Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive
    Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive
    Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive
    Ebook934 pages6 hours

    Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive

    By Neil Astley

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley’s Staying Alive, which became Britain’s most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who’ve wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder.

    Staying Alive didn’t just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn’t read poetry for years because it hadn’t held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. A companion anthology, Being Human (2011), completed this poetry trilogy. Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (2012) selects 100 poems from all three anthologies, a third from each. These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry – all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry.

    'I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive – I think it has a heartbeat, or maybe that’s my own thrum humming along with the music of these poets. Sitting alone in a room with these poems is to be assured that you are not alone, you are not crazy (or if you are, you’re not the only one who thinks this way!) I run home to this book to argue with it, find solace in it, to locate myself in the world again.' – Meryl Streep

    ‘Truly startling and powerful poems.’ – Mia Farrow

    ‘These poems distil the human heart as nothing else… Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. It’s invigorating and makes me proud of being human.’ – Jane Campion

    ‘Staying Alive is a blessing of a book. The title says it all. I have long waited for just this kind of setting down of poems. Has there ever been such a passionate anthology? These are poems that hunt you down with the solace of their recognition.’ – Anne Michaels

    ‘Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can’t think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems.’ – Philip Pullman

    ‘Usually if you say a book is “inspirational” that means it’s New Agey and soft at the center. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I’ve decided I’m now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius.’ – Edmund White

    ‘Staying Alive is a wonderful testament to Neil Astley’s lifetime in poetry, and to the range and courage of his taste. It’s also, of course, a testament to poetry itself: to its powers to engross and move us, to its ability to challenge and brace us, and to its exultation. Everyone who cares about poetry should own this book.’ – Andrew Motion

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateSep 29, 2016
    ISBN9781780371771
    Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive
    Author

    Neil Astley

    Neil Astley is the editor of Bloodaxe Books which he founded in 1978. His books include many anthologies, most notably those in the Staying Alive series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011) and Staying Human (2020), along with three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets and In Person: World Poets. He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, and has published two poetry collections, Darwin Survivor and Biting My Tongue, as well as two novels, The End of My Tether (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award), and The Sheep Who Changed the World. He was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books in 1995; is a patron and past trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival; and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. He lives in the Tarset valley in Northumberland.

    Read more from Neil Astley

    Related to Being Alive

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

      Feb 6, 2024

      Bang out hundreds of pages of rhyming couplets about something other than your identity or your perceptions, and you, too, will likely fall out of love with lyric poetry. The post Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Toward A Unified Theory

      Jan 1, 2022

      Condemned to live inside the weatherof our moods What are you doing? Filling this bucket with waterand dumping it into the water They can’t excavate the amphitheater further because it extends backbeneath the houses We close their eyes not for thembu

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón

      Dec 14, 2022

      U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Restless Herd

      Apr 14, 2021

      Restless Herd
      21 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TheTimeIsNow

      Jun 14, 2023

      Suggested Reading: The Art of Revising Poetry: 21 U.S. Poets on Their Drafts, Craft, and Process (Bloomsbury, June 2023) edited by Charles Finn and Kim Stafford “There has long been a gap in the writing trade,” the editors write in the introduction t

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Max Porter

      Dec 6, 2019

      I would have been lost this year (as any other) without poetry to cling to and travel with. The post A Year in Reading: Max Porter appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Joy Of The Illegible

      Sep 1, 2023

      Books I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes Tin House Books, 2023 paperback, 104 pages, $16.95 Megan Fernandes’ latest collection of poems, I Do Everything I’m Told, begins with an epigraph from Gwendolyn Brooks: “Sit where the light corrupts y

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder

      Aug 17, 2017

      What, if anything, do you think poetry can do for us in these difficult times? The post Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Wilds Of Poetry

      Sep 1, 2018

      Ecopoetry not in the sense of poetry decorated somehow with landscape—bird or snake, river or mountain—but in the radical sense of poetry that weaves consciousness and landscape together, returning the human to “nature” and the “wild,” from which we

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      nothing so lonely as the hospitalbed. nothing so lonely as beinglonely in the hospital bed. nothingso jargoned as the body sproutingbrush tuber cannula or rue. nothingso pure as the abstracted by which Imean exploded body, the body thatholds its skin

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Mar 15, 2022

      a ghost is hangingfrom the doorpostof our past— can you see it?it has wounds—it’s bleedingyears from its mouth [.] when we left ourhouses that aprilit was for history’s pleasure— twice the war wasin far-flung townsthen it grew a light foot and veered

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art Of The Comp Title

      Jun 14, 2023

      The Art Of The Comp Title
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Living In A House Is Like

      May 1, 2022

      Standing in each stanza—no, I’m sorry—room. Standing in each room waslike standing in a tester stroke of wall paint. All these blobs of colors in rows and columns, the size of thumbs.Together—a portrait of potential. But blues leaped to yellow leaped

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      All I Know

      Jul 1, 2022

      The Statue of Liberty was packed in crates of lentilsand there is a species of catfish with scalesso tough that piranhas can’t chew throughto red softness. I’m thinking of what is vital,today. The willow tree in my dreams that swaysand a little girl

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      I’ve seen enough films where a character nickshimself shaving or maybe has a bread knife slip and the thinrun of blood is supposed to stand for some violence,for something he did and is desperateto cover up, but the truth will out—I’ve seen enough th

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On Writing Poems Facing Into The Broken World

      Mar 1, 2020

      Kaveh Akbar and Jane Hirshfield have been in a running e-mail conversation since January 2016, when Akbar first contacted Hirshfield about doing an interview in his Divedapper series, before his first, widely acclaimed book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Al

      16 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Rot

      Sep 2, 2022

      Rot
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Pitch Like A Pro

      Jun 14, 2023

      Pitch Like A Pro
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Beatrice Kilat

      Dec 13, 2019

      By that I mean that he’s a little practical and a little dreamy, a little horny and a little precious, which is just how I like a person. The post A Year in Reading: Beatrice Kilat appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Poetics Of Wrongness, An Unapologia

      May 1, 2019

      I’m writing this lecture in the middle of a particular night in my particular life. This is relevant. Three years ago I was asked to write these lectures by the Bagley Wright Lecture Series, and it seemed impossible. I’d never given lectures. I imagi

      49 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Being Alive

    4/5

    46 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A good balance and range
    • 4/5
      An excellent collection of poetry arranged according under some surprising headings. If you want a poetry anthology then this is the one to get!

    Book preview

    Being Alive - Neil Astley

    BEING ALIVE

    the sequel to Staying Alive

    Edited by Neil Astley

    Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley’s Staying Alive, which became Britain’s most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who’ve wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder.

    Staying Alive introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, offering an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It brought many other readers back to poetry, people who hadn’t read poetry for years because it hadn’t held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. A third companion anthology, Being Human, completes this modern poetry trilogy.

    ‘I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive – I think it has a heartbeat, or maybe that’s my own thrum humming along with the music of these poets. Sitting alone in a room with these poems is to be assured that you are not alone, you are not crazy (or if you are, you’re not the only one who thinks this way!) I run home to this book to argue with it, find solace in it, to locate myself in the world again.’ – Meryl Streep

    ‘These poems remind us of what we have felt yet never fully articulated, what we have dreamt yet never believed entirely possible. Perhaps most importantly, the poems in here tell us there is nothing more powerful than language when its agenda is to reveal rather than to conceal or distort.’ – Kamila Shamsie

    ‘Hopefully, books like this will put poetry back into the mainstream.’ – Van Morrison

    Cover photograph © Laura Doss | www.corbisimages.com

    Responses to Staying Alive:

    ‘Truly startling and powerful poems.’ – Mia Farrow

    ‘These poems distil the human heart as nothing else… Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. It’s invigorating and makes me proud of being human.’ – Jane Campion

    ‘Staying Alive is a blessing of a book. The title says it all. I have long waited for just this kind of setting down of poems. Has there ever been such a passionate anthology? These are poems that hunt you down with the solace of their recognition.’ – Anne Michaels

    ‘Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can’t think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems.’ – Philip Pullman

    ‘Usually if you say a book is inspirational that means it’s New Agey and soft at the center. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I’ve decided I’m now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius.’ – Edmund White

    ‘A vibrant, brilliantly diverse anthology of poems to delight the mind, heart and soul. A book for people who know they love poetry, and for people who think they don’t.’ – Helen Dunmore

    ‘Staying Alive is a wonderful testament to Neil Astley’s lifetime in poetry, and to the range and courage of his taste. It’s also, of course, a testament to poetry itself: to its powers to engross and move us, to its ability to challenge and brace us, and to its exultation. Everyone who cares about poetry should own this book.’ – Andrew Motion

    ‘This is a book to make you fall in love with poetry…Go out and buy it for everyone you love.’ – Christina Patterson, Independent

    BEING ALIVE

    the sequel to Staying Alive

    edited by

    NEIL ASTLEY

    CONTENTS

    Title Page

    Neil Astley Introduction

    1  Exploring the World

    Elma Mitchell This Poem…

    Gerald Locklin The Iceberg Theory

    Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry

    Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin The Horses of Meaning

    Paul Muldoon Symposium

    Simon Armitage Not the Furniture Game

    Vincent Woods A Song of Lies

    Philip Gross Mappa Mundi

    Donald Hall The Poem

    Galway Kinnell Saint Francis and the Sow

    Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill Celebration

    Elizabeth Bishop At the Fishhouses

    Stewart Conn Tremors

    Theodore Roethke Night Journey

    Randall Jarrell The Orient Express

    C.P. Cavafy Ithaka

    Sheenagh Pugh What If This Road

    Philip Larkin Poetry of Departures

    Derek Mahon The Last of the Fire Kings

    Matthew Sweeney The Appointment

    Derek Mahon The Mayo Tao

    Michael Longley Echoes

    Hayden Carruth No Matter What, After All and That Beautiful Word So

    Mark Doty Migratory

    Don McKay Close-up on a Sharp-shinned Hawk

    Lorna Crozier Inventing the Hawk

    George Mackay Brown The Hawk

    Robert Adamson The southern skua

    2  Taste and See

    Philip Levine The Simple Truth

    David Budbill The First Green of Spring

    Denise Levertov O Taste and See

    Li-Young Lee From Blossoms

    Peter Davison Peaches

    Galway Kinnell Blackberry Eating

    Sylvia Plath Blackberrying

    Tony Harrison A Kumquat for John Keats

    Vicki Feaver Crab Apple Jelly

    Jacob Polley A Jar of Honey

    Pablo Neruda Sweetness, Always

    Kim Addonizio For Desire

    Helen Dunmore Wild strawberries

    Pablo Neruda Horses

    Ted Hughes The Horses

    Henry Shukman Horses at Christmas

    Katrina Porteous Calf

    Mary Oliver How Everything Adores Being Alive

    Alden Nowlan In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus

    Henri Cole Cleaning the Elephant

    Alden Nowlan The Bull Moose

    Elizabeth Bishop The Fish

    Wendell Berry The Peace of Wild Things

    Czesław Miłosz Gift

    Jane Hirshfield Not-Yet

    Andrew Greig A Pre-Breakfast Rant

    Chase Twichell Hunger for Something

    Ruth L. Schwartz Talking to God on the Seventh Day

    Jack Gilbert Hunger

    Gwendolyn MacEwen Dark Pines Under Water

    Erin Mouré Toxicity

    P.K. Page Planet Earth

    Wisława Szymborska The Ball

    Anne Michaels The Passionate World

    Sarah Lindsay World Truffle

    Archibald MacLeish You, Andrew Marvell

    Mary Oliver Look and See

    Agha Shahid Ali Stationery

    Michael Donaghy The Present

    Imtiaz Dharker Blessing

    Robert Creeley The Rain

    Naomi Shihab Nye So Much Happiness

    Jane Kenyon Happiness

    Robert Bly The Third Body

    Czesław Miłosz On Pilgrimage

    Mary Oliver The Summer Day

    Carl Dennis The God Who Loves You

    James K. Baxter The Ikons

    Czesław Miłosz Veni Creator

    Carl Sandburg Prayers of Steel

    Antonio Machado ‘Last night while I was sleeping’

    Elizabeth Smither Mission Impossible

    R.S. Thomas

    FROM

    Counterpoint

    Dennis O’Driscoll Missing God

    Charles Causley The Forest of Tangle

    Fiona Farrell Credo

    Aidan Rooney-Céspedes Retro Creation

    Kaylin Haught God Says Yes to Me

    Kerry Hardie Sheep Fair Day

    Ruth L. Schwartz Oh God, Fuck Me

    3  Family

    Jacob Polley Smoke

    Marge Piercy The watch

    Lucille Clifton the lost baby poem

    Jeni Couzyn Heartsong

    Helen Dunmore Scan at 8 weeks

    Kona Macphee Ultrasound at 13 weeks

    Paul Muldoon The Sonogram

    Pauline Stainer The Ringing Chamber

    Victoria Redel Ninth Month

    Derek Mahon An Unborn Child

    Louis MacNeice Prayer Before Birth

    Pablo Neruda Births

    Kona Macphee The night before the last day of January

    Kate Clanchy Driving to the Hospital

    W.N. Herbert The Harvest in March

    Matthew Hollis And let us say

    Lauris Edmond Tempo

    Fleur Adcock Counting

    Kate Clanchy Love

    Sylvia Plath Morning Song

    Richard Murphy Natural Son

    Thom Gunn Baby Song

    Helen Farish Newly Born Twins

    Sharon Olds My First Weeks

    Kathleen Ossip Nursling

    Anne Stevenson The Victory

    Kate Clanchy Stance

    Jane Hirshfield Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk –

    Anne Winters

    FROM

    Elizabeth Near and Far

    Fleur Adcock For Andrew

    Gabriela Mistral Let Him Not Grow Up

    Rita Dove Daystar

    Anna Jackson The peacock of motherhood

    Connie Bensley Single Parent

    Michael Ondaatje Bearhug

    Nick Flynn Cartoon Physics, part 1

    Michael Laskey A Tray of Eggs

    Thomas Lynch Skating with Heather Grace

    Tony Hoagland Benevolence

    Carlos Drummond de Andrade Infancy

    Anne Stevenson The Mother

    Seamus Heaney Sunlight

    Philip Levine Starlight

    Seamus Heaney

    FROM

    Clearances

    Yehuda Amichai My Father

    Sinéad Morrissey Genetics

    Seamus Heaney Digging

    Brendan Kennelly I See You Dancing, Father

    Theodore Roethke Papa’s Waltz

    Susan Wicks My Father Is Shrinking

    Li-Young Lee Little Father

    Hart Crane My Grandmother’s Love Letters

    Andrew Waterhouse Climbing My Grandfather

    Thomas Lynch Custody

    Julia Copus Second Home

    Marie Howe How Many Times

    Kona Macphee No fairy story

    Selima Hill House

    Ai The Cockfighter’s Daughter

    Sylvia Plath Daddy

    Sharon Olds Waste Sonata

    Tracey Herd The Survivors

    Pascale Petit The Strait-Jackets

    Pascale Petit Self-Portrait as a Warao Violin

    Susan Glickman But till that morning, ain’t no one gonna harm you

    John Steffler Hollis Street Square, Halifax

    Gjertrud Schnackenberg Returning North

    Maurice Riordan Time Out

    Helen Dunmore The blessing

    C. Day Lewis Walking Away

    Kathleen Jamie Mother-May-I

    Simon Armitage Kid

    Cynthia Fuller Guests

    Simon Armitage

    FROM

    Book of Matches

    Rutger Kopland Johnson Brothers Ltd

    Paul Farley Laws of Gravity

    Gael Turnbull Transmutation

    Vona Groarke Family

    Sharon Thesen Animals

    Miller Williams Animals

    Sharon Olds Forty-one, Alone, No Gerbil

    Billy Collins Putting Down the Cat

    Elizabeth Smither On the euthanasia of a pet dog

    Gerry McGrath ‘Noticing a man unable…’

    Howard Nemerov Walking the Dog

    4  Love Life

    Wisława Szymborska Love at First Sight

    Rosemary Tonks Story of a Hotel Room

    Lavinia Greenlaw Tryst

    Derek Walcott Love After Love

    Julia Copus Love, Like Water

    Yehuda Amichai To My Love, Combing Her Hair

    Cathy Song The White Porch

    Zbigniew Herbert Rosy Ear

    Margaret Atwood Variation on the Word Sleep

    Greta Stoddart The Blindfold

    Zbigniew Herbert Silk of a Soul

    Derek Walcott The Fist

    Deryn Rees-Jones What It’s Like To Be Alive

    Hayden Carruth Alive

    Robert Hass Misery and Splendor

    Sharon Olds This Hour

    Galway Kinnell After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

    Czesław Miłosz Love

    Jack Gilbert The Great Fires

    Jane Hirshfield Knowing Nothing

    Carol Ann Duffy Warming Her Pearls

    Helen Farish Look at These

    Liz Lochhead I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine

    Carol Ann Duffy Valentine

    Pablo Neruda Ode to the Onion

    Linda France If Love Was Jazz

    Billy Collins Litany

    Pablo Neruda

    FROM

    100 Love Sonnets

    Patrick Kavanagh On Raglan Road

    Brendan Kennelly Raglan Lane

    Stanley Kunitz Touch Me

    William Matthews Misgivings

    Kerry Hardie The Hunter Home from the Hill

    Michael Longley The Waterfall

    U.A. Fanthorpe Atlas

    Philip Larkin An Arundel Tomb

    5  Men and Women

    Frederick Seidel Men and Women

    C.K. Williams The Dress

    Denise Levertov The Mutes

    Fred Voss The Inspection

    Marge Piercy In the men’s room(s)

    Gwen Harwood A Simple Story

    Tony Hoagland The Change

    Carol Ann Duffy Mrs Midas

    Anne Rouse Spunk Talking

    Tom Leonard Four of the Belt

    Chris Greenhalgh A Man in the Valley of the Women

    Roddy Lumsden Prayer To Be with Mercurial Women

    Wendy Cope Bloody Men

    Clare Pollard And Another Bloody Thing…

    Charles Bukowksi sexpot

    Radmila Lazic I’ll Be a Wicked Old Woman

    Deborah Randall Ballygrand Widow

    Kim Addonizio ‘What Do Women Want?’

    Liz Lochhead Rapunzstiltskin

    John Agard English Girl Eats Her First Mango

    David Constantine Pleasure

    Minnie Bruce Pratt Done

    Selima Hill Please Can I Have a Man

    Billy Collins Man in Space

    Alice Oswald Wedding

    Michael Laskey The Tightrope Wedding

    Philip Larkin The Whitsun Weddings

    Michael Longley The Pattern

    Dorothy Molloy Les Grands Seigneurs

    Selima Hill Being a Wife

    Denise Levertov The Ache of Marriage

    Sylvia Plath The Applicant

    Dorothy Nimmo Good Gifts

    Jacques Prévert Breakfast

    Dorothy Nimmo Ill-Wishing Him

    Liz Lochhead My Way

    Cheryl Follon Love Rats

    Duncan Forbes Recension Day

    Michael Blackburn Before That

    Catherine Smith The New Bride

    Helen Ivory Sleeping with the Fishes

    James Fenton Let’s Go Over It All Again

    Eleanor Brown Sonnet

    6  Being and Loss

    Wallace Stevens The Emperor of Ice-Cream

    Jackie Kay Somebody Else

    James Merrill Mirror

    Michael Davitt The Mirror

    Chase Twichell Cat and Mirror

    Gael Turnbull Transmutation

    Henri Cole Original Face

    Aleksandar Ristovic The essential

    Marin Sorescu Pond

    W.B. Yeats The Circus Animals’ Desertion

    Jack Gilbert Measuring the Tyger

    César Vallejo The black heralds

    John Berryman

    FROM

    Dream Songs (155)

    Paul Durcan The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious

    Jane Kenyon Otherwise

    James Fenton The Mistake

    C.P. Cavafy Che Fece…Il Gran Rifiuto

    Andrew Waterhouse Speaking About My Cracked Sump

    Tracey Herd Ophelia’s Confession

    Selima Hill Hairbrush

    Polly Clark Elvis the Performing Octopus

    Sarah Wardle Flight

    Kerry Hardie Autumn Cancer

    Julia Darling Chemotherapy

    Gael Turnbull Transmutation

    Kerry Hardie She Replies to Carmel’s Letter

    Kenneth Mackenzie Caesura

    David Scott Heart

    Esther Jansma Descent

    Carole Satyamurti Broken Moon

    Wendy Cope Names

    Bob Hicok Alzheimer’s

    Alison Pryde Have We Had Easter Yet?

    Tony Hoagland Lucky

    Mark Doty Brilliance

    Pearse Hutchinson Flames

    Nick Drake The Very Rich Hours

    Mark Doty The Embrace

    Kerry Hardie What’s Left

    Lucille Clifton poem to my uterus

    Lucille Clifton to my last period

    Howard Moss The Pruned Tree

    James K. Baxter Tomcat

    David Constantine The Hoist

    R.S. Thomas Lore

    Grace Paley Here

    Anne Stevenson Who’s Joking with the Photographer?

    Fleur Adcock Weathering

    Lauris Edmond 3

    A.M.

    C.K. Williams The Shade

    Frederick Seidel Dune Road, Southampton

    Matthew Sweeney The Box

    Gerard Woodward The Murderer Is a Cow

    Jacob Polley Moving House

    Imtiaz Dharker This room

    Naomi Shihab Nye Kindness

    7  Daily Round

    William Bronk The Way

    Glyn Maxwell The Nerve

    Simon Armitage Killing Time #2

    Louis MacNeice Bagpipe Music

    Dennis O’Driscoll Life

    Roo Borson City Lights

    August Kleinzahler Snow in North Jersey

    William Matthews Grief

    Helen Dunmore To Virgil

    Maura Dooley Mind the Gap

    Jo Shapcott My Life Asleep

    David Constantine New Year Behind the Asylum

    Alden Nowlan Great Things Have Happened

    Thom Gunn Night Taxi

    Ken Smith Message on the machine

    Brendan Kennelly Clearing a Space

    Ciaran Carson Clearance

    Ciaran Carson Turn Again

    Edward Hirsch In Spite of Everything, the Stars

    Jack Gilbert Searching for Pittsburgh

    Lavinia Greenlaw Zombies

    Dennis O’Driscoll Home

    Philip Levine What Work Is

    Al Purdy Alive or Not

    Jacques Prévert At the Florist’s

    Anne Rouse Her Retirement

    Philip Larkin Toads

    Robert Phillips The Panic Bird

    Julie O’Callaghan Managing the Common Herd:

    Deborah Garrison Fight Song

    Peter Didsbury A Malediction

    Rita Ann Higgins Some People

    Rodney Jones TV

    Vicki Feaver The Way We Live

    Philip Levine Every Blessed Day

    Tom French Pity the Bastards

    Ruth Dallas Photographs of Pioneer Women

    Donald Hall Names of Horses

    George Mackay Brown The Ballad of John Barleycorn, The Ploughman, and the Furrow

    Grace Nichols Sugar Cane

    Linda Gregg Fish Tea Rice

    Derek Mahon Everything Is Going To Be All Right

    Stanley Kunitz The Round

    8  Lives

    Derek Mahon Lives

    Brendan Kennelly The Story

    Gael Turnbull Transmutation

    Suzanne Cleary Acting

    Elizabeth Smither The sea question

    Esther Morgan The Sea

    Michael Harlow No Problem, But Not Easy

    Joanne Limburg Seder Night with My Ancestors

    Agha Shahid Ali The Dacca Gauzes

    Maya Angelou Still I Rise

    Gwendolyn Brooks Sadie and Maud

    Douglas Dunn Glasgow Schoolboys, Running Backwards

    Denis Glover The Magpies

    Paul Muldoon The Loaf

    Vona Groarke Imperial Measure

    Billy Collins Nostalgia

    Thomas Lux Plague Victims Catapulted over Walls into Besieged City

    Ken Smith Part of the crowd that day

    Tom Paulin Desertmartin

    Derek Mahon Ecclesiastes

    Andrew Waterhouse Now the City Has Fallen

    Peter Reading

    FROM

    Going On

    Imtiaz Dharker Honour Killing

    Carol Rumens Geography Lesson

    W.H. Auden Refugee Blues

    George Szirtes My father carries me across a field

    Choman Hardi Escape Journey, 1988

    Kapka Kassabova Someone else’s life

    Jane Griffiths Migration

    Carl Sandburg Limited

    Moniza Alvi Arrival, 1946

    C.P. Cavafy The City

    Ken Smith Malenki robot

    Saadi Youssef The Mouse

    Carol Rumens The Emigrée

    James Fenton The Ideal

    Gwyneth Lewis A Poet’s Confession

    Zbigniew Herbert Tongue

    Mihangel Morgan Conversation

    W.S. Merwin Losing a Language

    Zbigniew Herbert From the Technology of Tears

    Agha Shahid Ali

    FROM

    The Country Without a Post Office

    Yehuda Amichai ‘The Rustle of History’s Wings,’ as They Used to Say Then

    Yehuda Amichai Jerusalem

    James Fenton Jerusalem

    Mahmoud Darwish In This Land

    Moniza Alvi The Sari

    James Fenton Wind

    9  Mad World

    Robert Pinsky ABC

    Gerald Stern The Dog

    Emily Dickinson ‘I reason, Earth is short…’

    William Stafford Earth Dweller

    Hans Magnus Enzensberger The End of the Owls

    Miroslav Holub The end of the world

    Edwin Muir The Horses

    Vijay Seshadri The Disappearances

    W.H. Auden The Shield of Achilles

    Edwin Brock Five Ways to Kill a Man

    Tadeusz Różewicz Pigtail

    Primo Levi Shemà

    Tadeusz Różewicz The survivor

    (attr.) Martin Niemöller ‘First they came for the Jews…’

    Erich Fried What Happens

    Adrian Mitchell To Whom It May Concern

    W.H. Auden ‘When Statesmen gravely say…’

    Hans Magnus Enzensberger Explaining the Declaration

    Aleksandar Ristovic Untitled

    Bertolt Brecht War Has Been Given a Bad Name

    Mahmoud Darwish He Embraces His Murderer

    Bertolt Brecht

    FROM

    A German War Primer

    Heberto Padilla Song of the Juggler

    Erich Fried Conversation with a Survivor

    Jackie Kay Twelve Bar Bessie

    Adrienne Rich

    FROM

    An Atlas of the Difficult World

    Genevieve Taggard At Last the Women Are Moving

    Carole Satyamurti Ourstory

    Marge Piercy The low road

    Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy Revenge

    Czesław Miłosz Dedication

    Douglas Dunn Ratatouille

    Paul Durcan In Memory: The Miami Showband – Massacred 31 July 1975

    James Merrill Casual Wear

    Yehuda Amichai The Diameter of the Bomb

    Norman MacCaig The Red and the Black

    Sinéad Morrissey The Wound Man

    John Burnside History

    C.K. Williams The Hearth

    W.H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts

    Wisława Szymborska Reality Demands

    Adam Zagajewski Try to Praise the Mutilated World

    Faiz Ahmed Faiz A Prison Evening

    Adrienne Rich To the Days

    Sheenagh Pugh Sometimes

    Eva Salzman Spells

    Helen Dunmore Glad of these times

    Jen Hadfield Staple Island Swing

    10  Ends and Beginnings

    Philip Larkin The Trees

    M.R. Peacocke Late Snow

    C.P. Cavafy Candles

    Saadi Youssef Night in Al-Hamra

    Helen Dunmore Candle poem

    Mark Strand A Piece of the Storm

    Bernard O’Donoghue Going Without Saying

    Patrick Kavanagh Wet Evening in April

    W.S. Merwin For the Anniversary of My Death

    Adrienne Rich Final Notations

    Raymond Carver Gravy

    Jane Kenyon In the Nursing Home

    Jo Shapcott Lovebirds

    Sharon Olds Beyond Harm

    Roy Fisher The Entertainment of War

    Seamus Heaney Mid-Term Break

    Robert Kroetsch Sounding the name

    Stephen Dobyns When a Friend

    Edwin Brock And another thing…

    Michael Longley Detour

    Paul Durcan Tullynoe: Tête-à-Tête in the Priest’s Parlour

    Bernard O’Donoghue Concordiam in Populo

    Elizabeth Smither A cortège of daughters

    Meg Bateman After the Funeral

    Virginia Hamilton-Adair A Last Marriage

    Anne Stevenson Musician’s Widow

    Lauris Edmond Anniversary

    R.S. Thomas A Marriage

    Carol Muske-Dukes Love Song

    Ruth Stone Poems

    Antonio Machado The Eyes

    Ruth Stone Curtains

    Elizabeth Jennings Not at Home

    Jane Hirshfield A Room

    Brendan Kennelly We Are Living

    Marie Howe What the Living Do

    Norman Nicholson Sea to the West

    Lauris Edmond Girls

    Czesław Miłosz A Mistake

    Tony Hoagland Migration

    Michael Hartnett A Prayer for Sleep

    Ruth Pitter The Task

    James K. Baxter

    FROM

    Autumn Testament

    Mary Oliver Some Questions You Might Ask

    M.K. Joseph A Riddle: Of the Soul

    Michael Hartnett ‘There will be a talking…’

    Gary Snyder For the children

    Ruth Stone In the Next Galaxy

    Jane Kenyon Let Evening Come

    T.S. Eliot

    FROM

    Four Quartets

    Further reading

    Acknowledgements

    Index of writers

    Index of titles and first lines

    Copyright

    INTRODUCTION

    If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

    EMILY DICKINSON

    Being Alive is the sequel to Staying Alive, which became Britain’s most popular poetry book within a fortnight of publication in 2002. Staying Alive didn’t just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn’t read poetry for years because it hadn’t held their interest.

    Staying Alive was taken up by readers because it gave them hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. This companion anthology is for all those people who’ve wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder.

    While this new anthology has been conceived as a sequel to Staying Alive, the power and range of the selection are such that it can be read just as fruitfully on its own. Like Staying Alive, it is a bridge anthology, a book designed to make its readers want to read more work by the poets it features, and I would hope that new readers who come first to Being Alive would make Staying Alive their next port of call. This would not be a backward step but rather a broadening out from Being Alive.

    Being Alive takes readers on a journey through the world of contemporary poetry, stopping off for encounters and meetings. Many of the poems seem almost alive to the living world, alert to what they sense and summon up through language. Reading and re-reading them, I feel the jolt of a live connection, a quickening of consciousness. I hope this is something which readers will share, and that Being Alive will pass Emily Dickinson’s now famous test for true poetry, that it makes you feel as if the top of your head has been lifted off.

    Housman described how poetry affected him in similarly physical terms: ‘Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.’

    Those two comments were very much in my mind when I was choosing poems for Being Alive. I wanted to give readers as many hair-raising, head-lifting poems as possible in the one book, but to vary the selection with different kinds of poems, balancing heartrending, gut-wrenching poems of explosive power with gentler, playful, witty, thought-provoking poems of tenderness and sensuality. All these are poems which I feel had to be written. And because they were necessary poems for the writers, I hope readers will find them as compelling as I do. There are a lot of modern poems which don’t engage me as a reader, either because they’re too clever for their own good or too simplistic in their sentiments. The American poet William Stafford once said: ‘I don’t want to write good poems. I want to write inevitable poems – to write the things I will write, given who I am.’ That’s the kind I look for, poems which the poet needed to write, poems whose integrity derives from an honest and truthful engagement with living language and with living in the world.

    These aren’t poems which just confirm what we already know. Another American poet, James Tate, said: ‘What we want from poetry is to be moved, to be moved from where we now stand. We don’t just want to have our ideas or emotions confirmed. Or if we do, then we turn to lesser poems, poems which are happy to tell you killing children is bad, chopping down the rainforest is bad, dying is sad.’ In other words, good poetry doesn’t offer simple solace or poetic medication, it opens up the senses, it disturbs, questions and challenges. These poems make the reader less settled yet more whole, more alert to the world, more alive, more in touch with being human.

    Paul Muldoon puts it rather well: ‘The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.’ Being Alive and Staying Alive include many breathtaking poems by all kinds of writers from many different countries, classes, cultural backgrounds and literary traditions. These take the reader by surprise because the voice, style, stance or angle of approach are often quite different from what’s expected.

    When I first had the idea for Staying Alive, it was for a diverse and lively book to introduce new readers to contemporary poetry as well as to show existing poetry readers (whose access to international poetry is restricted by the narrowness of British publishing) a wider range of poems from around the world. I had no thoughts then of a sequel, but I also had no idea that the book would be championed so enthusiastically that readers would want a companion anthology.

    Staying Alive was my response to the findings of a readership survey. This presented a damning picture of how poetry was viewed by the general public: how people whose knowledge of modern poetry was very limited would dismiss it as obscure, difficult, dull, boring or pretentious. Modern poetry, according to their comments, was irrelevant and incomprehensible, so they didn’t bother with it, not even readers of literary fiction and people interested in other arts which use language, such as theatre and film; and not even people who read Shakespeare and the classics: one of the most surprising findings of that research was that only 5% of the poetry books sold in British bookshops were by living poets.

    Staying Alive was my attempt to show all those people who love literature and language and traditional poetry that contemporary poetry is relevant to their own lives; and that much of it is lively, imaginative and accessible to intelligent readers who might not have given it much of a chance before. And that didn’t involve dumbing down, but choosing lucid poems to entice new readers. There’s no conflict here between access and excellence.

    Staying Alive won thousands of new readers for poetry largely because of word of mouth: reader power. And those readers didn’t just buy one copy for themselves, they bought more and more to give to friends and family as presents. Staying Alive is still being discovered by new readers. Two years after the book appeared, I’m still receiving letters, postcards and e-mails expressing people’s appreciation, messages of support and thanks, all saying how much Staying Alive had helped or stimulated them and fired up their interest in poetry. These responses are not untypical:

    ROB MARCHMENT

    : ‘I just wanted to say that I am completely blown away by your anthology!…I feel as if I have reconnected with the flesh and blood of poetry once again.’

    ANTHEA MATTHISON

    : ‘I am writing to thank you, as a reader, for showing me a way back to poetry after years of alienation.’

    JONATHAN WOOD

    : ‘I have read hardly any poetry in my 46 years. I found it disconcerting and difficult…I have been moved to tears and laughter by the poems I read in the last two days and carry the book everywhere…thank you for publishing and editing this wonderful anthology. I have found a new world.’

    MAGGIE BUTT

    : ‘It is a joy to read something celebratory in a world where it is fashionable to talk everything down. Our students arrive at University with a curiously ambivalent attitude to poetry. Many say they hate it, but most write it. I think your book will go a long way to persuading them they don’t hate it after all.’

    JOHN M

    c

    DONAGH

    : ‘It will be a staple in my First year course for a while to come. Indeed, this course is crucial in the college as the students have a choice whether or not to do English in the first few weeks and Staying Alive has shown them that poetry has a relevance and a unique ability to speak to us as human beings.’

    JOANNE GONZALEZ

    (writing of a poet friend): ‘She is 90, and blind. I had just bought Staying Alive and began reading it to her. I do not exaggerate to say she was transformed. She asked to hold the book, and pressed it against her forehead. She chose life today because of your book. I have a lump in my throat as I write this. I thank you, poetry does matter.’

    The Staying Alive postbag also includes notes from readers about other poems which have been important to them in their own lives, many of which I have now been able to include in Being Alive. And readers have expressed their thanks for being introduced to many poets they had never heard of before and whose books they had then sought out, including many whose poetry isn’t published in Britain. Two poets in particular aroused a strong response, America’s Mary Oliver and Canada’s favourite modern poet, Alden Nowlan, and Bloodaxe is now publishing separate editions of their poetry as the first titles in a new series called Bloodaxe World Poets.

    Being Alive joins a family of books aimed at opening up the readership of contemporary poetry. It is not only a sequel to Staying Alive, but the first of two companion anthologies, to be followed in 2008 by Being Human. The range and personal relevance of Being Alive have been strengthened by all those readers of Staying Alive who’ve written offering not just thanks but valuable suggestions. I hope more people will write in response to Being Alive, ensuring that Being Human will be a companion anthology even more closely tuned to the interests and taste of readers. And if there are other poets from around the world whose books you would like to see published in Britain, do write and tell me. Then you may be able to experience something like the delight felt by the boy in Gael Turnbull’s ‘Transmutation’ (357) whose grandmother tells him stories influenced by his own wishes. Too often, editors think of themselves and their poet friends as the only arbiters of taste, only publishing writers they think people ought to read and depriving readers of other kinds of poetry which many would find more rewarding. Being Alive, like Staying Alive, tries to give readers a much wider choice.

    My own journey into modern poetry began in the 60s with the Liverpool Poets’ Mersey Sound. That book was the magic bus which opened my mind to thousands of other poets. If Being Alive captures your imagination, I hope it will become your own bridge to a whole alternative world of contemporary poetry.

    NEIL ASTLEY

    1

    Exploring the World

    Good poets are the explorers of the world. Out on the frontiers, they send back bulletins.

    EAMON GRENNAN

    A poem should take you somewhere different…a poet should be the one least likely to step into the same river twice.

    SEAMUS HEANEY

    THIS BOOK’S JOURNEY

    through the world begins with poetry itself, followed by celebrations of the natural world, journey poems and some of those meetings mentioned in the Introduction: here the encounters are with birds, while in section 2 they’re with animals and fish. But these are not the familiar kind of nature poems typical of traditional pastoral verse: indeed, what they evoke is not familiarity but unfamiliarity in crossing paths with other lives, opening up the self to otherness. Just as in Lawrence’s animal poems, the writers feel a quickening of consciousness in meeting another creature, and the poem captures that pivotal moment. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poems, her insights into the world are achieved through acute observation, as in ‘The Fish’ (70). In this section, Bishop’s ‘At the Fishhouses’ (31) shows poetry’s transforming power, her accumulation of minute detail leading to the incantatory finale where the sea is described as like knowledge, ‘flowing and drawn, and since / our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown’. That word ‘flown’ is the past participle not of ‘flow’ but of ‘fly’; ‘flown’, chiming with ‘drawn’, sounds better than ‘flowed’, but completely changes the sense. James Merrill, Anne Stevenson and Robert Pinsky have all written illuminating commentaries on these few lines.

    The journey poems include Cavafy’s quintessential life-quest poem ‘Ithaka’ (36) in which the journey itself is what’s important, not the final landing (the Laistrygonians and the Cyclops were giants encountered by Odysseus on his ten-year odyssey after the Trojan War).

    The idea of disappearance has fascinated many poets (Staying Alive, 407-11). Larkin focuses on those left behind in ‘Poetry of Departures’ (38), while Derek Mahon (39) and Matthew Sweeney (40) follow their fugitives. Mahon’s ‘The Mayo Tao’ (41) evokes a remote place of refuge in the same Irish landscape memorably celebrated by Michael Longley in ‘Echoes’ (42) and other poems from his books The Ghost Orchid, The Weather in Japan and Snow Water.

    This Poem…

    This poem is dangerous: it should not be left

    Within the reach of children, or even of adults

    Who might swallow it whole, with possibly

    Undesirable side-effects. If you come across

    An unattended, unidentified poem

    In a public place, do not attempt to tackle it

    Yourself. Send it (preferably, in a sealed container)

    To the nearest centre of learning, where it will be rendered

    Harmless, by experts. Even the simplest poem

    May destroy your immunity to human emotions.

    All poems must carry a Government warning. Words

    Can seriously affect your heart.

    ELMA MITCHELL

    The Iceberg Theory

    all the food critics hate iceberg lettuce.

    you’d think romaine was descended from

    orpheus’s laurel wreath,

    you’d think raw spinach had all the nutritional

    benefits attributed to it by popeye,

    not to mention aesthetic subtleties worthy of

    verlaine and debussy.

    they’ll even salivate over chopped red cabbage

    just to disparage poor old mr iceberg lettuce.

    I guess the problem is

    it’s just too common for them.

    it doesn’t matter that it tastes good,

    has a satisfying crunchy texture,

    holds its freshness,

    and has crevices for the dressing,

    whereas the darker, leafier varieties

    are often bitter, gritty, and flat.

    it just isn’t different enough, and

    it’s too goddamn american.

    of course a critic has to criticise:

    a critic has to have something to say.

    perhaps that’s why literary critics

    purport to find interesting

    so much contemporary poetry

    that just bores the shit out of me.

    at any rate, I really enjoy a salad

    with plenty of chunky iceberg lettuce,

    the more the merrier,

    drenched in an italian or roquefort dressing.

    and the poems I enjoy are those I don’t have

    to pretend that I’m enjoying.

    GERALD LOCKLIN

    Introduction to Poetry

    I ask them to take a poem

    and hold it up to the light

    like a color slide

    or press an ear against its hive.

    I say drop a mouse into a poem

    and watch him probe his way out,

    or walk inside the poem’s room

    and feel the walls for a light switch.

    I want them to waterski

    across the surface of a poem

    waving at the author’s name on the shore.

    But all they want to do

    is tie the poem to a chair with rope

    and torture a confession out of it.

    They begin beating it with a hose

    to find out what it really means.

    BILLY COLLINS

    The Horses of Meaning

    Let their hooves print the next bit of the story:

    Release them roughmaned

    From the dark stable where

    They rolled their dark eyes, shifted and stamped –

    Let them out, and follow the sound, a regular clattering

    On the cobbles of the yard, a pouring round the corner

    Into the big field, a booming canter.

    Now see where they rampage,

    And whether they are suddenly halted

    At the check of the line westward

    Where the train passes at dawn –

    If they stare at land that looks white in patches

    As if it were frayed to bone (the growing light

    Will detail as a thickening of small white flowers),

    Can this be the end of their flight?

    The wind combs their long tails, their stalls are empty.

    EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN

    Symposium

    You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it hold

    its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds.

    Every dog has a stitch in time. Two heads? You’ve been sold

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1