A Poet for Every Day of the Year

Description

Allie Esiri's beautiful gift anthology, A Poet for Every Day of the Year, is the perfect introduction to 366 of the world's greatest ever verse writers. Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it is bursting at the seams with familiar favourites and exciting new discoveries. Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti and Emily Bronte sit alongside Roger McGough, Wendy Cope, Imtiaz Dharker, Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath and Ocean Vuong. Each of the 366 poems features a small introduction that gives a sense of who the writer was, and not just the greatness of their work. Some offer insightful biographical details or key historical context, while others may provide quirky, humorous anecdotes. The day-to-day format of the anthology invites readers to make poetry a part of their daily routine, and makes sure that they discover something inspirational, life affirming, provocative, moving or entertaining each and every day.

Allie Esiri, who read Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University, is an accomplished curator and host of live poetry events at The National Theatre, The Bridge Theatre, and at Hay, Oxford, Bath and Cheltenham literary festivals. Her anthology A Poem for Every Day of the Year was in the best books of the year list in The Times and the Observer and the audiobook is read by Helena Bonham Carter and Simon Russell Beale. Her anthology, A Poem for Every Night of the Year was a best book of the year in The Times and the New Statesman and won the IBW 2017 book award.

A Poem for Every Day does exactly what this sort of book should do and rallies the old crowd-pleasers (Housman, Kipling and Hardy make multiple appearances), then makes occasional dashes off the beaten path to take in things such as Imtiaz Dharker's lovely poem Crab-Apples and even one poem by that gruff bastion of inaccessibility Geoffrey Hill (Ode on the Loss of the Titanic). If you feel as though your life is lacking a bit of poetry, this is an excellent place to start. * Best Poetry Books of 2017, The Times *