Poems to Live Your Life By

Riddell Chris Riddell

Description

A gorgeously illustrated collection of poems for every walk of life   Curated by artist and writer Chris Riddell, Poems to Live Your Life By is a beautifully illustrated collection of poems for readers young and old to carry with them as they grow. The book includes favorites, both old and new—from selections of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets to original poems by Neil Gaiman to lyrics to an indie rock song by Phoebe Bridgers. It is divided into different subjects and includes poems about youth, love, imaginings, and endings. Brought to life by Chris Riddell’s striking artwork, Poems to Live Your Life By is the kind of book that readers can return to again and again at different moments in their life.  

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 05 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683357612
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

AMULET BOOKS NEW YORK
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from

the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-4197-4121-0 eISBN 978-1-68335-761-2

This selection and illustrations copyright Chris Riddell 2018

All poems copyright the individual poets

The right of Chris Riddell to be identified as the

compiler and illustrator of this work has been asserted by him

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2018 by Macmillan Children s Books

an imprint of Pan Macmillan

20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

Published in 2019 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in

quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use.

Special editions can also be created to specification.

For details, contact [e-mail] or the address below.

Amulet Books

is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
Contents

An Introduction

vi

Musings

The isle is full of noises

William Shakespeare

1

from

The Tempest

There is a pleasure in a

pathless wood

George Gordon, Lord Byron

2

from

Childe Harold s

Pilgrimage

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

4

Freedom

Olive Runner

7

Adlestrop

Edward Thomas

8

Cargoes

John Masefield

10

Youth

The Minister for Exams

Brian Patten

16

The Great Escape

Chris Riddell

21

Thirteen

Kate Tempest

22

I Am Very Bothered

Simon Armitage

25

Smoke Signals

Phoebe Bridgers

28

Family

Walking Away

Cecil Day Lewis

34

Outgrown

Penelope Shuttle

35

Digging

Seamus Heaney

36

Tissue

Imtiaz Dharker

38

Eden Rock

Charles Causley

42

Safe Sounds

Carol Ann Duffy

44

Bright Star

John Keats

45
Love

I Miss You

A. F. Harrold

48

Something Rhymed

Jackie Kay

56

There is a field

Rumi

58

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen

60

He Wishes for the Cloths of

Heaven

W. B. Yeats

64

Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

67

Invitation to Love

Paul Laurence Dunbar

68

The Sun Has Burst the Sky

Jenny Joseph

69

A Birthday

Christina Rossetti

70

Valentine

Carol Ann Duffy

72

Love Letter

Nick Cave

74

The Whitsun Weddings

Philip Larkin

78

Imaginings

Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll

88

Witch Work

Neil Gaiman

96

The Listeners

Walter de la Mare

104

Orphee

Neil Gaiman

106

The Lady of Shalott

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

120

Nature

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats

142

Moon-Whales

Ted Hughes

150

The Windhover

Gerard Manley Hopkins

152

The Language of Cat

Rachel Rooney

154

War

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

160

The General

Siegfried Sassoon

166

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale

168
Endings

Not Waving but Drowning

Stevie Smith

172

Let Me Die a Youngman s

Death

Roger McGough

174

Do Not Go Gentle into That

Good Night

Dylan Thomas

180

Because I could not stop for

Death

Emily Dickinson

182

To be, or not to be

William Shakespeare

188

from

Hamlet

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and

tomorrow

William Shakespeare

190

from

Macbeth

Index of First Lines

192

Index of Poets

194

Acknowledgments

196

About Chris Riddell

198
An Introduction

T

he power of poetry is its ability to give voice to our

experiences and emotions. We collect poems as

we go through life. We read them at celebrations and

at remembrances. We turn to them when we re in love

and when we re heartbroken. Poetry connects us with

one another and reminds us what it is to be human.

This is a collection of poems I have lived my life by.

I vividly recollect sitting, as a very small boy, at the feet

of an old soldier from the Great War. I remember

looking up into a face ravaged by mustard gas and

being told later that he had been blinded in an attack

on the Somme-something I only understood after

reading Wilfred Owen s devastating poem. I remember

going through the looking glass as a young reader and

into the tulgey wood where I encountered the whiffling

Jabberwock. The swirling Gothic strangeness of Lewis

Carroll s poem has stayed with me ever since. Later,

at school, Shakespeare was drilled into me so that I

could achieve exam success. Then, as a college student,

I rediscovered him one magical midsummer s night,

sitting on a cushion on the stage of the National Theatre

in London. I remember having lunch with Ted Hughes

early in my career and listening transfixed as he talked

about his collection of poems called

Moon-whales

that

he d asked me to illustrate. I ll never forget meeting

Roger McGough and Brian Patten for the first time at

a rooftop party that featured flamingos. I once sat in a
train carriage opposite a sepulchral Nick Cave,

shared a stage in a tent with Neil Gaiman as he read

a poem about a witch, and drew live on a giant screen

to a sold-out crowd as Phoebe Bridgers sang about

beaches and pelicans.

I fell in love on Valentine s Day listening to the

songs of Leonard Cohen. I ve felt the pang of my

children, grown up and independent in just the way

Penelope Shuttle describes, and the bittersweet

nostalgia for my parents that Charles Causley evokes.

I ve found myself on a train from Hull to London,

reading Philip Larkin s famous poem for the first time

because of an inscription on a statue at the station.

I ve paddled in the Indian Ocean with A. F. Harrold,

the bottoms of our trousers rolled, as he broke my

heart with his poem I Miss You.

When I find poems like these, I like to write them

out and then draw around the words as I let their

meaning sink in. So, when compiling this anthology,

I asked for the poems to be given plenty of space so that

I could draw around them, directly onto the page. These

poems are certainly poems to live your life by. I hope

they speak to you as powerfully as they have to me.

The isle is full of noises

from

The Tempest

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again. And then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.

William Shakespeare
2

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

from

Childe Harold s Pilgrimage

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
3

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne er express, yet cannot all conceal.

George Gordon, Lord Byron
4

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.
5

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

7

Freedom

Give me the long, straight road before me,

A clear, cold day with a nipping air,

Tall, bare trees to run on beside me,

A heart that is light and free from care.

Then let me go!-I care not whither

My feet may lead, for my spirit shall be

Free as the brook that flows to the river,

Free as the river that flows to the sea.

Olive Runner
8

Adlestrop

Yes, I remember Adlestrop-

The name-because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop-only the name-

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry;

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
9

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Edward Thomas
10

Cargoes

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
11

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

With a cargo of diamonds,

Emeralds, amethysts,

Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
12

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield

16

Th