Sleep is mysterious, a precious commodity that can be restoring and consoling but sometimes maddeningly elusive.
This selection explores sleep from all sorts of fascinating angles. We encounter a young elephant asleep among "the tessellating pieces of its herd" and a father snoring on the sofa - catching up at last after a lifetime of hard work and early mornings. And, of course, there are wakeful nights with a baby. Throughout, there's an intriguing sense that sleep can't ever be fully put into words. In an exploration of hibernation the poet wonders:

"How better to drift
toward another world but with leaves
falling, their warmth draping us..."
- from 'Sleep' by Todd Davis

The poems are sure to beguile and entertain û whether you read them during the day or in the more atmospheric hours of the night. We all need our sleep, but when it eludes us a poem is perhaps a good substitute.

Poems by Kim Addonizio, Todd Davis, Ella Duffy, Rhian Elizabeth, Aaron Kent, Rochelle Roberts, Roger Robinson, Martha Sprackland, David Wheatley and Walt Whitman.