Poetry and the Olympics

The 2012 Olympics will leave behind an unusual legacy. Walking around the Olympic Park in years to come, you’ll find poems waiting for you at every corner. There’s Tennyson – some lines from “Ulysses”, ending with, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” . Joining this are

Andrea Del Sarto by Robert Browning

‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?’

Freedom’s Plow by Langston Hughes

‘First in the heart is the dream.
Then the mind starts seeking a way."

Variation on a Theme of Rilke by Denise Levertov

‘and what I heard was my whole self
Saying and singing what it knew: I can.’

Dignified by Sean O’Brien
‘To change the world by mastering a game.’

Whatever else happens to the place generations from now, there will be evidence that the Olympic Games of 2012 inspired some poets to leave their words for the future.

This is part of an initiative called Winning Words, masterminded by William Sieghart, the founder of National Poetry Day, to “carpet the nation with poetry”.

The Winning Words project has permanent poetry installations placed throughout the Olympic Park , supported and delivered by the Olympic Delivery Authority as part of their strategy to integrate art into the Park. There is also be a series of temporary poems displayed during the games by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games’ in order to continually animate the Olympic site. 

The ambitions of Winning Words also extends beyond the Olympics, aiming to ‘carpet the nation in poetry’ by encouraging communities to create their own temporary or permanent installations in their own villages, towns and cities.

"In our increasingly alienated modern lives," he says, " an appropriate poem can be more helpful than many forms of therapy." We love our poetry but are often intimidated by it. Yet we consume more greetings cards than any other nation, enjoy our chants on the football terraces and have contributed significantly to the canon of rap music. Poetry is all around us, and as our great cultural legacy to the world it deserved to feature in the Olympic park and celebrations. That's what Winning Words is all about: the joy of inspiration and of shared understanding.

He also has a book "Winning Words"which has 160 or so poems, from the ancient to the modern, that believe can inspire and help the reader through the tribulations of daily existence, by providing a sense of complicity and understanding.