Soul Feast: nourishing poems of hope & light: a companion anthology to Soul Food

By Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce

Soul Feast is a companion to the hugely popular poetry anthology Soul Food, offering up a further feast of thoughtful poems to stir the mind and feed the spirit, bringing hope and light in dark, uncertain times. 

The original Soul Food anthology (2007) achieved its wide popularity by word of mouth. For many thousands of readers feeling adrift in the early years of the 21st century, the poems in that book offered support and sustenance. This new compilation once again shows how poetry can help sustain our search for meaning in the face of even more destructive and disorientating events. All these poems are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to seekers and non-believers. 

Drawn from many traditions, Soul Feast includes work by poets ranging from Lal Ded and Tukaram to Pessoa, Borges, Cummings and Langston Hughes, as well as poems by celebrated contemporary poets such as Ellen Bass, Imtiaz Dharker, Jane Hirshfield and Naomi Shihab Nye. This is a book to keep by the bedside or to keep with you when travelling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781780377070

Book preview

Cover: Soul Feast, Nourishing Poems of Hope and Light edited by Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce

SOUL FEAST

NOURISHING POEMS

OF HOPE AND LIGHT

EDITED BY NEIL ASTLEY

& PAMELA ROBERTSON-PEARCE

Logo: Bloodaxe Books

For Noah, always

Contents

TITLE PAGE

1.JOURNEYS

Lorna Crozier – Packing for the Future: Instructions

Mary O’Donnell – The Intimate Future

Julius Chingono – As I Go

Jericho Brown – Crossing

Stanisłav Barańczak – If china

William Stafford – The Way It Is

Toon Tellegen – ‘I drew a line…’

Ruth Stone – Train Ride

Tomas Tranströmer – Tracks

Ted Kooser – November 12: 4.30 A.M.

Kerry Hardie – We Go On

Lal Ded – Two poems

2.SOUL SEARCH

Jane Hirshfield – Counting, New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me

Kona Macphee – The Gift

Denise Levertov – The Gift

Arun Kolatkar – Yeshwant Rao

Tukaram – ‘When he comes…’

Kathleen Ossip – The Believer

Dennis O’Driscoll – Fabrications

Edward Hirsch – I Was Never Able to Pray

Giorgio Caproni – Prayer

Arundhathi Subramaniam – Prayer

Jorge Luis Borges – Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf

Peter Sirr – A Saxon Primer

Lucie Brock-Boido – Soul Keeping Company

Adriana Lisboa – Soul Washing

May Swenson – Question

3.LIFE ON EARTH

Denise Levertov – O Taste and See

Linda Pastan – Imaginary Conversation

Muriel Rukeyser – Yes

Gregory Orr – To Be Alive

Rosemary Tonks – Addiction to an Old Mattress

Maya C. Popa – Dear Life

Marin Sorescu – With Only One Life

John McCullogh – Watermelon Man

Ada Limón – Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance

Jack Hirschman – Path

Jack Gilbert – A Brief for the Defense

Ellen Bass – The Thing Is

Ellen Bass – Any Common Desolation

Joan Margarit – Love Is a Place

Jane Hirshfield – A Cedary Fragrance

Chase Twichell – Saint Animal

Mona Arshi – Little Prayer

William Stafford – Listening

Tuvia Ruebner – Wonder

Jeong Ho-seung – A Spider

Jane Hirshfield – The Supple Deer

Jane Hirshfield – The Envoy

Lynne Wycherley – The Substitute Sky

Marie Howe – Postscript

4.ALL TOGETHER NOW

Fernando Pessoa – They Spoke to Me of People, and of Humanity.

Vincent Katz – This Beautiful Bubble

Naomi Shihab Nye – Gate A-4

Imtiaz Dharker – How to Cut a Pomegranate

Imtiaz Dharker – Crab-apples

John Koethe – Lives

Tomas Tranströmer – After Someone’s Death

Taha Muhammad Ali – Maybe

A.E. Housman – ‘Good creatures…’

Tomas Tranströmer – Alone

Jeong Ho-seung – To Daffodils

Sandra McPherson – Some Meanings of Silence

John O’Donohue – from For the Break-up of a Relationship

Naomi Shihab Nye – The Art of Disappearing

Lee Young-ju – Lumberjack Diary

Naomi Shihab Nye – Shoulders

Lauren Halderman – from Instead of Dying

Chen Chen – a small book of questions: chapter VII

Mary Jean Chan – Conversation with a Fantasy Mother

Jane Clarke – Spalls

Sandra Cisneros – At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor

Doug Anderson – Homage to Li Po

Alicia Ostriker – Wrinkly Lady Dancer

Lucille Clifton – homage to my hips

Noriko Ibaragi – When I Was at My Most Beautiful

Noriko Ibaragi – Your Own Sensitivity at Least

Linda Pastan – I Am Learning to Abandon the World

Joy Harjo – I Am a Prayer

5.HOPE AND LIGHT

Imtiaz Dharker – Carving

Kerry Hardie – Flesh

Alyson Hallett – Suddenly, Everything

E.E. Cummings – ‘i thank You God for most this amazing’

Edip Cansever – Table

Elena Shvarts – ‘Set your course by the Sun… ’

Imtiaz Dharker – Living Space

Brendan Kennelly – Permission

Adam Zagajewski – Wake Up

Danusha Laméris – Insha’Allah

Miroslav Holub – The door

Roger Robinson – A Portable Paradise

Boris A. Novak – Decisions: II

Ivan V. Lalić – The Spaces of Hope

Lisel Muller – Hope

Enda Coyle-Greene – Hope

Edith Södergran – Hope

Ellen Cranitch – Hope

Ai Qing – The Lamp

Samuel Menashe – Now

Langston Hughes – Dreams

Langston Hughes – Harlem [2]

Brendan Kennelly – Good Souls to Survive

Molly Fisk – Against Panic

Michael D. Higgins – The Well 2

Leanne O’Sullivan – A Healing

Paula Meehan – Seed

Derek Mahon – Everything Is Going To Be All Right

NOTES ON THE POETS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX OF WRITERS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

COPYRIGHT

1. JOURNEYS

Packing for the Future: Instructions

Take the thickest socks.

Wherever you’re going

you’ll have to walk.

There may be water.

There may be stones.

There may be high places

you cannot go without

the hope socks bring you,

the way they hold you

to the earth.

At least one pair must be new,

must be blue as a wish

hand-knit by your mother

in her sleep.

*

Take a leather satchel,

a velvet bag and an old tin box –

a salamander painted on the lid.

This is to carry that small thing

you cannot leave. Perhaps the key

you’ve kept though it doesn’t fit

any lock you know,

the photograph that keeps you sane,

a ball of string to lead you out

though you can’t walk back

into that light.

In your bag leave room for sadness,

leave room for another language.

There may be doors nailed shut.

There may be painted windows.

There may be signs that warn you

to be gone. Take the dream

you’ve been having since

you were a child, the one

with open fields and the wind

sounding.

*

Mistrust no one who offers you

water from a well, a songbird’s feather,

something that’s been mended twice.

Always travel lighter

than the heart.

LORNA CROZIER

The Intimate Future

The first day will startle in a paradise

of spectacle and movement. In this release

from the wintry cocoon, the long chill

over, we will forget our solitude.

Like nectar-starved butterflies, we’ll cluster

together in displays of brightening wings,

velvety trims, our chitined scales and spots

trembling at the end of long starvation.

We’ll fly close – so close – to one another

in drifts of prismatic colour, our patterns,

shapes, antennae, colliding, shifting,

crowding sociably to drink and drink:

such intimate nectars, proboscis-fed

to another’s need, wings sugar-drowsy.

MARY O’DONNELL

As I Go

My pot is an old paint container

I do not know

who bought it

I do not know

whose house it decorated

I picked up the empty tin

in Cemetery Lane.

My lamp, a paraffin lamp

is an empty 280ml bottle

labelled 40 per cent alcohol

I picked up the bottle in a trash bin.

My cup

is an old jam tin

I do not know who enjoyed the sweetness

I found the tin

in a storm-water drain.

My plate is a motor car hub-cap cover

I do not know

whose car it belonged to

I found a boy wheeling it, playing with it

My house is built

from plastic over cardboard

I found the plastic being blown by the wind

It’s simple

I pick up my life

as I go.

JULIUS CHINGONO

Crossing

The water is one thing, and one thing for miles.

The water is one thing, making this bridge

Built over the water another. Walk it

Early, walk it back when the day goes dim, everyone

Rising just to find a way toward rest again.

We work, start on one side of the day

Like a planet’s only sun, our eyes straight

Until the flame sinks. The flame sinks. Thank God

I’m different. I’ve figured and counted. I’m not crossing

To cross back. I’m set

On something vast. It reaches

Long as the sea. I’m more than a conqueror, bigger

Than bravery. I don’t march. I’m the one who leaps.

JERICHO BROWN

If china

If china, then only the kind

you wouldn’t miss under the movers’ shoes or the treads of a tank;

if a chair, then one that’s not too comfortable, or

you’ll regret getting up and leaving;

if clothes, then only what will fit in one suitcase;

if books, then those you know by heart;

if plans, then the ones you can give up

when it comes time for the