The Poetry Remedy: Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind, and Soul

Product Description

The US edition of the bestselling The Poetry Pharmacy A beautiful collection of curated poems each individually selected to provide hope, comfort, and inspiration—for all of life’s most difficult moments

Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice are tailored to those moments in life when we need them most, from general glumness to news overload, and from infatuation to losing the spark. Whatever you’re facing, there is a poem in these pages that will do the trick.

This pocket-size companion presents the most essential fixes in William Sieghart’s poetic dispensary—those that, again and again, have shown themselves to hit the spot. Whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even an excess of ego—or whether you are seeking hope, comfort, inspiration, or excitement—
The Poetry Remedy will provide just the poem you need in that moment.

Review

“With
[The Poetry Remedy] on your shelf, you’ll never be at a loss for comforting words.”
—
Book Page

“Truly a marvelous collection . . . There is balm for the soul, fire for the belly, a cooling compress for the fevered brow, solace for the wounded, an arm around the lonely shoulder—the whole collection is a matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss.”

—Stephen Fry

“The book is delightful; it rightly resituates poetry in relation to its biggest and most serious task: helping us to live and die well.”

—Alain de Botton

“Healing for the heart and soul. I keep my copy with the brandy and aspirin.”

—Jeanette Winterson, author of
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

About the Author

William Sieghart has had a distinguished career in publishing and the arts. He established the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 1992 and founded the UK’s National Poetry Day in 1994. He is a former chairman of the Arts Council Lottery Panel and current chairman of Forward Thinking, a charity seeking peace in the Middle East; the Somerset House Trust; and Street Smart, Action for the Homeless. He was awarded a CBE in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to public libraries.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Condition | AnxietyAlso suitable for: Fear for Children • Fear for the Future • Sleeplessness • Stress • Worrying
For as long as anxiety has existed, human beings have woken up panicking in the night. And anxiety has existed for a long time: at the very least, since we first became aware of ourselves and of the future, however many millennia ago. Yet it was not until the modern age that anxiety seemed to become an epidemic. Ironically, in a time of greater plenty, health, and comfort worldwide than ever before, we are more racked by worry than we have ever been.
No one tells you when you become a parent that you are condemned to worry for the rest of your life. Lying awake at night is usually the worst of all: the blank space of the darkness provides a theater for the most intense and unlikely of worries, putting your sense of powerlessness, of your own vulnerability and of the vulnerabilities of your loved ones, into even sharper perspective. The nighttime is when there is nothing to be done except brood.
These nocturnal concerns are not easy to escape, but I find the calming words of Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” help me put things into perspective. Although I live in the middle of a city, far away from the wood drake and the great heron, I can see them in my mind’s eye when I whisper his words. Perhaps it is the poetic equivalent of counting sheep, but this poem helps me to calm my mind and my breathing, and drift into unconsciousness.
The Peace of Wild ThingsWendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their li