About the Book
We all have days when we find ourselves in need of some positivity. In difficult times, the words of others can lift us up. Bright, joyful art to inspire hopefulness is combined with carefully curated poems, chosen to lift the spirits through the healing power of words. The book is divided into eight sections on the themes of hope, resilience & courage, joy, nature & escape, love, tranquillity, gratitude and comfort.
Featuring a diverse range of writers from Oscar Wilde to Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson to Warsan Shire, the selections are accompanied by explanations and illuminating context that reinforces the positive mental health message. Combining uplifting lines of verse and joyful illustrations, this unique book provides a much-needed dose of hopefulness and happiness in turbulent times, whether as a thoughtful gift for someone in need of solace or a resource that can be turned to whenever we need to.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Hope
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson
Hope, Emanuel Carnevali
I Shall Return, Claude McKay
Everyone Sang, Siegfried Sassoon
Lift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson
Ode to the West Wind (stanza 5), Percy Bysshe Shelley
Resilience + Courage
Still I Rise, Maya Angelou
Courage, Anne Sexton
Invictus, William Ernest Henley
Lines on Retirement, after Reading Lear, David Wright
Courage, Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Don’t Quit, John Greenleaf Whittier
Joy
How to Triumph Like a Girl, Ada Limón
On Joy and Sorrow, from The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
Of Being, Denise Levertov
Nurse’s Song, William Blake
Afternoon on a Hill, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Magdalen Walks, Oscar Wilde
Nature + Escape
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth
Something Told the Wild Geese, Rachel Field
High Flight, John Gillespie Magee Jr.
On the Day the World Begins Again, Armand Garnet Ruffo
From a Railway Carriage, Robert Louis Stevenson
Time, Ursula Bethell
Love
The Sun Rising, John Donne
Invitation to Love, Paul Laurence Dunbar
For women who are ‘difficult’ to love, Warsan Shire
The Oasis, Naomi Replansky
The Light Gatherer, Carol Ann Duffy
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats
Tranquillity
Sonnet: A sea of foliage girds our garden round, Toru Dutt
Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, William Cullen Bryant
The Lost Lagoon, E. Pauline Johnson
A Hymn to the Moon, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Sweet and Low, from The Princess, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Camomile Tea, Katherine Mansfield
Gratitude
Sonnet 39: Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet 29: When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes, William Shakespeare
The Last Days of Summer Before the First Frost, Tim Bowling
Haiku, Issa
Thanks, W.S. Merwin
Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity, John Tobias
Comfort
Sorrow Is Not My Name, Ross Gay
A December Day, Sara Teasdale
The Dream Keeper, Langston Hughes
Up-Hill, Christina Rossetti
Late Fragment, Raymond Carver
In Blackwater Woods, Mary Oliver
About the Author :
Carolyn Gavin is a painter, illustrator and designer based in Toronto, Canada. Vibrant, playful and happy are perfect words to describe her style. She is principal designer for Ecojot, a family-run eco-friendly paper business and also licenses her work for fabric, homewares and packaging. Find her on IG @carolynj (460k followers).Dr Julie Sutherland is a writer and editor based in Ontario, Canada. She is a bibliotherapist for the ReLit Foundation, facilitating and presenting a wide variety of reading for well-being events in Canada, the US, the UK and online. She is passionate about the capacity of literature to effect change in the human spirit.
