In our deepest grief we still turn instinctively to poetry for solace. These poems, drawn from many different ages and cultures, remind us that the experience of parting is a timelessly human one: however alone the loss of a loved one leaves us, our mourning is also something that deeply unites us; these poems of parting and passing, of sorrow and healing, will find a deep echo within those who find themselves dealing with grief or bereavement. Whatever our loss, it is assuaged in finding a voice – and whether that voice is one of private remembrance or public memorial, The Picador Book of Funeral Poems will help you towards it.

Aphorism (n.): a pithy observation which contains a general truth 'All my teachers have been women. Though several men have taken me aside for an hour to tell me things they know' The Book of Shadows contains several hundred reflections and aphorisms on love, God, art, sex, death, work, and the spirit, imagination and conduct of the human animal. Writing with the same mixture of high seriousness, dark humour and lyric precision that define his poetry, Don Paterson has made a book to carry everywhere and open anywhere - to brighten or darken the moment, but always to administer a jolt to the idling mind. 'Falling and flying are near-identical sensations, in all but one final detail. We should remember this when we see those men and women seemingly in love with their own decline'

The poems in Poems on Nature are divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter to reflect in verse the changes of the seasons and the passing of time. Part of the Macmillan Collectors Library series, featuring expert introductions for your favourite classics. This edition features an introduction by Helen Macdonald, author of the international bestseller, H is for Hawk. Since poetry began, there have been poems about nature; it’s a complex subject which has inspired some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Poets from Andrew Marvell to W. B. Yeats to Emily Brontë have sought to describe the natural environment and our relationship with it. There is also a rich tradition of songs and rhymes, such as ’Scarborough Fair’, that hark back to a rural way of life which may now be lost, but is brought back to life in the lyrical verses included in this collection.

A stunning anthology of poetry to create calm and peacefulness. The poems are arranged around themes of meditation, friendship, gratitude, prayers and blessings, stillness and consolation. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics with ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features a preface by Ana Sampson. There are poems by Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, W. B. Yeats, Katherine Mansfield, George Herbert, William Wordsworth, Anne Brontë, Khalil Gibran, Rumi, Walt Whitman and many more. There are also uplifting prayers and blessings from around the world. Each inspiring verse flows effortlessly into the next in this anthology of classic poetry, Poems for Stillness.

Words of sadness and loss, comfort and consolation Summoning the words to express our feelings of loss for a loved one in the days following a death can feel almost impossible. And often the choice of readings available can seem daunting. Poems and Readings for Funerals is a carefully curated collection of the very wisest words about death by some of the world's greatest poets, thinkers, playwrights and novelists. Featuring beautifully and thoughtfully written poems, prose extracts and prayers, these readings have been chosen to move and console, sympathize and relieve - to bring everyone attending a funeral or memorial closer together.

Four times each year, the Poetry Book Society selects the best poetry titles being published and asks the poet to write 500 words on their own work at the time of its publication. The PBS bulletin has published some of the most revealing, candid and insightful statements these poets have ever made. DON'T ASK ME WHAT I MEAN selects the best of these pieces. A genuine Who's Who of late 20th-century verse - Auden, Raine, Gunn, Hughes (who also contributes a remarkable short essay on Sylvia Plath's Ariel), Heaney, R.S. Thomas, Betjeman, Larkin, Merwin, Hecht, Paul Muldoon, Craig Raine, Norman McCaig, Geoffrey Hill, Tom Paulin, Derek Mahon, Sean O'Brien, up to and including contemporary notables such as Simon Armitage, Shapcott, Glyn Maxwell, Lavinia Greenlaw, Carol Ann Duffy, Wendy Cope, Michael Donaghy and Paul Farley.

Ian Duhig has long inspired a fervent and devoted following. With The Lammas Hireling - the title poem having already won both the National Poetry Competition and the Forward Prize for Best Poem - Duhig has produced his most accessible and exciting volume to date, and looks set to reach a whole new audience. A poet of lightning wit and great erudition, Duhig is also a master balladeer and storyteller who shows that poetry is still the most powerful way in which our social history - our lives, loves and work - can be celebrated and commemorated.

Joy in the Morning alludes to Psalm 30:5: Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. These poems ultimately point to the inherent rewards of continuation and survival, as the Scripture suggests, while they also pun on the words morning/mourning to reveal ways in which joy can be found even amid suffering. The sure joy Claude Wilkinson offers readers is this: nature's delicate details and memory's refining power. Tender, astonishing depictions - of an iridescent beetle, a jazz funeral, rural poverty transformed by a mother's love - carry the theme in lyrical form. Joy in the Morning are poems of strong emotion and exquisite artistry.

50 Ways to Read a Poet: a reader's guide to the poetry of Michael Donaghy is the first substantial critical work to be written on one of the UK's best-loved poets. Donaghy, a hugely popular, influential and much-loved figure in the UK poetry scene, died tragically early at the age of fifty in 2004. In fifty short essays accompanying fifty of Donaghy's best poems, his friend and editor Don Paterson makes the argument for Donaghy to be recognised as one of the greatest poets of recent years, and author of some of the most powerful, complex, moving and memorable poems to have been written in our lifetime. Unusually for a work of criticism, his commentary combines sharp and witty analysis of Donaghy's poems with biographical sketch and personal reminiscence, setting Donaghy's work in both a literary and a human context. This book coincides with the tenth anniversary of Donaghy's death, and the publication of the new paperback edition of his Collected Poems.

This wonderful new edition of Poems on the Underground is published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Underground in 2013. Here 230 poems old and new, romantic, comic and sublime explore such diverse topics as love, London, exile, families, dreams, war, music and the seasons, and feature poets from Sappho to Carol Ann Duffy and Wendy Cope, including Chaucer and Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and Shelley, Whitman and Dickinson, Yeats and Auden, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott and a host of younger poets. It includes a new foreword and over two dozen poems not included in previous anthologies.