Poems of Home

Poets from around the world celebrate the universal appeal of the comforts of home in this unique anthology.

Whether inhabited or remembered, whether solitary or teeming with family, whether a refuge from the world or a connection to a community, home is essential to the self. The poems in this anthology invite us into urban apartments and cozy cottages, stately mansions and hermits’ huts. We watch a medieval housewife explain how she has spent her day; we join with Robert Herrick as he gives thanks for his ＂humble roof . . . weatherproof＂; we peep in on Amy Lowell in the bath and John Donne in his bed, and join Joy Harjo at the kitchen table.

Home can mean many things: from Horace’s rural farm to Billy Collins’s favorite armchair, from Milton’s ＂blissful bower＂ in Paradise to Imtiaz Dharker’s ＂Living Space＂ in the slums of Mumbai. Mary Oliver imagines her dream house, Emily Dickinson dwells in possibility--＂a fairer House than Prose,＂ and a wide range of displaced poets long for their home countries: Ovid, Joachim du Bellay, Kapka Kassabova, Mahmoud Darwish, and even Jules Supervielle feeling ＂Homesick for the Earth.＂ Wherever you happen to dwell or whatever your idea of domestic bliss, you are sure to find visions that resonate in No Place Like Home.

Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

JANE HOLLOWAY is the editor of the Pocket Poet anthology The Language of Flowers. She has been a senior editor at Everyman’s Library in the UK since its revival in 1991. She lives in Seaford, East Sussex.