A Poet's Guide to Britain

Book excerpt: Introduced and selected by the poet-presenter Owen Sheers, A Poet's Guide to Britain is a major poetry anthology that ties in with the BBC series of the same name. Owen Sheers passionately believes that poems, and particularly poems of place, not only affect us as individuals, but can have the power to mark and define a collective experience - our identities, our country, our land. He has chosen six powerful poems, all personal favourites, and all poems that have become part of the way we see our landscape. The anthology follows a similar format to the BBC series itself, while also offering paper chains of poems about the landscape and nature of Britain, transcripts of contemporary poet interviews, and a short introduction to each lead poem.