Since this April is National Poetry Month, we’ve gathered together selected poetry and related items from Open Collections for your enjoyment!

Our recently added Historical Children’s Literature Collection includes several poetry chapbooks. This chapbook, The butterfly’s ball, and the grasshopper’s feast, includes beautiful engraved illustrations:

Roscoe, William. The butterfly’s ball, and the grasshopper’s feast, 1807.

Roscoe, William. The butterfly’s ball, and the grasshopper’s feast, 1807, p. 7.

Our BC Historical Books collection also contains several collections of poetry. Eric Duncan’s Rural rhymes and the sheep thief begins with the following disclaimer:

Duncan, Eric. Rural rhymes and the sheep thief, 1896, p. 7.

Here’s the first page of the first poem from the book, “A mosquito song”:

Duncan, Eric. “A mosquito song”. From Rural rhymes and the sheep thief, 1896, p. 11.

If you’re interested in Japanese poetry, check out our One Hundred Poets collection. This collection contains 74 books and 20 different card sets relating to the poetry anthology Hyakunin Isshu 百人一首 (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each). You can read more about the collection in this previous blog post.

[Kinoya Hisomaro ; illustrated by Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Kuniyoshi], [Nishikie chūiri hyakunin isshu], [1849].

You may also be interested in the utagaruta card sets within this collection. You can find them here, and check out our previous blog post to learn more about how this game is played.

[One hundred poets card sheets], [Meiji period [1868-1912]].

This month is a great time to seek out poetry readings. We found this photo of Allen Ginsberg reading at UBC in 1963:

UBC 1.1/11341-2. Holborne, Peter. Allen Ginsberg reading poetry at UBC. August 2nd, 1963. Allen Ginsberg reading poetry at UBC.

Finally, check out this adorable poem about a cat interrupting a game of croquet:

Playing croquet, 1875.