Festive gifts of comfort and joy
THE time of ‘comfort and joy’ doesn’t always deliver either, which is why some people (more than one might expect) turn to poetry for consolation and confirmation. Why? Because you discover that your longings are universal and your pain is not unique. So a poetry book can be a gift of healing, and Rachel Kelly’s anthology You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems For Life’s Ups And Downs (Yellow Kite €21.99) is the perfect present.
A true evangelist for poetry as an aid to wellbeing, the mental health campaigner begins, ‘Words can be a way to make sense of our feelings’, and divides her choices into the four seasons, representing moods of sadness, hope, joy and reflection. The range is engaging, offering old favourites such as Keats and Derek Walcott as well as songs and new writers.
Kelly follows each poem with a beautifully concise explanation which will be welcomed by anyone unaccustomed to reading poetry — and bring fresh delight to those who encounter familiar poems anew. The whole book is an essential companion.
Padraig O Tuama has a similar idea with Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems To Open Your World (Canongate €19.99). His choices are ‘sometimes exploring common ground, sometimes not’, and are drawn from a very wide range of nationalities and cultures.
Based on the popular podcast of the same name, this is more an anthology for an experienced poetry lover, although O Tuama’s expansive and deeply personal essays about each poem are very helpful. He explains, ‘The poems have become like friends I turn to and return to.’
He doesn’t really structure his choices and most will not be familiar. So this is a journey of discovery; an anthology that provides a challenge on every page as well as a wealth of frank autobiographical material from the Irish poet, teacher and theologian.
Very different is the work of Donna Ashworth, which reaches straight into the hearts of her countless readers. This is direct, popular poetry, ‘grown’ on social media accounts, marketed on her website, and praised by well-known figures at home and abroad.
Her new trilogy (Black & White €13.99 each) seeks to cover three key aspects of the human condition — Love and Loss and Life — ‘to help navigate life’s many twists and turns’. Like Rachel Kelly, Ashworth uses the term ‘ups and downs’ — and this direct language is very important, especially in Loss, which I heartily recommend for those who are grieving, as well as readers experiencing loss in other forms.
There are many useful new poems for funerals here, full of lucid beauty, and no, that is not depressing. For Christmas is a period when many of us sink into sad remembrance of the beloved dead, but we can be helped if guided gently by poetry which is (as Ashworth writes) ‘a mirror to reflect our suffering back, but this time with comfort and perhaps a little more clarity’.
Each of these books is a gift from all the poets to each individual reader, reassuring us that there is nothing strange in our feelings, and that joy can flicker when you are least expecting it.
You will find that your longings are universal... and your pain is not unique