The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Given that insects vastly outnumber us (there are approximately 200 million insects for every human) it is no surprise that there is a rich body of verse on the creeping, scuttling, flitting, stinging things with which we share our planet. Many cultures have centuries-old traditions of insect poetry. In China, where noblewomen of the Tang dynasty kept crickets in gold cages – countless songs were written in praise of these ‘insect musicians’. The haiku masters of Japan were similarly inspired, though spread their net wider to include less prepossessing bugs such as houseflies, fleas, and mosquitoes. The poets collected here range from Donne, Marvell, Keats, and Wordsworth; Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Christina Rossetti, to Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon and Alice Oswald.