Neil Astley

Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human have introduced many thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, and have helped poetry lovers to discover the little known riches of world poetry.

Each anthology in the Staying Alive series has 500 poems to touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. These books have been enormously popular with readers, especially as gift books and bedside companions. The poems – by writers from many parts of the world – have emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit.

This pocketbook selection of 100 essential poems from the first three anthologies is a Staying Alive travel companion (also available as an e-book). As well as selecting favourite poems from what was originally a trilogy – readers’ and writers’ choices as well as his own favourites – editor Neil Astley provides background notes on the poets and poems. A fourth volume in the series, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive, was published in 2020.

This format makes it even more suitable as a gift book for all those people you’re sure would love modern poetry if only they were familiar with these kinds of poems.

These essential poems are all about being human, being alive and staying alive: about love and loss; fear and longing; hurt and wonder; war and death; grief and suffering; birth, growing up and family; time, ageing and mortality; memory, self and identity; faith, hope and belief; acceptance of inadequacy and making do…all of human life in a hundred highly individual, universal poems.

‘These poems distil the human heart as nothing else… Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. It’s invigorating and makes me proud of being human’ – Jane Campion

‘Truly startling and powerful poems’ – Mia Farrow

‘Staying Alive is a book which leaves those who have read or heard a poem from it feeling less alone and more alive’ – John Berger

‘I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid… But this new book feels even more alive – I think it has a heartbeat’ – Meryl Streep

Ireland: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin

USA: Click here to order from Indiebound or Bookshop.org