Although he’s often thought of as a somewhat gloomy poet, Larkin (1922-85) had his tenderer, more celebratory moments too, such as in this, the opening poem from his 1974 collection High Windows, describing the annual ritual of the British family seaside holiday.

Marshallese poet Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s collection Iep Jaltok confronts the existential challenge of sea-level rise for island nations. In 2 Degrees, her infant daughter’s fever prompts a bitter reflection on the arrogance of fossil fuel-consuming nations: the difference between 1.5C and 2C “Seems small … just crumbs / like the Marshall Islands / must look / on a map”. Jetn̄il-Kijiner was the Marshall Islands’ climate envoy at Cop27, and criticised the failure to phase out fossil fuels even as developing nations celebrated the loss and damage fund. We’ve gathered these ocean poems from a range of sources to help you open your head and soul to the wide unknown. Whether we are nervous and need to be peaceful, anxious and want to be cheerful, or sensitive and need to be reminded of your power, ideas of the ocean bring this into our heart and spirit. ‎should not be construed as a substitute for advice from a medical professional or health care provider. Life thrills in the shallows as well as the deep. The glory of the foreshore is celebrated in Of Sea, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s bestiary of the intertidal zone. Mud shrimp drifting with the tide float in “silk light”; ragworm, burrowing in estuarine mud, shimmer “in all the love of being”.

The simple vocabulary and rhymes paired with the colourful images of sea life make it an easy poem for children to follow. It will also hopefully help them to use their imaginations to visualise some of the creatures that can be found under the sea!only my mind is not present and I can't control where I go, I can't remember where I go, im mindless. Im walking on an ocean. An ocean of happiness I can't baptize myself in. The ocean gets more wet except the ocean is filled with sweat, sweat from running from all my problems. Exhaustion fills my body. That is the pure moment I realize I am asleep, the wetness is beads of sweat on my forehead from the 16th night terror this week. Contemporary Pacific Islander poetry most commonly includes oral and written poetry composed by authors who are genealogically linked to the indigenous people of the areas of the Pacific known as Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. While many of these poets live within the “Pacific Basin,” there are also many residing in the United States. Because Pacific Islanders are one of the fastest growing populations in America, it is essential that we read Pacific literature, which has for too long been invisible within discussions of American and Global poetry. Desire is also the main current of The European Eel, Steve Ely’s lush recreation of the incredible transatlantic migration eels undertake to their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Little is known about their ocean-going lives, but in Ely’s telling it becomes a testimony to life’s irrepressibility. A female eel will gradually consume her own body to fuel the journey, “reducing herself to the seed of her species’ future”. It culminates in an ecstatic account of eel sex, coiling in billowing clouds of golden milt and ova, “sparks from the cornucopian flame / of Archaea’s unkillable, dark pleroma”. Gorgeously written, this poem begins by describing the water as unraveling velvet. Fanning describes how the water fills the earth, but never fully encompasses it. Water is always changing its shape, filling yet fleeting. It is everywhere, yet never within your control. The ocean has had a very significant role in poetry since the dawn of poetry itself. It’s easy to see why. The ocean — both wild and calm, dangerous and beautiful — is a made up of contradictions and mystery. Ocean poems can not only be dedicated to capturing the heart of sea, but to metaphors for love and trauma, among many other things. More than that, the ocean has played a role in the history of many cultures, making it a setting that is both intimately personal, and vastly universal.

Oceanic is a generous, romantic, and ambitious look at the different stages of life, and how we experience the love and wonder that lead us to become more fully realized and compassionate as we grow each decade… [it’s] Nezhukumatathil’s most cohesive collection to date, as she takes her prior preoccupations and dissects them in new ways that invite, as all of her work does, a sense of marvel and astonishment.” — Tin House Animated Tale presenting The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy from player.hamilton-trust.org.uk We explored the oceans of poetry to provide you the best poems about the ocean from over a decades of English-language poetry. So if you’re ready let’s dive into these best poems about the sea. 1. A Miracle to BeholdWe might say a poem is a bit like a boat, a vessel borne aloft by rhythms that surge or eddy. It is also like the sea itself, with its deep places and ever-receding horizon. “The sea has many voices,” observes Eliot in The Dry Salvages. More than anything, the many voices of oceanic poetry declare the vitality of life even in the midst of crisis. “There is a lullaby in all of us,” Burnett writes, “a call of sea”. If only we would listen.

Dive headfirst into the captivating splendor and sheer might of the ocean through the finest sea-themed poems, all nestled in one cozy corner for your delight!

There are billions of species hidden in the ocean that interact in ways that we will never fully comprehend.