What do you do when you are sad or struggling? I read poetry. In fact I can’t understand why one wouldn’t read poems then. People tell me, ‘oh I don’t really get poetry.’ It baffles me. If you don’t have poems or prayers ,what do you hold onto when the pain gets to be too much? When you aren’t strong enough to hold on any more.

Poetry as therapy exists, and Bibliotherapy is even being piloted on the National Health Service

“The use of books as therapy in the treatment of mental or psychological disorders.” – Oxford English Dictionary

I’ve compiled my own bibliotherapy shortlist for you. Scroll down and find a poetic or literary ‘prescription’ for your emotional state.

Angry

Peaceful Heart – Haven Trevino

Annoyed

Twelve Things I Don’t Want to Hear – Connie Bensley

Anxious

All will be well – St Julian of Norwich

The Way We Live – Kathleen Jamie 

Bored

The Camel’s Hump – Kipling

Broken

Clearing – Martha Postlewaite

Confused

The Peninsula – Seamus Heaney

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Critical

Wild Geese – Mary Oliver

Love – George Herbert

Depressed

The Lake Isle of Innisfree – W. B. Yeats

A Thing of Beauty – Keats

The Bright Field – R.S Thomas

Disconnected

My help is in the mountain – Nancy Wood

The Darkling Thrush – Thomas Hardy

Discouraged

Say Not the Struggle Naught Availith – Arthur Hugh Clough 

Sometimes – Sheenagh Pugh

Days – Philip Larkin

Start Close In – David Whyte

Frustrated

Every New Morning – Susan Coolidge 

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam – Ernest Dowson

Grief

Postscript: For Gweno – Alun Lewis

Musee des Beaux Arts – W. H. Auden

Remember – Christina Rossetti  

Sympathy – Emily Bronte

Hatred

A Poison Tree – Blake 

Hopeless

Everyone Sang – Siegfried Sassoon

Hope Things with Feathers – Emily Dickinson

The Arrow and The Song – Longfellow

Insecure

Still I Rise – Maya Angelou

Where there is a woman there is magic – Ntozake Shange

Lonely

One Art – Elizabeth Bishop

All You Who Sleep Tonight – Vikram Seth

Misery

The End of Love – Sophie Hannah 

I pray to the ray from the window pain – Anna Akhmatova

Moody

The Guest House – Rumi

Leisure – William Henry Davies

The Rainy Day – Longfellow

Panic

Do You Imagine the Universe is Agitated? – Lao Tzu 

Rejection

Sweet Darkness – David Whyte 

Sad

i thank you god for this amazing day – e.e.cummings

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What are your favourite poems and books? Please share in the comments…..

Image courtesy of Bob AuBuchon.