Actor and authors join in starry event to mark publication of new poetry anthology

Mike Leigh and Simon Russell Beale in S&S event

20.02.14 | Caroline Carpenter - The Bookseller

Actors Simon Russell Beale and director Mike Leigh will join novelists Ian McEwan, Melvyn Bragg and Ben Okri at a starry event to mark publication of a new poetry anthology from Simon & Schuster.
S&S is publishing Poems That Make Grown Men Cry (10th April) in partnership with Amnesty International. The book, which is edited by father and son Anthony and Ben Holden, features emotion-filled poems that have been chosen by 100 famous men, such as John le Carré, Salman Rushdie and Stephen Fry.

A Platform event at the National Theatre on 29th April, will see readings from the chosen poems. Director Richard Eyre and actor Simon McBurney will also take part.   
Poems featured in the anthology include William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet XXX’, chosen by Melvyn Bragg, Samuel Taylor Colerudge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’, chosen by Sebastian Faulks, and Thomas Hardy’s ‘During Wind and Rain’, chosen by Ken Follett. Other famous names who have contributed to the selection include actor Jeremy Irons, musician Nick Cave and author and journalist Christopher Hitchens. The book includes an afterword from Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer.

The collection is said to be "emblematic of the human struggle to make a difference - as all poets rely on the human right to freedom of expression, but throughout history have been amongst the first targeted by repressive governments, because of their power to stir emotions and liberate ideas."

Anthony Holden is a journalist and biographer who has published more than thirty books, including lives of Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky and Laurence Olivier. Ben Holden is a writer and film producer.

Poems That Make Grown Men Cry will be published on 10th April.