Desert Island Poems: poetry to guide you through life

Alumnae and school friends actress Helena Bonham Carter and poetry curator Allie Esiri will be our guests at our latest South Hampstead Speaker Series. The two friends met on their first day at South Hampstead High School in 1977 and have remained close ever since.

During the evening they will read from Allie’s poetry anthology, A Poem for Every Day of the Year, taking us on a journey of life through poems and showing us how poetry can inspire, rouse, console, express the inexpressible and make us double up with laughter. 

Allie devised her anthology to make poetry accessible to as many as possible. 

“It is a brilliant idea to divide the year up with a poem for every day - it gets round the feeling of defeat that can set in with unwieldy anthologies. A flamboyantly miscellaneous list of authors ranges from Sappho to AA Milne and from Langston Hughes to Charles I. Adults and children should read in the new year with this book and keep going.” The Observer

In the audiobook version of the anthology, Helena reads the poems with actor Simon Russell Beale.

We look forward to welcoming pupils, parents, staff and alumnae to hear Helena and Allie talk about the power of reading poetry aloud and the spoken word.

Signed copies of A Poem for Every Day of the Year (Macmillan £16.99) and the CD box set (Macmillan £19.99) will be available to purchase after the event.