Stressed, Unstressed

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.

‘Inspired … With excellent commentary from beginning to end, this useful book is cheaper than therapy … A wonderful volume for every home’ Bel Mooney, Daily Mail ‘Packages up some of the most beautiful and beloved of poems (from Horace to Clive James, by way of Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and WB Yeats) … Read a poem a day and it could save your sanity as much as any fancy new theory … Above all, the poems remind us what it is to be human in any age, and that we are not alone’ Sunday Times

Jonathan Bate is a well-known literary scholar. Paula Byrne is a best-selling author and Chief Executive of The Bibliotherapy Foundation.