Poetry has always been bound up with ideas of endurance, redemption, consolation, and survival, and it is one of the best antidotes to depression. We Have Come Through brings together 100 poems celebrating individual courage in resisting the ravages of psychological trauma, induced by both external events and mental breakdown. The book moves through sections covering intimations of alienation, the causes of madness, the individual's experience at the nadir, through to healing and redemption. The final section has poems that can function as a charm against adversity and as part of our emotional repair kit. Especially powerful are those poems charting the emergence of hope after despair. Poems like George Herbert's 'The Flower' convince the reader that both the despair and the alleviation were real for the writer and they hold out the promise that relief does come. Peter Forbes has chosen poems that range in time and scope from Shakespeare, Clare and Blake, through Hardy, Auden, MacNeice and Stevie Smith, to John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and many contemporary poets.

About the Author
Peter Forbes is a writer, journalist and editor. He was Editor of Poetry Review, Britains leading poetry magizine, from 1986-2002. His anthology Scanning the Centuary in poetry (1999) was widely acclaimed. He translate Primo Levi's personal anthology, The Search for Roots, published by Penguin Press 2001.


Book Information
ISBN 9781852246198
Author Peter Forbes
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 214g