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by Neil Astley (Editor)
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 Wislawa Szymborska and Tomas Tranströmer from Europe.Author Biography
Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably the Bloodaxe Staying Alive trilogy: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004) and Being Human (2011), now followed by Staying Human (2020); and three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds (2008), and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017). He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005). He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry from the Society of Authors and was given a D.Litt by Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books. He also guest-edited a transatlantic all-poetry issue of the American literary journal Ploughshares, the first such issue in its 43-year history. He lives in the Tarset Valley of Northumberland, England.
