When I was little, I don’t remember reading much poetry. I don’t remember anyone reading poetry to me either. Perhaps a few snippets from Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. On the whole I think I found poems confusing and hard to understand. I also worried about getting the meaning ‘wrong’ and then embarrassing myself by seeming a bit stupid.
That feeling didn’t ever really go away. Even now, I find a lot of poetry intimidating. But what has changed is that it doesn’t stop me from reading it, or enjoying it, or knowing that I will likely interpret things in my own subjective way - and that’s okay. In fact it’s more than okay. Reading any kind of literature is a deeply personal and subjective experience. I just wish somebody had said that to my 11 year-old self.
A special friend recently gave my daughter a copy of this gorgeous anthology: Everyone Sang - A Poem For Every Feeling by William Sieghart and illustrated by Emily Sutton. It is a big, solid book, full of different kinds of poems from different parts of the world, some old, some new. When you pick it up, it feels heavy in a reassuring kind of way. And the artwork is beautiful, each page is overflowing with rich and evocative illustrations. It’s the kind of book I wish I had read when I was young because I would have loved it. And it would have felt like an invitation, a way in to poetry that was open-hearted and welcoming.
Here are two of my favorite pages. Perhaps because Sassoon was writing during the First World War, or perhaps because Manly Hopkins uses words in such a visceral way, each poem reminds me that even when the headlines are full of suffering and fear, poetry is capable of wielding its own kind of power. And whatever feeling you are feeling, in a matter of moments, you can find yourself transported…connected, inspired, reassured, seen.
William Sieghart established the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 1992, and founded National Poetry Day in 1994. He is a former chairman of the Arts Council Lottery Panel, and current chairman of both the Somerset House Trust and Forward Thinking, a charity seeking peace in the Middle East and acceptance of British Muslims. Alongside the Poetry Pharmacy series, his anthologies include Winning Words: Inspiring Poems for Everyday Life and 100 Prized Poems: Twenty-five Years of the Forward Books.
Emily Sutton graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a degree in illustration; as well as illustrating picture books, she paints, sculpts and designs prints. Emily's previous titles for Walker include Tiny, Lots, Grow, The Christmas Eve Tree, the highly acclaimed A First Book of the Sea and her author-illustrator debut Penny and the Little Lost Dog. Visit her at her at https://emilysutton.co/shop
Everyone Sang - A Poem For Every Feeling is published by Walker Books in the UK and I think it’s available in the States too.