One of the most difficult things about grief is that it leaves us with feelings that can be so hard to articulate. Luckily, says Joanna Scanlan, “Poets do the job for us, and thank God that they do!”
The Thick of It star is one of 11 actors and poets, including actor Alison Steadman and bestselling poet Donna Ashworth, who are reading poems in memory of their loved ones to commemorate Celebration Day, an annual moment dedicated to remembering those who have died. Held annually on the last Monday in May, the movement has gathered steam since it was conceived in 2022 and backed by figures such as Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, and Prue Leith. This year, the campaign has partnered with Hospice UK, Mind and Make A Wish.
Inspired by festivities around the world like Mexico’s Day of the Dead, Celebration Day encourages busy Brits to take a moment and reflect on how those who have passed shaped who we are. To mark the occasion this year, writer and anthologist Allie Esiri has curated Poems to Remember, a series of heartfelt short films, directed by Oliver Parker, featuring readings of poems by actors and poets filmed inside of Dr Johnson’s House, the preserved 17th-century London home of writer Samuel Johnson.
The videos will be published exclusively on The Independent website in the lead-up to Celebration Day on 25 May, with the first, featuring 29-year-old actor-turned-poet from Cambridgeshire Lucas Jones, whose words have attracted more than one million admirers on social media, to be published on Wednesday 21 May.
Participants this year include star of the stage Nathanial Parker who reads Johnson’s “On the Death of Dr Robert Levet” in remembrance of his mother, who worked tirelessly as a GP in the NHS. The internet’s favourite poet Wendy Cope is featured by Detectorists’ Sophie Thompson, who selected “The Orange” to honour three independent greengrocers – Mr Roberts, Mr Naidu, and Tony’s – “who have had an extraordinary impact on my life when I thought about it”.
The TV presenter Caroline Flack, who died by suicide in 2020, is honoured by Ophelia Lovibond who credits poetry with helping her “find my feet again” after the “sudden and shocking” loss of her close friend. Lovibond reads the 1949 poem “Remember” by the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti: “I had never experienced this gulf… this absence, and yet her absence felt like a presence at the same time […] It was so hard to talk about it and genuinely, poetry was so helpful in feeding me a line and helping to kind of pull me back in,” said Lovibond.
Scanlan, meanwhile, recited Robert Browning’s 1889 poem “Now” in honour of her childhood friend Sarah who died as a teenager after she was hit by a car.
The actor espoused the importance of sharing our grief with one another. After the death of her husband in World War II, her grandmother, Scanlan said, “swallowed those feelings in the form of 12 bottles of whisky a week”.
Through the art of poetry, these 11 actors and writers have come to better understand that knotty, ever-present emotion of grief, to learn how to ride the ebbs and flows of a loss that never goes away. “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve explored the happiness of grief,” says Manawer, whose reading of his own poem “Soft Heart” pays tribute to his late mother.
This year’s Celebration Day will culminate in The Big Toast, held on Monday 25 May, during which the nation is encouraged to raise a glass to someone who shaped their life.
