To mark Poetry Day Ireland tomorrow (Thursday 30 April), the Marine Institute is sharing a selection of poems that celebrate the power of our seas and oceans.

The State agency for marine research will join Poetry Ireland’s annual celebration of poetry, which this year is taking place online all over the island of Ireland.

“It’s wonderful that the Marine Institute is taking part, as the marine world has long been a subject of fierce fascination for poets,” said Lisa Jewell of Poetry Ireland.

“By sharing poems online during Poetry Day Ireland, the institute is helping to bring people together through poetry and deepen their appreciation of our ocean.”

The Marine Institute will share poems from well-known poets such as Ireland’s beloved Seamus Heaney, and American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson often wrote about the sea but it’s believed she did so from her imagination, having never actually visited the ocean.

Other writers who have been captured by the sea’s imagery include famous children’s author Lewis Carroll, and Irish poet and much-loved former TV presenter Pat Ingoldsby.

Poet Robin McNamara, living in Waterford city, has also kindly shared his poem ‘The Fisherman’, about the sacrifice and dangers faced by fishermen who fish the seas off Dunmore East, Co Waterford.

Poems inspired by the sea are already being shared each day on the Marine Institute’s social media channels — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — which will continue until this Saturday 2 May.

The poems will also be available for download on the Marine Institute’s website.