Stressed, Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind
Can you be re-lit by poetry? This little book offers everyone one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry.Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Returned again and again over the centuries by great imaginations are love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling at peace and at one with the natural world. ‘Stressed Unstressed’ harvests an array of poems on such themes in the hope that they will speak to you when you are processing your worries or when you simply want to fill your mind with different, more positive thoughts.Words can act as drugs, and on the bedside or in a waiting-room this little volume of poetry can help in all sorts of difficult circumstances. So here is a selection of new poems and old, enduring classics and forgotten gems. Next time you are feeling stressed or anxious, worried or sleepless, panicky or unable to cope, ‘Stressed Unstressed’ invites you to read a poem and join the thousands of others who have read and remembered and loved these poems – to form a very special community. This is bibliotherapy.
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William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016
© Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne 2016
Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne assert the moral right to be identified as the editors of this book
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008203863
Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008168162
Version: 2016-10-28
These poems were selected by Jonathan Bate, Paula Byrne, Sophie Ratcliffe and Andrew Schuman, who all contributed to the section introductions. Many of the poems have been tried and tested in healthcare settings or at stressful times, past and present. Proceeds from sales of the anthology will be donated to ReLit, the campaign of the Bibliotherapy Foundation (a charitable enterprise) to alleviate stress and other mental health conditions through mindful reading. For more information about the work of the Foundation, please visitwww.relit.org.uk.
We would love to hear about the ways in which this anthology, and poetry in general, has helped you. Please add your comments on our websitewww.relit.org.uk/stressed.
‘Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind’
Rudyard Kipling
There are many ways of dealing with stress: a walk in the park, a cup of tea and a chat with a friend, a long hot bath, or that form of practised meditation which has become known as ‘mindfulness’. In this little book, we would like to share another remedy, in fact one of the oldest remedies of all: the reading of poetry.
True poetry, claimed William Wordsworth, is either ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ or ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. The idea for this anthology came from the recollection of the powerful feelings stirred by some life-changing moments. There was a thirteen-year-old girl who lost her father and found comfort in a four-hundred-year-old poem by John Donne. There was the sense of utter desolation on being told by a compassionate consultant that a five-year-old daughter in intensive care could not be guaranteed to survive the night: hope came from a remembered poem that gave a glimpse of how others have endured their own desolation and come out the other side. Then there was the need to fill the mind with beautiful words and rich thoughts while waiting through many hours of surgery as that same child received a life-saving transplant.
There was also the experience of stress so intense that it manifested itself as physical pain in the hands and feet that was as real as that of an organic condition: yet the pain evaporated when a creative general practitioner prescribed not a drug but a book that provided exercises for managing stress. This inspired the thought: if words can do the work of drugs, what is to lose by putting them in our mental health first aid kit?
There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. The great eighteenth-century reader and writer Dr Samuel Johnson said that the only purpose of literature was to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it. We offer some poems that provide pure (even nonsensical) enjoyment, but most of our selections are intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences. Among the themes to which poets have returned again and again over the centuries are love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost, or of feeling at peace and at one with the natural world. We have harvested an array of classic poems on such themes in the hope that they will speak to you when you are processing your worries or when you simply want to fill your mind with different, more positive thoughts.
As ‘Poems on the Underground’ have for many years been momentary mental oases for stressed-out London commuters, so this volume of enduring classics and forgotten gems is intended for the waiting room, the sickbed, the sleepless night, the day when everything seems to be going wrong, the moment of respite. Keep it by your bed or stash it in your bag.
