JOYS FOREVER
John Keats would certainly have recognised plenty of joys forever among the poems submitted to the competition commemorating his 200th anniversary, for things of beauty abounded. Poems looked at the life and untimely death of the poet, at his relationships, hardships and sickness, at the world in which he lived and they way he might have interpreted today’s world. The curse of tuberculosis in 1821 was paralleled with the coronavirus issue in 2021, nightingales sang and Grecian urns proliferated, while Madeline’s seduction and the Belle Dame’s activities in her Elfin grot showed no signs of abating.
In short, stunning poems were submitted, and in most cases the engagement with the subject matter was complemented by the careful crafting of
