Michael Rosen’s unflinching account of surviving Covid, a celebration of inner-city teaching and a fresh take on Shakespeare in the year’s standout collections
Despite everyone’s hopes, the shadow of Covid-19 has been hard to escape this year. Michael Rosen’s account of his near death and subsequent recovery from the virus, Many Different Kinds of Love (Ebury), is one of the first of no doubt many reckonings with the pandemic. Rosen’s poems are supplemented by messages written by the NHS staff looking after him while he was in an induced coma. The book is unflinching, showing the ravages of being seriously ill – but hopeful and uplifting, too.
The crisis of climate change has seen poets reaching for new expressions to alter the narrative about the challenge we all face. Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency (Valley Press), edited by Kate Simpson, is the best eco-themed anthology to emerge this year, with poems that are dynamic, elegiac and hopeful. In a similar vein, Penelope Shuttle, in her wonderfully clarifying Lyonesse (Bloodaxe), paints a picture of mythic lands submerged under seas and the loss, personal and environmental, that follows.
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