Bright Poems for Dark Days

Julie Sutherland received her PhD in English Studies and is now a writer and editor based in New Brunswick, Canada. She is a research associate with the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health at the University of Northern British Columbia. She has a long history of teaching poetry and other literature in educational and non-educational settings in Canada, the US, the UK and online. She is passionate about the capacity of literature to effect change in the human spirit. Carolyn Gavin is a painter, illustrator and designer based in Toronto, Canada. Vibrant, playful and happy are perfect words to describe her style. She is principal designer for Ecojot, a family-run eco-friendly paper business and also licenses her work for fabric, homewares and packaging. Find her on IG @carolynj.

• Introduction  Hope‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers, Emily DickinsonHope, Emanuel CarnevaliI Shall Return, Claude McKayEveryone Sang, Siegfried SassoonLift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon JohnsonOde to the West Wind (stanza 5), Percy Bysshe Shelley  Resilience + CourageStill I Rise, Maya AngelouCourage, Anne SextonInvictus, William Ernest HenleyLines on Retirement, after Reading Lear, David WrightCourage, Ella Wheeler WilcoxDon’t Quit, John Greenleaf Whittier  JoyHow to Triumph Like a Girl, Ada LimónOn Joy and Sorrow, from The Prophet, Kahlil GibranOf Being, Denise LevertovNurse’s Song, William BlakeAfternoon on a Hill, Edna St. Vincent MillayMagdalen Walks, Oscar Wilde  Nature + EscapeI Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William WordsworthSomething Told the Wild Geese, Rachel FieldHigh Flight, John Gillespie Magee Jr.On the Day the World Begins Again, Armand Garnet RuffoFrom a Railway Carriage, Robert Louis StevensonTime, Ursula Bethell   LoveThe Sun Rising, John DonneInvitation to Love, Paul Laurence DunbarFor women who are ‘difficult’ to love, Warsan ShireThe Oasis, Naomi ReplanskyThe Light Gatherer, Carol Ann DuffyAedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats  TranquillitySonnet: A sea of foliage girds our garden round, Toru DuttInscription for the Entrance to a Wood, William Cullen BryantThe Lost Lagoon, E. Pauline JohnsonA Hymn to the Moon, Lady Mary Wortley MontaguSweet and Low, from The Princess, Alfred, Lord TennysonCamomile Tea, Katherine Mansfield  GratitudeSonnet 39: Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace, Elizabeth Barrett BrowningSonnet 29: When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes, William ShakespeareThe Last Days of Summer Before the First Frost, Tim BowlingHaiku, IssaThanks, W.S. MerwinReflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity, John Tobias  ComfortSorrow Is Not My Name, Ross GayA December Day, Sara TeasdaleThe Dream Keeper, Langston HughesUp-Hill, Christina RossettiLate Fragment, Raymond CarverIn Blackwater Woods, Mary Oliver