locked ward.

While I in the meantime fondly fiddled 

With rhyme and unreason, publishing pamphlets

And Leeds Poetry Weekly while under the bane

Of his tragic illness, poet and mother,

You were driven from pillar to post

By the taunting yobbery of your family

And the crass insensitivit...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...rld’s…

Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,

Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol

Hold no sway on ward one, nor even being

‘A six language master,’ on PICU madness is the only qualification.

There was the ‘shaving incident’ at school, which

Made him ready to walk out at fifteen, the alcohol

Defences at Oxford which shut us out then petered out

During the six years in India, studying Bengali at Shantiniketan.

He tott...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...otest years;

From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May,

From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square

To Balliol, Balliol in the rain.



The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you,

As you became that road through silent years,

From the famous crossing to the stunted bridge

Caparisoned with carnivals of children,

Cohorts of coloured clowns and Father Christmases.



The years become you as the Clothworkers’ Hall in gold

Became you, and you ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry