To mark this year’s World Poetry Day we’ve compiled thirteen songs from the likes of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Cure, James Blake (above) and Talking Heads directly inspired by poetry. Check out the playlist and accompanying poems/poets below.
1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand (Paradise Lost by Milton)
2. The Cure – How Beautiful You Are (The Eyes of the Poor by Baudelaire)
3. Talking Heads – I Zimbra (Gadji Beri Bimba by Hugo Ball)
4. Joni Mitchell – If (If by Rudyard Kipling)
5. Lana Del Rey – Body Electric (I Sing The Body Electric by Walt Whitman)
6. Calexico – Two Silver Trees (Norman Dubie)
7. David Bowie – The Man Who Sold The World (Antigonish by Hughes)
8. Regina Spektor – Apres Moi (February by Boris Pasternak)
9. Bob Dylan – Beyond Here Lies Nothin’ (Ovid)
10. Dum Dum Girls – Rimbaud Eyes (Arthur Rimbaud)
11. Beach Boys – California Saga (Beak of Eagles by Robinson Jeffers)
12. James Blake – Overgrown (All Overgrown… by Emily Dickinson)
13. Ciaran Lavery & Ryan Vail AKA Sea Legs – Ceol Na Mara (feat. Conor O’Kane)
