Poems about growing up reflect the universal journey of transformation and self-discovery that individuals experience as they transition from childhood to adulthood. These poems explore the complexities, challenges, and joys of this pivotal phase of life.
Poems about growing up often delve into the process of self-discovery and the exploration of personal identity. They capture the exhilarating yet sometimes daunting journey of finding one’s place in the world.
These poems may touch upon the search for individuality, the navigation of changing relationships, and the gradual understanding of one’s dreams, passions, and values.
‘I Remember, I Remember’ by Thomas Hood is a poem dedicated to the nostalgic embrace of childhood memory. Hood idolizes his ‘childish ignorance’, painting his memories with beautiful colors and images.
I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
‘Indian Weavers’ explores the inevitability of death while celebrating the cycles of human existence and experience.
Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
‘My Mother Would Be a Falconress’ by Robert Duncan explores a son and mother’s relationship through the lens of a falcon breaking free from his handler.
My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
‘My Son the Man’ explores the reality of parenting and engages with the inevitability of the passage of time.
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
‘Childhood’ explores the transitory moment when a child becomes aware of the passing of time, and the process of growing old.
I used to think that grown-up people chose
To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,
And veins like small fat snakes on either hand,
On purpose to be grand.
In Sheenagh Pugh’s ‘Sweet 18’, an older woman expresses her desire to regain youth as she battles the temptation to take it from others.
You move before me with all the unknown ease
of your age; your face clear of the awareness
that clouds mine. Your only scars; where you tried
to shave, before there was any need.
‘In Memory of the Utah Stars’ captures the manner in which memories can provide us with both pleasure and pain.
Each of them must have terrified
his parents by being so big, obsessive
and exact so young, already gone
and leaving, like a big tipper,
In ‘Advice to a Teenage Daughter,’ Thrilling uses war imagery to describe how a teenage girl should approach love.
You have found a new war-game
called Love.
Here on your dressing-table
‘Captain Cook (To My Brother)’ by Letitia Elizabeth Landon reflects on the loss of childhood and how emotional looking back on the past is.
Do you recall the fancies of many years ago,
When the pulse danced those light measure that again it cannot know!
Ah! We both of us are alter’d, and now we talk no more
Of all the old creations that haunted us of yore.
‘Stealing Peas’ explores the bittersweetness of a memory that ultimately reveals the inherent insecurities and vulnerabilities of childhood.
Tamp of a clean ball on stretched gut.
Warm evening voices over clipped privet.
Cut grass. Saltfish from the mudflats,
and the tide far out.
The ‘Coronation’ by Helen Hunt Jackson can be considered a literary work that represents the topic of power and its instability, the worth of humility, and the desire for self-knowledge.
At the king's gate the subtle noon
Wove filmy yellow nets of sun;
Into the drowsy snare too soon
The guards fell one by one.
‘The Distances’ by Charles Olsen present a complex, haunting meditation on the darker sides of love.
I wake you,
stone. Love this man.
‘To a Daughter Leaving Home’ uses the metaphor of a child learning to ride a bike to beautifully capture a parent’s mixed emotions of pride and fear as they watch their daughter grow up and gain independence.
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
‘Midsummer’ meditates on adolescence, lost innocence, and memory as the speaker remembers hot summer nights from their youth.
On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry,
the boys making up games requiring them to tear off the girls’ clothes
and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer
‘Once Upon a Time,’ written by the Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara, is a satirical poem on the modern way of greeting someone. The lack of compassion, simplicity, and brotherhood is portrayed in this poem.
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
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