Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive
By Neil Astley
5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley’s Staying Alive, which became Britain’s most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who’ve wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder.
Staying Alive didn’t just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn’t read poetry for years because it hadn’t held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. A companion anthology, Being Human (2011), completed this poetry trilogy. Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (2012) selects 100 poems from all three anthologies, a third from each. These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry – all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry.
'I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive – I think it has a heartbeat, or maybe that’s my own thrum humming along with the music of these poets. Sitting alone in a room with these poems is to be assured that you are not alone, you are not crazy (or if you are, you’re not the only one who thinks this way!) I run home to this book to argue with it, find solace in it, to locate myself in the world again.' – Meryl Streep
‘Truly startling and powerful poems.’ – Mia Farrow
‘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
‘Staying Alive is a blessing of a book. The title says it all. I have long waited for just this kind of setting down of poems. Has there ever been such a passionate anthology? These are poems that hunt you down with the solace of their recognition.’ – Anne Michaels
‘Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can’t think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems.’ – Philip Pullman
‘Usually if you say a book is “inspirational” that means it’s New Agey and soft at the center. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I’ve decided I’m now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius.’ – Edmund White
‘Staying Alive is a wonderful testament to Neil Astley’s lifetime in poetry, and to the range and courage of his taste. It’s also, of course, a testament to poetry itself: to its powers to engross and move us, to its ability to challenge and brace us, and to its exultation. Everyone who cares about poetry should own this book.’ – Andrew Motion
Neil Astley
Neil Astley is the editor of Bloodaxe Books which he founded in 1978. His books include many anthologies, most notably those in the Staying Alive series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011) and Staying Human (2020), along with three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets and In Person: World Poets. He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, and has published two poetry collections, Darwin Survivor and Biting My Tongue, as well as two novels, The End of My Tether (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award), and The Sheep Who Changed the World. He was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books in 1995; is a patron and past trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival; and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. He lives in the Tarset valley in Northumberland.
Read more from Neil Astley
Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Do Not Go Gentle: poems for funerals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Human: the companion anthology to Staying Alive and Being Alive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Funny Ha-Ha, Funny Peculiar: a book of strange & comic poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Land of Three Rivers: The Poetry of North-East England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hundred Years' War: modern war poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Being Alive
Related ebooks
The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Final Voicemails: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Back Chamber: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You: A Book of Her Poems & His Poems Collected in Pairs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Each Happiness Ringed by Lions: Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best American Poetry 2016 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946–2006 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Reincarnations: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best of the Best American Poetry: 25th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5sensorium: poetry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Best American Poetry 2020 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Like: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best American Poetry 2017 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Poetry: States of the Art Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Zodiac: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Scribbled in the Dark Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Logan Notebooks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best American Poetry 2006: Series Editor David Lehman Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When I Go: Selected French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sonnets to Orpheus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Questions of Travel: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Asymmetry: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Village Life: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Encounter in April: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blue-Tail Fly Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Poetry For You
Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Being Alive
4 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A good balance and range
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a companion to Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times. It's a similar collection, with a range of themes and different poets. A pretty diverse collection. I haven't read every poem in it, but I love the fact that I can dip in and out of it and almost always find something I want. I think these two anthologies will be staying with me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An excellent collection of poetry arranged according under some surprising headings. If you want a poetry anthology then this is the one to get!