‘Tomorrow Is Beautiful: The perfect poetry collection for anyone searching for a beautiful world …’

remember, you do not have to understand any of these poems to engage with them; in fact the converse is true: the job of these poems is to understand you

Sarah Crossan

from her anthology
Tomorrow Is Beautiful

Earlier today I held this lovely anthology in my hands and breathed ‘thank you.’ Thank you for the poems, of course. But thank you, a huge thank you, to the compiler, Sarah Crossan, for her introduction, and within it one of the best lines I’ve read about poetry: ‘the job of these poems is to understand you.’

Do you remember, at 4 or 5, ‘knowing’ that Tip and Mitten and Peter and Jane were your personal friends? And that, later, those adventures with ‘The Famous Five’ were liveable, breathable events in your own life? And mine? These stories existed to have something to do with, something to say to, something to understand about, you. And me. But, as they say, ‘time goes by’ – and sometimes we forget.

Today, between these covers lie working invitations to remember – and to do what ‘poetry’ means: ‘to create.’ Calls to continuing adventure – vivified by, and excited in the knowledge that these poems are celebrating us, engaging with and encouraging us, recognising and witnessing us. We are seen. And we know ourselves loved and appreciated by those who, by means we now find hard to fathom, ‘see us’.

We know ourselves growing and illuminated from within because others, because poems, seek to understand us. And we’re thereby able to see, in advance, that ‘Tomorrow’ – something, something about tomorrow – ‘is beautiful.’

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