“I bought a volume of Yeats' chosen poems on a study holiday in Ireland when I was fifteen. The poem stood out for its simplicity and loving atmosphere and I learned it by heart. It was my first book of poems in English (I'm Italian).”

“I sipped my black coffee under a warm overcast sky and ‘Butterflies & Goosebumps’ allowed me vulnerability, it listened as I spoke of a hope of love and security. It bears all the load I didn't have to carry.”

“My mother died during Covid lockdown. She was very old and alone in hospital. We felt the usual things…grief…end of an era….and especially guilt that we could not have eased her passing. But I saw this poem at this time and shared it with my family and it sort of brought us together although we were all far apart. A bit of light in the dark and love.”

“All of it speaks. The direct address to the hearer, of that repeated ‘if there was ever one’ binds it together into a series of very key gifts the writer is offering you, open-armed and open-hearted. The vulnerability being offered to you has to sink in. Your tears will be dried, the world will be made brighter, you will be made whole and safe.”

"The poem makes me feel less alone in low moments and reminds me of the beauty still to come, how it's okay to be just carrying on."

"It chimes with my despair at how little humankind cares for the lives of other creatures and so readily and easily destroys the beauty of the natural world."

"I can think of two poems which are vital to me right now in my life. One you already know - 'Oh Western Wind when wilt thou blow' - the other I've tried recording and putting on my Facebook page, by Wilfred Owen – ‘Strange Meeting.' Thanking you and wishing you every good thing."

“I first read The Orange after it was sent to me by an online friend. It offers a quiet realisation of happiness and fulfilment in the everyday that I felt so hungry for all those years ago at my lowest, that I am working towards achieving every day. I could read it every day, and I want to get a tattoo of an orange at a future date.”

"I was maybe 19 years old, riding on a bus through Portland, Oregon. I remember I had just enough money for a pack of cigarettes and a coffee. I was feeling lost. Then I happened on this poem in a packet from school and when I read it it felt like everything stopped - the bus, the rain, my worry."

“Tagore wrote it over 30 years before India's independence. The clarity of the vision, the poignancy of the words, the power of the dream, passion for freedom, all are encompassed in this poem, for me.”

“This poem has been an absolute touchstone, a profound friend to me, throughout my adult life. The line above is the absolutely central text of my life. I hope when I get to the end of it, I will feel I was awake.”

“I first encountered this poem as the epigraph to a biography of Al Capone, which I started but never finished. The lines of Carl Sandburg stayed with me though and would play in my head as an attitude to things, a way of not being fooled by the way things look, a toughness which was not put on but deeply engrained.”

“I read it often at the peak of the pandemic. Days when I felt lonely, frightened, and missing the people that I loved. It held an even deeper meaning then, and has never left my side since.”

“I stumbled upon this poem as a shy, quiet sixteen year-old. In those days I used to yearn for adventure - I felt like I'd never done anything truly exciting. But when I read this poem it made me realise that sometimes the quiet, pensive, everyday moments can mean more to you than the wild crazy adventures.”

"Throughout my international business career I have repeatedly quoted the line "good fences make good neighbours". I could carry on for hours about this poem."

“It would be at school. The teacher reading the poem for us. The words of the 16 year-old poet saved me as a pupil. Suddenly, I found an interest in what was coming my way from my teachers. I pricked my ears, I related, I was grateful.”

“I was living in London and feeling lost and a little homesick. I had recently rediscovered Heaney's poetry and had felt through it a strong connection to home in Northern Ireland. ‘The Baler’ spoke to me both in its deeply familiar imagery but also in the subtle elegy."

"My speech teacher first showed it to me aged 13 and it has been etched into my tissues since...this verbal tattoo, that keeps whispering away at me. After a wild journey in advertising, charity, motherhood, I return to speech; this time, I am the teacher."

“I've always enjoyed the opportunity to freeze time with a photograph. And having done it for many years, people in the photos have passed away, couples have separated, kids have grown. So this poem helps me hold onto the privilege of allowing someone to re-enter those scenes and passing moments of time.”

"I got a mimeographed copy in tenth grade from my English teacher. I love the reference to ‘the leaping greenly spirit of trees and the blue true dream of sky.’ And it’s a poem of gratitude and rising from depression: ‘i who have died am alive again today.’"

“What stood out to me in this poem is this wonderful line: ‘lt's a very connected world, Marianne.’ A week doesn’t go by when this line, and what it represents, doesn’t come to mind. It strengthens and inspires me, encourages me to feel permanently and widely related to everything and everyone.”

“Stephan G. Stephansson, considered Iceland’s greatest poet, actually homesteaded in Central Alberta, where I moved in 1985. It is in my will that the last line should be etched on my gravestone. Those last four lines have sustained more often than I care to admit.”

"I had just moved to New York after graduating college for my first real job. I knew no one there. It became a constant companion for the next few months. I even took it with me to the Frick - no less than it deserved."

"I've been working through your back catalogue, and I haven't seen an appearance by Billy Collins yet, and so I would like to share with you my favourite poem, my friend."

"I loved the realistic advice the mother gives to the son - that life is not a bed of roses. This poem reminds me often times life is a journey filled with ‘climbings, bare places’, but we ought not to give up."

“I found this in a Sunday supplement that would feature a single poem each week (sadly it has long been discontinued). It is a poem of optimism which has stuck with me in many difficult times, and always gives me hope.”

“It was on an Arvon course that I first encountered 'The Note'. I loved it for many things...the intrigue of the first line, the form, the pace…but most of all it filled me with some kind of hiraeth - a longing for something I hadn't known I needed.”

"The last lines are the perfect example of how friends must occasionally be challenging as well as kind. Sometimes we need a reminder from our friends to live the life we want to, even if it’s not what we want to hear in the midst of it all."

"This poem sums up for me what it means to be a woman just trying to exist against a world that seems to be set up against us. I have the phrase tattooed on my arm, it's that dear to me."