Invoking spiders and senators, physicists and aliens, Lauren Haldeman’s second book, Instead of Dying, decodes the world of death with a powerful mix of humor, epiphany, and agonizing grief. In the spirit of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, these poems compulsively imagine alternate realities for a lost sibling (“Instead of dying, they inject you with sunlight & you live” or “Instead of dying, you join a dog-sledding team in Quebec”), relentlessly recording the unlived possibilities that blossom from the purgative magical thinking of mourning. Whether she is channeling Google Maps Street View to visit a scene of murder (“Because / a picture of this place is / also a picture of you”) or investigating the origins of consciousness (“Yes, alien / life-forms exist / they are your thoughts”), Haldeman wrenches verse into new sublime forms, attempting to both translate the human experience as well as encrypt it, inviting readers into realms where we hover, plunge, rise again, and ascend.

Crossing the Unknown Sea is about reuniting the imagination with our day to day lives. It shows how poetry and practicality, far from being mutually exclusive, reinforce each other to give every aspect of our lives meaning and direction. For anyone who wants to deepen their connection to their life’s work—or find out what their life’s work is—this book can help navigate the way. Whyte encourages readers to take risks at work that will enhance their personal growth, and shows how burnout can actually be beneficial and used to renew professional interest. He asserts that too many people blindly trudge through a mediocre work life because so many “busy” tasks prevent significant reflection and analysis of job satisfaction. People often turn to spiritual practice or religion to nurture their souls, but overlook how work can actually be our greatest opportunity for discovery and growth. Crossing the Unknown Sea combines poetry, gifted storytelling and Whyte’s personal experience to reveal work’s potential to fulfill us and bring us closer to ultimate freedom and happiness.

Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization - I'm not the only one who feels like this. In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television, honing his prescriptions all the time. This pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary- those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work. Whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego, there is something here to ease your pain.

Every year, people living in our towns and cities - the homeless, suicides, old people living alone - are found dead. Their funerals are held without relatives or friends. In Amsterdam in 2002, F Starik established a network of poets who would write a personal poem for the deceased and read it at their funeral as an affirmation of their existence.

Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music world. In his newly discovered poems and song lyrics, we see the world through his eyes. The poetry reveals his depth of understanding, both of the world around him and within - his frailties and his strengths alike. He pens verses in his hallmark voice, reflecting upon love, pain, freedom, fame and mortality. Illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash's own handwritten pages, Forever Words is a remarkable addition to the canon of one of America's heroes. His music is a part of our collective history, and here he demonstrates the depth of his talent as a writer. Edited and introduced by Paul Muldoon, with a foreword by John Carter Cash, this is a book sure to delight and surprise fans the world over.

Poetry. Poems of a loneliness that quarrels with itself from the far edge of love, this is a collection of would-be love poems chastened by experience. I was a Promethean dilettante disabused of tinder, says the speaker, who later observes, After you reach adulthood / no one bets you'll set this world / on fire. Ackerson-Kiely returns with a second book of perfectly trenchant heartbreak and longing.