Reflecting the changing seasons and linking to events on key dates - funny for April Fool's Day, festive for Christmas - these poems are thoughtful, inspiring, peaceful, energetic, upbeat, motivating, and empowering! I won’t say I’ve became a poem lover overnight, but this was a great stepping stone into a world previously unknown. New Statesman Not only is it a thing of beauty, it also offers an accessible, informative, bitesize approach to poetry. OK my new year reading resolutions, I obviously did not reach my goal this year, yet I'm still going to try read 30 books next year 😂 So starts the last poem in "A Poem For Every Day of the Year" edited by Allie Esiri. The poem being "Ring out, wild bells" by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

A Poem For Every Day of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share on every day of the year. The experience of working my way through this book over the course of the year has been very positive. Being able to pull out this beautiful volume and take a palate-cleanser for whatever else I have been reading (or doing) has been restorative, even in a year where I have read a lot of contemporary poetry. Best Poetry Books of the Year, The Times [ A Poet for Every Day of the Year] does exactly what it says on the tin, presenting a poet for you to meet and take your time with every day; to savour, enjoy, read, re-read and return to, knowing that there’ll be another one along tomorrow. What a year it's been! I haven't actually finished the book yet, but I'll forget to update goodreads later so its now or never.The Contents of A Poet for Every Day of the Year list the poem and poet for each calendar day although I prefer not to look at that properly until next year when I’ve enjoyed a daily surprise from the book. With poets from Angelou to Wordsworth there really is something for any and every reader. One of the absolute pleasures here is the attention to more marginalised poets such as those from the LGBTQIA+ community so that A Poet for Every Day of the Year feels inclusive and engaging. Beautiful collection of poetry. It took me nearly four years to finish, occasionally reading some poems, but I loved this volume and will be looking for something similar to read in the future.

I also had fun with the index of first lines at the end of A Poet for Every Day of the Year, reading them aloud like performance poetry and seeing if they would work as found poems in their own right! This anthology has so much to offer and every time I think about it next to the bed ready for me to read last thing at night it brings happiness and a smile to my face. A Poem For Every Day of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share on every day of the year. These poems are funny, thoughtful, inspiring, humbling, informative, quiet, loud, small, epic, peaceful, energetic, upbeat, motivating, and empowering!

Finished this 10 days early. I was trying to read one a day but now I want to wrap up my challenges at the end of the year, lol. Reflecting the changing seasons and linking to events on key dates – funny for April Fool's Day, festive for Christmas – these poems are thoughtful, inspiring, peaceful, energetic, upbeat, motivating, and empowering! Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it is bursting at the seams with familiar favourites and exciting new discoveries. T.S.Eliot, John Betjeman, Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare and Christina Rossetti sit alongside Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, and Kae Tempest. This collection is a mix of poems; some funny, some reflective. Some I had heard before and some I hadn't. I have listed some of my favourites from this listening below but I think if I re-listen at some other time time of year this list might be totally different.

A DNF. I love the idea of a poem-a-day book, but I didn’t feel very uplifted by this selection. I got as far as 15th February and decided to stop. Some of the poems I knew, some I didn’t, but they all felt a bit bleak. I saw this advertised at the beginning of the year and bought it in an independant bookshop in Tring. This year has been a very busy and at times stressful year so reading a poem every day has helped me to cope and put me in a good place at the beginning of each day. There were both really well-known poems and poems by newer/lesser known poets, which provided a good mix.

Lots of classics in here and a mix of newer poets also. Some are funny, thoughtful, inspiring, humbling. Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it is bursting at the seams with familiar favourites and exciting new discoveries. Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti and Emily Bronte sit alongside Roger McGough, Wendy Cope, Imtiaz Dharker, Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath and Ocean Vuong.