This carefully selected little book will offer solace – they are poems that offer the reader an escape from the constant chatter of everyday thought; that make space for the unexpected; that help us to reinvent ourselves within the chaotic landscape of our lives. Some will be old favourites; others less well-known; all the poems will have the power to surprise or move.

It will differ from other 'self help' style anthologies in that it won't be designed to offer bland consolation – a deeper, more lasting comfort comes from art that makes us sit up and listen, that reawakens the senses and offers new ways of looking – poetry that, in the best sense, unsettles us, in order to reconnect us with the world around us and bring us to a place of greater clarity.

The anthology will be divided into the following sections: The deep heart's core (poems about places of sanctuary); As a boy I stood before it for hours (poems that remind us to place our focus 'out there'; that show us how to be mindful); A world in a grain of sand (poems that play with the notion of scale, so that the tiny becomes large and the large tiny – putting things in perspective); Still life (poems about focusing on a specific moment); and Another Self (poems on friendship/companionship; a sense of everyone being in the same boat).

 

LIFE SUPPORT was published on 4th April 2019 by Anima.