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‘Last year is dead, they seem to say,” wrote Philip Larkin in his poem The Trees. “Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”
In the heart of the winter (both literally and metaphorically, as the world is in such turmoil), the distilled quality of poetry can work its particular kind of alchemy, as we attempt to make sense of things. I have been “prescribing” poetry at festivals, conferences, hospitals and schools from the back of my “Emergency Poet” ambulance since 2011, and later via the Poetry Pharmacy bookshops. Here I’ve compiled a first aid cabinet to lift your spirits and help you face this January.
If you’re someone who stares at a new year with mild dread, or if you’re in need of some fortification against the inevitable existential angst of the season, these poems might gently remind you that starting is the whole point. Poetry doesn’t promise miracles, but it can help us reach down a little deeper.
This first beautiful poem by Rhiannon Hooson is a prescription against those days, in the words of William Wordsworth, when “the world is too much with us”.
Wintering by Rhiannon Hooson
At the first frost, when cold made sugar
bloom meager into the sloes, cows
steamed the valley, down from the hillsides.
Geese woke us in the night. Larches turned
like old men toward the wind and let go.
In the house, pipes burst, the clock
stopped ticking, water came down the chimney.
The elm at the turn in the track dropped
its last leaves, held black branches
up to the stars. In the kitchen,
my mother baked saffron into the bread –
round suns wintering on the table.
Hooson’s poem reminds us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. It’s not just the dazzling light at the close of the poem, but also the beauty in the bleakness: “the elm at the turn in the track dropped its last leaves.”
New Every Morning by Susan Coolidge
Every morning is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.
I love this very little poem by Susan Coolidge (pseudonym of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey), author of the children’s classic What Katy Did, she is less well-known as an accomplished poet. It’s short enough to easily remember and carry like a pick-me-up for those dark winter mornings. This is a prescription for putting one foot in front of the other. Take this poem first thing in the morning with strong coffee.
The Welcome by Imtiaz Dharker
You were running on broken glass,
a child chased by nightmares
down battered streets, until at last
you came to this door. Here
are rooms made of hope, shelves full
of voices that call you in. They say
you can stop running now, pull
out a chair and sit. For you, they lay
a table with a feast that tastes of places
in your dreams, honey from the hive,
warm bread, words like spices.
This is where people come alive
to speak their stories in ink and blood
on wild nights, dappled afternoons,
telling of fallen tyrants, drought and flood
under desert stars and arctic moons.
They spin legends and conjure myths
in mother tongues and other tongues
that give your accent to their dance with death,
their love of life, the songs they sing.
You have been welcomed in
to books that smell like ancient trees,
standing here with broken spines,
opening like thoughts set free
and as the pages turn, your breath
quickens with something you always knew
in your blood like remembered faith.
When you open the book, it opens you.
This poem hints at the darkest of troubles, of running along battered streets, of tyrants and floods. But with its “rooms made of hope”, the journey is one that is ultimately hopeful. Strength and resolve can be discovered inside the pages of books, it tells us, from stories of trials overcome and in a common humanity. Take this poem as an antidote to the temptation of endless scrolling through Instagram reels, and as a powerful and efficacious stimulant for compassion and alleviating self-absorption.
Thaw by Edward Thomas
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.
This short and powerful remedy by first world war poet Edward Thomas is an antidote to bleak January days and the darkness at 4.30pm. Even though winter is here with its speculating rooks in the cold, (they know something’s afoot), we may not see it ourselves, but this time will pass. I love the poem too, for its brevity and the poet’s exquisite craft. The repeated open vowels of “thawed”, “cawed, “grass” and “pass”. Read it aloud and you can’t help but feel that sense of an exhaled breath or sigh that’s comforting in itself.
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The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
With its proclamation “Into each life some rain must fall”, this poem reminds us that there’s no sense in fighting the miserable weather or those inevitable times in our lives when things are painful: times of grief, existential angst or struggle. There is comfort to be found in knowing that you are not alone in these feelings, that others have been there before and Longfellow’s advice is that beyond this, there is hope. I love this poem too as it reminds me that there is pleasure to be had in revelling in the melancholy of dreary days and feeling a bit sorry for yourself.
The Ground by Caroline Bird
You land on a ridge, six-feet down the cliff
and believe you have fallen from the dread
summit and survived, you think,
this is the ground.
until you notice the larks passing at eye level,
drop a cufflink and fall
fifty-feet into the open palm of another ridge,
deeper in, scratched, clothes torn,
you’ve lost a shoe but you think
this is the ground,
I can bake that lasagne now
till a kite gets snagged in your hair,
your feet meet a plunging carpet
now you’re hanging by your necklace
from a branch thinking
this is the ground,
let’s buy a puppy
as you sit in your bracken chair,
as you fall in your chair like a lopped flower head
face-planting – Yes! Ground! – in a tree,
wind-burnt from momentum, whip-
lashed by your own screams, oops, then oops,
oops, straddling a lamppost, a pillar, a shed, each time
you’ve survived, falling, landing, falling out,
who knows how long you’ve been travelling
down this thing, incrementally, held in the loosening-
tightening fist of a giant with a featureless face.
Thud. At last
I can put up that shelf. Make that baby.
You lie and let your bones heal, looking up
at the distance, experiencing plateau
for the first time, cold, hard, real, the opposite
of air. You shake like a prodigal astronaut.
I could build a house on this, you think,
staggering off.
The vertiginous quality of this wonderful poem runs through you like a breath of fresh air. I love this poem as it can be interpreted in two ways. Its conclusion seems to say that to hope for arrival and certainty is foolish, but for me it’s full of humour, a wry acceptance, and is a portrait of a life lived to the full, one hope of a safe landing after another. Bird’s images are delightful: “the larks passing at eye level”, “I can bake a lasagne now”, speaks of how we must be optimistic, getting up again, building our house. Keep staggering on!
This by Kathryn Bevis
A fire has been lit in new leaves,
will grow to a green world
in the dark wood. Small whites
rise in drifts to the swish of our boots.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
A pair of grey wagtails fly low,
gold-bellied, over the rushing river.
Their bodies translate water
to sunlight, sunlight to water.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Here, the wind toys with leaves like loose
change in the pockets of the sky.
High above, a wood pigeon calls to us,
wild and true, Who are you, who who?
Nothing is worth more than this day.
My final prescription comes from the wonderful poet and my friend Kathryn Bevis, who knew that she was dying as she wrote this poem. I know of no better stimulant than this, with its recommendation to live in the moment, its invocation of joy and to see the beauty in the everyday as she did.
