Poems to Fall in Love With

Chris Riddell, the 2015–2017 UK Children's Laureate, is an accomplished artist and the political cartoonist for the Observer. He has enjoyed great acclaim for his books for children. His books have won a number of major prizes, including the 2001, 2004 and 2016 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals. Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse won the Costa Children's Book Award 2013. His work for Macmillan also includes the bestselling Ottoline books, The Emperor of Absurdia, and, with Paul Stewart, the Muddle Earth books, the Scavenger series and the Blobheads series. Chris has been honoured with an OBE in recognition of his illustration and charity work. He lives in Brighton with his family.

This is a stupendously well-chosen, feelgood anthology in which even feel-bad poems feel good. This little book is a must-have, with poems that will make you feel more alive.

• Poem - 1: Locks - Neil Gaiman Poem - 2: Postcards from The Hedgehog - A. F. Harrold Poem - 3: Love and Friendship - Emily Bronte Poem - 4: La Belle Dame Sans Merci - John Keats Poem - 5: The Beautiful Librarians - Sean O'Brien Poem - 6: Sisters of Mercy - Leonard Cohen Poem - 7: Wormwood - Margot Armbruster Poem - 8: You: An Achilles Apple - Sappho Poem - 9: It's No Use/Mother Dear - Sappho Poem - 10: She Walks in Beauty - George Gordon, Lord Byron Poem - 11: If I profane with my unworthiest hand from 'Romeo and Juliet' - William Shakespeare Poem - 12: The Indian Serenade - P B Shelley Poem - 13: A Small Dragon - Brain Patten Poem - 14: A Lost Language - Nikita Gill Poem - 15: Valentine - Wendy Cope Poem - 16: From Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson - Gertrude Stein Poem - 17: i carry your heart with me - e e cummings Poem - 18: From Hamlet - William Shakespeare Poem - 19: A Red, Red Rose - Robert Burns Poem - 20: The Licorice Fields at Pontefract - John Betjeman Poem - 21: Mad Girl's Love Song - Sylvia Plath Poem - 22: Firework - Kate Tempest Poem - 23: Wild nights - Wild nights! - Emily Dickinson Poem - 24: Into My Arms - Nick Cave Poem - 25: I Don't Love You As if You Were a Rose - Pablo Neruda Poem - 26: Words, Wide Night - Carol Ann Duffy Poem - 27: Like a Flame - Grace Nichols Poem - 28: Like Otters - Hollie McNish Poem - 29: happiness - Roger McGough Poem - 30: The Bargain - Sir Philip Sydney Poem - 31: Corinthians . . . but the greatest of these is love - St Paul Poem - 32: Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare Poem - 33: The Owl and the Pussycat - Edward Lear Poem - 34: How Do I Love Thee? - Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poem - 35: The Good Morrow - John Donne Poem - 36: If You Are an Ancient Egyptian Hero - Hera Lindsay Bird Poem - 37: The parent anniversary - Lucy Thynne Poem - 38: Dark Sonnet - Neil Gaiman Poem - 39: The Song of the Wandering Aengus - W B Yeats Poem - 40: Love After Love - Derek Walcott Poem - 41: My Life Closed Twice - Emily Dickinson Poem - 42: Solitary Observation Brought Back from a Sojourn in Hell - Louise Bogan Poem - 43: Goodbye - Carol-Anne Marsh Poem - 44: Me and My Dog - Phoebe Bridgers Poem - 45: Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part - Michael Drayton Poem - 46: O Rose Thou Art Sick - William Blake Poem - 47: Remember - Christina Rossetti Poem - 48: I Can't Remember What We Talked About - Chris Riddell Poem - 49: The Taste of a Biscuit - A. F. Harrold Poem - 50: Funeral Blues - W H Auden Poem - 51: Tomorrow when you will not wake - Jan Dean