Staying Human

Staying Human is the latest addition to Bloodaxe’s bestselling Staying Alive series of world poetry anthologies. These anthologies have introduced many thousands of new readers to modern poetry as well as offering poetry lovers a broad, international selection of 500 ‘real poems for unreal times’ in each volume. Staying Human has a strong focus on the human side of living in the 21st century in poems from the past two decades relating to migration, oppression, alienation, day-to-day living, and the individual’s struggle to hold on. Many of these went viral after being shared on social media because they speak to our times with such great immediacy. The poets are from drawn from every continent, including Jericho Brown, Terrance Hayes, Jane Hirshfield, and Sharon Olds from the US, and Nobel Laureates Wisława Szymborska and Tomas Tranströmer from Europe.