Trigger Warning: The mention of depression and suicide in this article may be triggering to some readers. Please exercise personal care when reading.
A good poem can act as a window to our souls. Poems often make us feel seen, help us recognize what we are feeling, and perhaps even help us understand ourselves better. When overcoming struggles with depression, poetry can help us to recognize that things can and will get better. Here, we equip readers struggling with depression with a list of ten poetry collections meant to help us see the light when we are at our darkest.
The Emergency Poet: An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology by Deborah Alma
Deborah Alma delivers a poetry anthology with a targeted focus on helping readers overcome depression, stress, and anxiety. Alma believes that poetry is the cure for many different ailments. In The Emergency Poet: An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology, she combines classic poetry with contemporary poetry, proving that no matter what you suffer from, there is a poem to prescribe for it.
Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim
In Depression & Other Magic Tricks, Sabrina Benaim puts to words her own feelings of depression and other mental health struggles in a way that many readers have been able to relate to. She often ties back her experiences with her mental health to her family and to love, and how difficult it is to manage both.
“Anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town that depression felt obligated to invite to the party / Mom, I am the party, only I am a party I don’t want to be at”
Depression & Other Magic Tricks, Sabrina Benaim
Iced Coffee and Depression by Diana Towsend
Iced Coffee and Depression is part of Diana Towsend’s two-part series, The Coffeehouse Confessional, also featuring Grippy Socks and Cold Brew. She writes about depression, anxiety, heartbreak, and healing with a raw complexity. Both Iced Coffee and Depression and Grippy Socks and Cold Brew are portraits of humanity and remind readers that they are never truly alone.
suicide notes: before you go…: poems about finding hope and meaning in life, with reasons to stay alive by Christine Oburah
Christine Oburah takes an incredibly personal approach to her poetry, in suicide notes: before you go… sharing with readers the notes that she wrote to herself during her darkest days to remind herself that it is worth staying alive. “I just had to talk myself out of dying,” she writes. She shares this book with the hopes that these notes will help others in the same ways they helped her, or even inspire readers to find their own reasons.
“When the warmth of love is gone,/ And the heart grows cold,/ When pain is all that we know,/ And laughter is a memory of long ago,/ May the tears help us grow,/ And give us hope to evolve,/ As we embrace all that life holds.”
suicide notes: before you go…, Christine Oburah
Blessings for the Long Night: Poems and Meditations to Help You through Depression by Jessica Kantrowitz
In Blessings for the Long Night, Jessica Kantrowitz describes depression as a night that seems like it will never end. In her poetry collection, she emphasizes the feelings of relentlessness that come with depression and hopes that this book can offer a sense of light in the darkness. It does not promise to heal, but it promises to be a companion through the times when you feel the most alone.
Howling at the Moon by Darshana Suresh
In Howling at the Moon, Darshana Suresh writes captivating poems that struggle with the question of what it means to be alive. She brings a sense of raw relatability, defining human feelings and emotions in ways that will brighten your day, just because you will see yourself in her words. Her poems do not bring the promise of brighter days, but they will stay with you until brighter days seem possible.
“Here’s another secret: some days I am falling in love and other days I am just falling. / Here’s a bigger secret: I cannot tell those days apart. / Here’s the biggest secret: I don’t want to fall anymore. I don’t want to die.”
Howling at the Moon, Darshana Suresh
Happy, Okay?: Poems about Depression, Hope, and Survival by M.J. Fievre
Happy, Okay? is a series of contemporary poems written by M.J. Fievre that tells the narrative story of Paloma’s experience with depression through lyrical verse. This book focuses on the act of going through the motions with the hope of finding the path to happiness, self-acceptance, and purpose.
Small Ghost by Trista Mateer
Small Ghost combines poetry with Trista Mateer’s own illustrations and photography by Lauren Zaknoun, making it feel alive. The poems feel like a window into Mateer’s own mind as she struggles with her mental health. This book will feel like a friend, a place where all musings are shared and vulnerabilities are welcomed. It offers a sense of understanding that one may have felt was impossible.
“She thinks about how sweet it might feel to be soft again / thinks about thawing like ice / thinks about budding like spring / thinks about laughing until it doesn’t hurt to breathe anymore /”
Small Ghost, Trista Mateer
Good Poems for Hard Times by Garrison Keillor
Good Poems for Hard Times, edited by Garrison Keillor, is an anthology filled with poems old and new that are meant to get readers through hard times. Good Poems for Hard Times includes poetry from poets like William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, R.S. Gwynn, and Jennifer Michael Hecht. The poems offer a complex mixture of topics and themes that can both help readers through hard times and allow them to better appreciate the good times
To, the Bravest Person I Know by Ayesha Chenoy
To, the Bravest Person I Know acts as a guide for any and all difficult situations you may face in your life. Through her poetry, Ayesha Chenoy aims to deconstruct and reconstruct what it is to be normal. She reminds readers what it is to be brave with poems that have an immediate sense of honesty that are impossible to ignore and to forget.
“The thing with a closed door is light can still enter from under it.”
To, The Bravest Person I Know, Ayesha Chenoy
Reading has the power to heal, but more than that, it has the power to relate to how we feel (read more on reading through depression here). Sometimes, all we need is proof that someone has felt what we are feeling and they have gotten through to the other side. Other times, we just need someone to sit with us and offer companionship. We hope that this list can help you find at least one poem that can do both of these things for you.
Suicide and Mental Health Resources
To feel safe at all times is a basic human right; let’s work to make this world physically and mentally safe for everyone.
If you or someone you know is battling with mental health-related distress, we urge you to be kind and hold space for them, and contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (confidential, free, available 24/7/365):
→ Call or text 988
→ Chat at 988lifeline.org
→ Connect with a trained crisis counselor
European RNCE +44 (0)141 331 4180 or www.rcne.com/
List of Hotlines in 46 Countries: https://wave-network.org/list-of-helplines-in-46-countries/
For more recommendations aimed to help guide you through depression, click here.
Find these books and more on our For the Love of Poetry bookshelf on Bookshop.org.
