In celebration of the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Day on 3rd October the Booksellers Association and Forward Arts Foundation have announced Poetry Booksellers Love, 25 favourite poetry books from the last 25 years which were nominated and voted for by booksellers in the UK and Ireland. The list includes anthologies and single-author collections which cater for all palates and ages, and we hope it will help keep poetry sales booming for the next 25 years. A passion for politics, particularly among teenagers and young millennials, is fuelling a dramatic growth in the popularity of poetry, with sales of poetry books hitting an all-time high in 2018. Read more here.

We’re delighted that we’ll be celebrating National Poetry Day with Matt Harvey who will be performing poems from Sit!, a wonderful collection of poems about dogs: dogs which are mad, bad, kindly, philosophical and occasionally surreal. They sing to the moon and go boating; they mostly look after their humans but sometimes take them for a ride…Matt will also – somehow – link these poems to this year’s National Poetry Day theme of Truth.

PS rumour has it that Claudia Schmid, whose distinctive, dog-captivating illustrations co-create Sit!, might also take to the stage that night…