Eleven Poems About Football

Football has accrued its fair share of sound-bites and foot-in-mouth moments. These eleven poems strike an altogether more subtle note, and take us to the heart of why a seemingly straightforward team sport arouses such passion and commands lifelong devotion.
There’s a poem capturing the romance of children playing football until it’s almost too dark to see the ball, and another in which going to the match is a rite of passage for an immigrant boy seeking to belong. And, of course, there’s a poem evoking that iconic game played in No Man’s Land during the First World War Christmas Truce:
“All these boys want to hear today
Is the final whistle. Let them walk away.”
from ‘The Game: Christmas Day, 1914’ by Ian McMillan

This varied and entertaining mini-anthology demonstrates that the beautiful game is entirely worthy of the beautiful language of poetry. And there’s an extra contribution from the touchline by editor, poet and novelist Conor O’Callaghan whose memoir Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Irish World Cup Blues was published in 2005.
Poems by Simon Armitage, Tiffany Atkinson, Claire Crowther, Elaine Feeney, Miriam Gamble, Seamus Heaney, Gill Learner, Ian McMillan, Sean O’Brien, Conor O’Callaghan,
George Szirtes and Sarah Wardle.

Cover illustration by Hugh Ribbans.