Welcome to my Bright Poems page! Here’s where you’ll find short videos showcasing poems and illustrations from Bright Poems for Dark Days: An Anthology for Hope. You’ll also see links to interviews and other noteworthy pieces related to this poetry collection. Keep checking back for updates!
I believe in art’s transformative power. It shouldn’t be elitist, intimidating or inaccessible. I hope everyone who visits this page will deepen their understanding of the positive impact poetry and other art can have on all human life.
Links:
- Bright Poems for Dark Days — YouTube Channel
- Interview with Authority Magazine on Medium.com — “Poetry is a form of writing where the heart is turned inside out, and where sound and images are often more powerful or stirring than sense.”
- Bright Poems for Dark Days, Launch Zoom — “I … think poetry can have such a broad reach. … You don’t have to be a genius and you don’t even have to know a single thing about English literature … to hear a poem and have it bring you to your knees.”
- Book review at Scene Magazine — “…the range is impressive. Some fun, frivolous and fancy, others profound & pertinent. It touches the spot.”
Videos currently uploaded
Naomi Replansky, The Oasis
The award-winning poet Naomi Replansky was born in New York in 1918, where she was also living when she passed away in 2023, at age 104. The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Replansky showed an affinity for writing at an early age and as a young woman also became active in politics. There is nothing overtly political in her tender love poem, ‘The Oasis’, which expresses the feelings of wonder and gratitude a woman experiences when she realises the vibrancy and tenacity of love. The speaker candidly shares a poisonous thought experienced by humans since time immemorial—that love is not for her. The triumphant final line of each verse pronounces a marvellous counterclaim: her love is real, and she is worthy of it.
Carol Ann Duffy, The Light Gatherer
Carol Ann Duffy (1955– ) was the United Kingdom’s first female poet laureate. The Scottish poet is acclaimed for female-orientated love poems, many of them achingly passionate or candidly erotic. ‘The Light Gatherer’ is also female-centred, but eros makes way for the instinctual, unconditional love of a mother for her daughter. The devoted parent tenderly observes her ‘snowgirl’, who brims with light as she passes through infancy and youth. This luminescent child leaves brightness trailing behind her, as the glistening tails of shooting stars.
Raymond Carver, Late Fragment
In this poignant verse, brief as life itself, the American poet and writer of short fiction, Raymond Carver, reminds us that material possession means nothing at the end of our days. It is a poem that offers comfort to those wading through grief.
Oscar Wilde, Magdalen Walks
Everything shimmers with life in the celebrated Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde’s (1854–1900) ‘Magdalen Walks’. Clouds are racing, birds are singing for joy and trees are rustling with laughter in the glorious dawn of Spring. The speaker’s senses are awakened in this happy time: he sees fields strewn with flowers, smells new grass, hears the woods waking up and so on. The poem’s structure and rhyme scheme are formal and controlled, but the joyful images refuse to be bridled by end-stopped lines, instead running wild and rampant over edges of lines onto new ones.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Don’t Quit
This simple poem by the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) inspires hope and courage in the listener. Its steady rhythm and consistent rhyming couplets generate a sense of ease, familiarity and constancy that help a reader relax into the poem. In many ways, listening to it–or reciting it–has the same effect as engaging in meditative breathing.
John Donne, The Sun Rising
Very few poems capture the intensity and all-consuming nature of love like ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne (1572¬1631), an English poet as renowned for his often-racy love poems as he is for his sacred ones. In this poem, lovers in love are a world unto themselves. They know no season and recognise no time. The infatuated speaker audaciously proclaims that nothing exists beyond the walls of the lovers’ bedroom. The thrilling intensity of this poem is in its direct address to the sun, who has dared to summon the lovers out of bed. Refreshingly, they refuse. In a bold reordering of the cosmos, they command the sun to shine exclusively on them. In doing so, the poem says, it warms the whole world.
Siegfried Sassoon, Everyone Sang
The holidays can be a time of loneliness and alienation for so many. Here’s a little poem in the middle of the holiday season about hope for a brighter future, written by the First World War poet, Siegfried Sassoon.
Sara Teasdale, December Day
In ‘A December Day’, by the American lyric poet Sara Teasdale (1884–1933), the speaker finds comfort in the middle of a dark winter. The opening lines are so lovely that the final line of the first quatrain is startling. We must go back to see that the imagery is starker than we first thought. Dawn is not a glorious princess, basking in her own warm energy. She is sluggish and her languid movements produce a ‘sunless world’. When she finally rises, it’s not for long. Yet, the poem’s final line reminds us that beauty exists even in the dark and endures whether we can see it or not. Suspended in a snow-banked window is a ‘feathery filigree of frost’—a delicate pattern of ice. The alliteration is soft and gentle. Winter has lost its sting.
Warsan Shire, For Women Who Are Difficult to Love
This poem celebrates a ‘strange and beautiful woman’ whose heart is too fierce be tamed. The poem offers hope for women who feel they are ‘difficult to love’–or have even been told this about themselves. It inspires all of us who have strong personalities to respect ourselves and even love ourselves.
Rachel Field, Something Told the Wild Geese
The American poet and novelist Rachel Field’s “Something Told the Wild Geese” is a poem rich with images of glorious autumn. In it, the speaker marvels at the instinct (or foreknowledge?) wild geese possess as they prepare for the great change in seasons–that of fall metamorphosing into winter.
Denise Levertov, Of Being
It’s my pleasure to read from my newly released book, Bright Poems for Dark Days. The poem I’m reading here is by the American poet, Denise Levertov, whose six-decade career as a poet saw her writing poems ranging from anti-Vietnam War protest pieces to studies of the emotional landscapes of humans. It’s the latter that you’ll hear here.
Ada Limón, How to Triumph Like a Girl
This exhilarating poem by Ada Limón features in the Joy section of my anthology, entitled Bright Poems for Dark Days, illustrated by Carolyn Gavin.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, An Invitation to Love
I simply love Paul Laurence Dunbar’s ‘An Invitation to Love’, which appears in the ‘Love’ section of my anthology, Bright Poems for Dark Days. Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first Black poets in America to be nationally acclaimed for his poetry.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29
This famous sonnet by William Shakespeare offers insight into depression and how switching our thinking – turning our minds to something for which we feel gratitude – can help us pull ourselves out of the darkness. Gratitude is not a cure-all for depression, but it is a practice that can help.