Soul Feast

Soul Feast is a companion to the hugely popular poetry anthology Soul Food, offering up a further feast of thoughtful poems to stir the mind and feed the spirit, bringing hope and light in dark, uncertain times.

The original Soul Food anthology (2007) achieved its wide popularity by word of mouth. For many thousands of readers feeling adrift in the early years of the 21st century, the poems in that book offered support and sustenance. This new compilation once again shows how poetry can help sustain our search for meaning in the face of even more destructive and disorientating events. All these poems are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to seekers and non-believers.

Drawn from many traditions, Soul Feast includes work by poets ranging from Lal Ded and Tukaram to Pessoa, Borges, Cummings and Langston Hughes, as well as poems by celebrated contemporary poets such as Ellen Bass, Imtiaz Dharker, Jane Hirshfield and Naomi Shihab Nye. This is a book to keep by the bedside or to keep with you when travelling.

These poems illuminate the path of life. -- Rachel Campbell-Johnston The Times, on Soul Food
A friend gave me a copy of Soul Food as a gift... I thought it was so good that I gave it away to another friend within a matter of days, and bought myself a new copy, which I also gave away... I continue to buy copies for friends... I have read this book through from beginning to end a number of times now, and each time I am left with my spirit uplifted and a wondrous sense of warm joy in my soul. Not only is each poem fine, but reading the whole collection reads feels like the privilege of sharing another human's spiritual journey for a while. -- Henry Morgan The Merton Journal, on Soul Food
These poems will reconnect you with happiness, kindness, beauty and joy. They will teach you how to be here, now, fully aware and alive... Buy this book! You will be investing in happiness for days - and even dark lonely nights - to come. -- Anne Ashworth Universalist: The Journal of the Quaker Universalist Group, on Soul Food

Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce are co-editors of the Bloodaxe anthologies Soul Food (2007) and Soul Feast (2024), and collaborated on the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017).

Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books which he founded in 1978. His books include many anthologies, most notably those in the Staying Alive series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011) and Staying Human (2020).

Pamela Robertson-Pearce is an artist, filmmaker and translator. Her films include Imago: Meret Oppenheim (1996), on the artist who made the fur-lined teacup, and Gifted Beauty (2000), about Surrealist women artists including Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

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