MY YEAR IN POEMS

 

Ava Bonam sets poetry to music in her series MY YEAR IN POEMS.

Poems have a melody of their own. They have a rhythm, a soul, a tune that just needs to get caught. As a writer of poems herself, Ava Bonam sets out to visit the realm of folklore and literature once again - but this time the music derives from the words itself.
The melodies and harmonies have never been sung before and are solely composed for the specific poem.

If you've got a favourite poem that you would like to hear sung, please get in touch. 

#1   Oscar Wilde - Requiescat 

The young Oscar Wilde wrote this elegy for his younger sister's funeral.

Instruments used: voice, harmonium, harp.

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

#2   Dylan Thomas - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Instruments used: voice, guitar, castanets.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, to late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

#3   J.R.R. Tolkien - The road goes ever on and on 

Bilbo Baggins recites this poem in the first book of the Lord of the Rings series.

Instruments used: voice, Celtic harp.

The road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can.
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then? I cannot say.

#4   Ava Bonam - Trust, my nomad friend

Instruments used: voice, piano.

Trust, my nomad friend
Are you leaving again?
Leaving again, trust my friend?

I can see you are not well,
would you not prefer to dwell
in me a little longer.
Can we not walk together hand in hand,
and when I fall you pick me up
and when you crack I fill the gap.

Together, not apart,
for a part you are of me.
And in me you must reside.
You must -
I beg.

#5   Sara Teasdale - There Will Come Soft Rains 

Published in 1918.

Instruments used: voice, piano, harmonium, sitar.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.