Talking to Grief
By Poetry Pharmacy
By Poetry Pharmacy
It's Grief Awareness Week 2-8 December. If you're struggling with loss or know someone who is, some good books out there can offer wisdom, advice, and comforting words which might help, even just a little bit.
Here are some Poetry Pharmacy recommendations.
For a very comprehensive list (which includes books for children, fiction and poetry too) take a look at https:// www.librariesconnected.org.uk/page/death-positive-libraries-book-list
In Memoriam: Thirty Poems of Bereavement
Various Authors
£6.95 £6.46This second edition of this much-loved anthology contains poems of bereavement selected for their beauty and for the sense of consolation that they offer.
Mindfulness & the Journey of Bereavement: Restoring Hope after a Death
Peter Bridgewater
£8.99 £8.36
Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death
Yoel Hoffmann
£11.99 £11.15
Burying the Wren
Deryn Rees-Jones
£8.99Her sequence of 'Dogwoman' poems, which draws on the work of artist Paula Rego, is an extended elegy to her late husband, the poet and critic Michael Murphy. Above all these are poems of the body, ...the blue heartstopping pulse at the wrist , which are alive to the world and the transformative qualities of love.
My Little Brother
Christel Wiinblad
£7.99 £7.43My Little Brother is a sequence of ten poems by Christel Wiinblad, which work both as a loving portrait and celebration of her younger sibling, and an unflinching, direct account of his battle with schizophrenia.
Gifts the Mole Gave Me
Wendy Pratt
£9.99 £9.29A deep vein of love and grief runs beneath Wendy Pratt's rather wonderful new collection, whether she is writing about her lost daughter, missed birthdays, cockerels silenced to placate the neighbours, a virus under a microscope or a defiant run beside the North Sea. A sureness of touch, a startling image, and an ability to move the reader mark this Yorkshire poet as something very special indeed.’ Carole Bromley
Somehow
Helen Calcutt
£7.50 £6.97In September 2017, Helen Calcutt’s brother Matthew took his own life. He was 40 years old. ‘… the phone rang / and when I answered it / you’d killed / yourself, and that was the start / of you being dead.’ This is the starting point of an astonishing new pamphlet of poems by Helen Calcutt. At times harrowing; at others hopeful – always deeply felt and beautifully realised. These poems display the poise and precision of a poet already at the height of her powers, writing the un-writable, weaving the terrible into something relatable and filled with the light of understanding. How do we survive the tumultuous presence of grief? How does the trauma of losing a loved one to suicide affect, our identity, our creativity, and our ability to love? How – in a world shattered by incomparable change and severe loss – do we build a life from the wreckage? Because we do. Somehow, we do. “A highly accomplished set of poems which consider the ways grief, guilt and loss attach themselves to both the family and the natural world for restoration. What Calcutt does within these pages is acknowledge our ability to be resilient, while never dismissing the private moments we struggle and suffer to keep ourselves going. At times devastating, at other times buoyant, but always totally human.” – Anthony Anaxagorou
It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand
Megan Devine
£13.99 £13.01
The Essential Guide to Life After Bereavement: Beyond Tomorrow
Mary Jordan and Judy Carole Kauffmann
£13.99
The Other Side of Sadness (Revised): What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss
George Bonanno
£14.99 £13.94
