My new collection of poems for young people is launching this week, just in time for Children’s Mental Health Week 2023 (6-12 February). The book, called You Are Not Alone, is aimed at teen and young adult readers and it’s all about young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing.
The 70+ poems in this collection aim to take a broad view of the subject of mental health. They span a raft of themes, from how it can feel to live with various mental health conditions, to what it’s like dealing with the everyday pressures and challenges that many teenagers and young adults face.
All of the book’s poems are based on real voices and real experiences. Some of those voices are mine and some belong to friends, family, people I’ve met along the way and people I’ve read or heard about. In each poem you’ll find a fusion of several different voices, so the poems aren’t individually biographical as such. But, as you might guess, the whole project is inspired by my own personal history with mental health.
You can read all about this, and about the book, here on publisher Troika’s blog:
And here’s the book’s web page, with reviews, sample poems and accompanying video resources / short poetry films:
www.troikabooks.com/you-are-not-alone
We’ll be adding some teaching resources too, so if that’s of interest, do bookmark the page – or drop me a line and I can let you know as new resources become available.
Shauna Darling Robertson 