Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times by Neil Astley

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times

Neil Astley

This wonderful anthology brings together five hundred stunning poems on themes ranging from the body to journeys, animals and, of course, love and death. It is a book to make you fall in love with poetry and the perfect starting point for any non-poetry reader.

Extract

Just when it seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumour, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it ...

from Sweetness by Stephen Dunn

Parallels
  • Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times by Jo Shapcott & Matthew Sweeney (eds)
  • Here to Eternity by Andrew Motion (ed)
  • 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life by Daisy Goodwin (ed)