Grief Poetry

Drawing from his experience as a translator, Forrest Gander includes, in the first powerfully elegiac section, a version of a poem by the Spanish mystical poet St. John of the Cross. He continues with a long multilingual poem examining the syncretic geological and cultural history of the US border with Mexico. The poems of the third section - a moving transcription of Gander’s efforts to address his mother dying of Alzheimer’s - rise like hymns, transforming slowly from reverence to revelation.

Today Thomas Gray is remembered almost solely for this melancholy meditation on the inevitability of death and the insignificance of fame. The poem was originally thought to have been inspired by the death of Gray's close friend, Richard West, but modern critics think this to be unlikely. Retiring by nature, Gray did not want the elegy to be published, but his hand was forced by an unscrupulous editor who planned to publish the poem without permission. The polished elegance of the versification has ensured that the poem has retained its appeal over the centuries.

The Perseverance is the remarkable debut book by British-Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus. Ranging across history and continents, these poems operate in the spaces in between, their haunting lyrics creating new, hybrid territories. The Perseverance is a book of loss, contested language and praise, where elegies for the poet's father sit alongside meditations on the d/Deaf experience.

In her electric fourth collection, Melissa Broder penetrates the itch of existence and explores numberless deaths: the annihilation of self, the bereavement of love, the destruction of fantasy, the transmutation, even, of our ideas of dying. What emerges is an infinite series of false endings - each a trap door containing the possibility for alchemy, rebirth, and renewal. Last Sext confronts both eternal longing and the mystery of mortality, with language hot, primal, and dark.

The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray, Bella Thorne’s collection of illuminating and inspiring poems chronicles her personal struggles, relationships, and wild-child lifestyle, all with her trademark wit and wisdom.

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection. Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings", Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times.

From one of the most-viewed spoken word poets of all time, a poetry collection exploring themes of loneliness, anxiety, and longing, while also celebrating the gifts that come with being alone - the chance to live on your own terms, to learn to love yourself without any distractions, and to become your own biggest champion.

Our quoted authority is not the people in white coats but those with a quill, a heart and a soul that can take these feelings of love and loss and with the ink of words put to verse feelings and emotions that can be re-lived and shared by all. As they venture through depression, war, slavery to heartache and the loss of loved ones our eyes may mist and tears gently fall at what collectively we have done, have experienced, have witnessed and lost.

Instagram superstar and poet Nikita Gill shares a collection of poems crafted as the world went into lockdown, tackling themes such as mental health and loneliness, and the precarity of hope. Through the life cycle of a star, she invites the listener to feel connected to the universe, taking us on a journey through the five stages of grief to the five stages of hope.

Kae Tempest is one of the most exciting and innovative performers to have emerged in spoken-word poetry in many years; her dramatic poem "Brand New Ancients" won the prestigious Ted Hughes Prize for innovation in poetry. Tempest's wholly unique blend of street poetry, rap, and storytelling - combined with the spellbinding delivery of an open-air revivalist - has won her legions of followers all over the UK. Her remarkable stage presence is wholly audible in this poem, a spoken story written to be told with live music.

A classic poem written to mirror the pain of the loss of romance. There is no remedy. There seems no hope. The anguish comes through loud and clear in this piece, written by William Hope Hodgson and narrated by Glenn Hascall.

Grief. An emotion we all experience at one time or another, but there is no grief greater then the loss of a loved one. In this short poem by William Hope Hodgson, the narrator is alone with his grief and the realization that what had been will never be again.

This is a literary composition composed for those who feel like nobody's listening. For my comrades, my mom and my dad, and my two sisters who showed me what it means to be different. For the drug addicts that fiend but still dream of better conditions, huddled with puddles on pillows with Brillos and pipes, not bathed or slept in days, high as a kite. For the single parents that struggle working doubles, taxing their muscles so their children can comfortably cuddle and sleep at night.

Poetry in one form or another has been around almost as long as language. We have used it to communicate our joys and heartbreaks, our victories and our losses. But fear has also been a constant companion, and our ghost stories and monsters stretch their claws back into history as far as the eyes can see. The Configuration Discordant is an exploration of not only that fear, but of our global journey through poetry. One hundred poems exploring 75+ forms of poetic expression from the humble haiku to the mysterious Qasida.

Seit sein Hund Lola gestorben ist, kann den kleinen Niklas nichts mehr erfreuen. Alles ist in Traurigkeit gehüllt. Selbst wenn er mit seinen Freunden spielt, ist es nicht mehr so wie früher. Die Erde sieht dunkler aus als sonst, die Nässe ist nasser und die guten Schuhe drücken, wenn er rennt. Niklas fragt sich, ob Trauer je verschwinden kann, wenn doch alles vergeht - selbst die Schönheit der Welt... Oder ob man verlernen kann diese Schönheit zu sehen? Eines Tages lernt er einen alten Mann kennen, der immer allein auf einer Bank sitzt und in die Sonne blinzelt oder in den Schnee starrt.

Author Mae Bea Sayes is an artist-poet inspired by life, love, and literature. She transposes poems from images that come alive from ideas about her journey with the meter of language and the characters of literature. She creates cadence through wordplay and loves rhyme whenever it works. In her new collection of poems, The Graveyard and Other Poems, she examines the journey of the souls death, reawakening, and redemption.

All three volumes of Amanda Lovelace’s poetry in one audio collection - read by the author and guest contributors! Goodreads Choice Award-winning poet and USA Today best-selling author Amanda Lovelace’s 'women are some kind of magic' series is now available in one amazing audio collection! Includes: the princess saves herself in this one; the witch doesn't burn in this one; and the mermaid's voice returns in this one.

A gorgeous collection of poems exploring womanhood, sisterhood, love, loss, and longing, for people who find catharsis in poems, or people who have always wanted to read or listen to poetry, but don’t know where to start.

indigo is the joy and lament of a father, theologian, human being, fashioning new ideas about the divine within the painful loss of his daughter, within the constraints of his own intelligence, within the constraints of what religion had been telling him his whole life—some of which was good and some of which wasn't.

Celebrating James Tate’s work as it transcends convention, time, and everything that tells us, “No, you can’t do that,” Hell, I Love Everybody gives us the poet at his best, his most intimate, hopeful, inventive, and brilliant. John Ashbery called Tate the “poet of possibilities,” and this collection records forays into possibilities for American poetry’s future. With a foreword by Terrance Hayes, it is sure to give listeners new and old a lasting collection of favorites.