Channel 4 News’s international editor chooses her favourite books of poetry. She will present her book “I Brought the War with Me” at the London Literature Festival on 26 October.
Selected Poems
James Fenton, 2006
I always carry a book of poetry on my travels, and this is the most battered one. As a former foreign correspondent, Fenton has had experiences similar to my own, but poetry provides a more allusive, emotional language than journalism. “Wind”, in which he evokes the mass movement of people as the wind in a field of corn, is one of the poems in my new memoir-cum-anthology that I like the best.
The Iraqi Nights
Dunya Mikhail, 2014
This Iraqi poet conveys the pity of war, marrying the terrifying with the everyday. We often associate war poetry with the First World War’s soldier poets, but women have also written war poetry, notably from contemporary conflicts where civilians are the main victims.
Stag’s Leap
Sharon Olds, 2012
I recommend this to anyone going through a break-up. In some poems, Olds’s divorce sounds like a civil war – but one that ends in peace and acceptance.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Forest of Noise
Mosab Abu Toha, 2024
This collection by a Gazan poet – written since the Israeli assault started last year – is full of fury and longing, an emblem of the richness of Palestinian culture.
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Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
Warsan Shire, 2022
Since writing the line “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”, Shire has become one of the most celebrated poets of exile. She harnesses Somali oral tradition to Western pop culture. The result is a series of mesmerising poems about the experience of women and girls.
Available on The Week Bookshop
Selected Poems
W.H Auden, 1979
In the end, I always go back to Auden. He is the perfect poet for those of us who are absorbed in the history of our times, but who sometimes need to retreat into the personal.
Available on The Week Bookshop