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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016
© Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne 2016
Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne assert the moral right to be identified as the editors of this book
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008203863
Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008168162
Version: 2016-10-28
contents
ReLit and the Bibliotherapy Foundation
ReLit and the Bibliotherapy Foundation
These poems were selected by Jonathan Bate, Paula Byrne, Sophie Ratcliffe and Andrew Schuman, who all contributed to the section introductions. Many of the poems have been tried and tested in healthcare settings or at stressful times, past and present. Proceeds from sales of the anthology will be donated to ReLit, the campaign of the Bibliotherapy Foundation (a charitable enterprise) to alleviate stress and other mental health conditions through mindful reading. For more information about the work of the Foundation, please visit www.relit.org.uk.
We would love to hear about the ways in which this anthology, and poetry in general, has helped you. Please add your comments on our website www.relit.org.uk/stressed.
‘Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind’
Rudyard Kipling
There are many ways of dealing with stress: a walk in the park, a cup of tea and a chat with a friend, a long hot bath, or that form of practised meditation which has become known as ‘mindfulness’. In this little book, we would like to share another remedy, in fact one of the oldest remedies of all: the reading of poetry.
True poetry, claimed William Wordsworth, is either ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ or ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. The idea for this anthology came from the recollection of the powerful feelings stirred by some life-changing moments. There was a thirteen-year-old girl who lost her father and found comfort in a four-hundred-year-old poem by John Donne. There was the sense of utter desolation on being told by a compassionate consultant that a five-year-old daughter in intensive care could not be guaranteed to survive the night: hope came from a remembered poem that gave a glimpse of how others have endured their own desolation and come out the other side. Then there was the need to fill the mind with beautiful words and rich thoughts while waiting through many hours of surgery as that same child received a life-saving transplant.
There was also the experience of stress so intense that it manifested itself as physical pain in the hands and feet that was as real as that of an organic condition: yet the pain evaporated when a creative general practitioner prescribed not a drug but a book that provided exercises for managing stress. This inspired the thought: if words can do the work of drugs, what is to lose by putting them in our mental health first aid kit?
There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. The great eighteenth-century reader and writer Dr Samuel Johnson said that the only purpose of literature was to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it. We offer some poems that provide pure (even nonsensical) enjoyment, but most of our selections are intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences. Among the themes to which poets have returned again