The poet starts a new series, picking poems from her shelves to comfort and inspire us in isolation. Here she introduces a work that celebrates the sounds and smells of libraries
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be selecting poems from my library at home in Manchester to share with Guardian readers. Now seems as bad a time as any to read good poems – to discover or rediscover our living poets.
Poetry is the quiet music of being human and in these days and nights when our humanity is fully vulnerable and exposed, poetry takes a small step forward. In our separate isolations, a poem is like the Tardis: bigger on the inside. Like spring – to recall TS Eliot – poetry mixes memory and desire.
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