It’s Tuesday and the dVerse Poets Pub is open with hot cross buns, tea and coffee, as well as a selection of excellent poetry.  I’m Kim from writinginnorthnorfolk.com, your host for this week’s Poetics.

When I was teaching, I did a stint at a sixth form college, where I led a double act lesson with another teacher, each choosing a poem to work on with a small group of students. One week, my colleague arrived with a chopped up poem by Philip Larkin, which the students had to piece together in pairs. The poem was ‘The Building’ (High Windows, 1972) about a mysterious and ambiguous building. Only a little is revealed bit by bit through the poem. It was interesting to watch the students work out what the poem was about before analysing it as a group.

There are other poems about buildings that give the reader a sense of having been in them, for example ‘At the Fishhouses’ by Elizabeth Bishop, which you can listen to here.

^{Image by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash}

Further vivid images are evoked in ‘The Office Building’ by Helen Hoyt, ‘Homage to the British Museum’ by William Empson, and ‘Cathedral’ by Leslie Contreras Schwartz.

^{Photograph of the British Museum by Nicole Baster on Unsplash}

 ‘Scaffolding‘ by Seamus Heaney looks at a building from a different point of view, as does ‘Haunted Houses’ by Longfellow.

Your challenge today is to write a poem about a building of your choice, for example: the building in which you live; a building in which you were happy or sad; a favourite shop; a building in which you went to school or worked; a building that made an impression on you. You may write it in any form, but to push yourself that little bit further, you could write your poem in a similar way to Larkin, revealing the building bit by bit, so that the reader has to work out what it is.

If you are new to dVerse and/or Poetics, here’s how to join in:

• Write a poem in response to the challenge;
• Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below;
• There you will find links to other poets, and more will join so check back to see more poems;
• Read and comment on other poets’ work – we all come here to have our poems read;
• Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog;
• Comment and participate in our discussion below, if you like. We are a friendly bunch of poets.
• Have fun.
• This link will close on Thursday. If you miss it, don’t despair, you can link your poem to OLN.