'I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive - I think it has a heartbeat...' - Meryl Streep
Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley's Staying Alive, which became Britain's most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. Staying Alive didn't just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn't read poetry for years because it hadn't held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world.
Staying Alive and Being Alive have been followed by two further anthologies in the series: Being Human (2011) and Staying Human (2020).
