Grief Poetry

The poems in Enter Water, Swimmer: Poems travel physically and emotionally, addressing the human condition through evocative language. Enter Water, Swimmer and you will be steeped in various manifestations of this world and beyond, daring to take on diverse realms of women, belief, culture, and ethics.

There is a quality to the darkest of dreams, not unlike that of a frightening and disturbing poem. Each bleeds fear, breathes mystery, and allows us to see nightmares with a secret eye. Michael’s newest collection of poetry, When the Night Owl Screams, offers up to 105 chilling poems that worm their way through the fever dreams staining your subconscious. Remember...you were warned.

Honeybee is a collection of raw, honest, and intimate conversations with oneself that lead you on a journey of reflection. By writing truthfully about the intricacies of her experiences, Rideau’s first collection of work is one that will speak to the very depths of those who read it, inspiring a will to question, heal and empower.

On November 27, 2013, Kat Savage’s life forever changed. Her little sister, Angela, was brutally murdered, and Savage has been searching for the strength to write her grief down ever since. Finally, just shy of six years later, and one year after justice finally rained down upon the man to blame, Savage found the courage to try.

Laurence McKeown almost died in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh/Maze Prison in the North of Ireland, following 70 days on hunger strike in 1981. In later years, he helped facilitate poetry workshops in the prison and co-founded a prisoners magazine. In this, his debut collection of poems, written both during his incarceration and in subsequent years, Laurence reflects upon his developing political consciousness, exploring themes of politics, family, comradeship, longing, desire, and love.

Journey to happiness through writing. This book of poetry chronicles my journey through the grief of the death of my soulmate to gratitude and then, surprisingly, happiness. As I wrote and sketched I realized that the words and images welled up from my soul, helped me understand my experience, and moved me forward into healing. There are five sections in the book: "The Power of Love", "Loss and Grief", "Healing Begins", "Gestation", and "Thriving'. I have included musings and prompts after each section to encourage listeners to write their own journey to happiness and even joy.

This is a book of poetry to encourage people that have been through heartbreak, pain, grief and the ending of a relationship. It's honest, real talk about the feelings we have after experiencing this sort of death after losing someone we have deeply loved.

In nearly four decades as a journalist covering conflict from Rwanda to Kosovo to Palestine, Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum has always carried a book of poetry. In Ukraine, she tweeted a poem a day, and people began to read, to share, to ask for more. Here, Lindsey collects her favourite poems from ancient times to modern, by writers from all around the world. Alongside each, she recalls a memory from her own work, whether interviewing the warlords of Bosnia, meeting child soldiers in Uganda or giving testimony in Rwanda.

Attending to one's mother while she succumbs to cancer is no easy feat as this poetry chapbook will attest to.

When Rob Walton went into lockdown, he didn’t know that he would also go into mourning. Here, he writes about the life and death of his dad, and how sadness seeped into various aspects of his life. He also manages to find cheap laughs, digs at the government, celebrations of the young and old, unashamed sentimentality and suddenly disarming moments of tenderness.

Mental health is not a disease but a disability in which its reality can become problematic for everyone without help. The mass shootings stem from individuals who have not been help or are off their medications to avert them from criminal activity. Suicides are high amongst our youth, due to depression and those that surround them fail or refuse to acknowledge their cry for help.

This poem describes the universal feelings of a soldier in contemplation of his own mortality and impending death.

Poems that go from depression, death, and destruction to healing, love, spirituality, and life. Listen to 105 sonnets divided into four categories: Roses and Prickles, Spirits and Souls, Places, and Contemplations.

This collection of 23 poems contains most of the verse for which Wildred Owen is known today. Few poets have captured more effectively the tragic dichotomy of war, where, for many, survival can be a fate worse than death. The opening poem "Strange Meeting" describes a posthumous encoaunter between a soldier and an enemy combatant who he has killed on the previous day. The penultimate poem, "Disabled", is the private lament of a crippled veteran as he helplessly surveys the daily lives of people unscarred by war.

Written over the course of five years, these poems grapple with purpose and reality from a myriad of existentialist perspectives and themes. Through these poems, we travel through the cosmos, to various mythological settings, and even to our own neurons. If you’re seeking to rearrange your grey matter, this is the collection for you.

Where Decay Sleeps lays 36 poems on the undertaker’s table, revealing to us the seven stages of decay: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis, putrefaction, decomposition, and skeletonization. Listeners are summoned to walk the Gothic ruins of monsters, where death and decay lie sleeping.

This content is written in a poem format and tells the story of Black Americans and their journey from Africa to America.

The Soul Knows These Simple Truths is a poetry audiobook that contains 101 poems across a wide variety of themes such as heartbreak, grief, loss, hope, faith, inspiration, philosophy, tragedy, and the healing power of art.

"Ex Oblivione" is a prose poem by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in late 1920 or early 1921 and first published in The United Amateur in March 1921, under the pseudonym Ward Phillips. It is written in first person and tells of the dreams of a presumably dying man. In his dreams, the man is walking through a valley and encounters a vine-covered wall with a locked bronze gate therein. He longs to know what lies beyond the gate.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to the poem Femicide: When Friendship Meets Brutality today.