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Helena Bonham Carter, Toby Jones and Asa Butterfield are among actors performing poems in memory of family members and friends who have died, to mark Celebration Day later this month.
The initiative, conceived in 2022 by high-profile figures including Stephen Fry, Prue Leith, film director Oliver Parker and writer and poetry curator Allie Esiri, sets aside a day in the calendar each year to celebrate the lives of lost loved ones, inspired by celebrations such as Mexico’s Day of the Dead. The first Celebration Day was held on 26 June 2022, and now it runs on the last bank holiday Monday in May, which this year will be 26 May.
Stephen Mangan, Nathaniel Parker and Susan Wokoma were also filmed reading poems at Abbey Road studios in London. The videos will be published exclusively on the Guardian website in the lead up to Celebration Day, with the first, which features Bonham Carter reading Don’t Let That Horse by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, available to watch today.
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Wilfred Owen and Sheenagh Pugh are among the poets whose works were selected by the actors. Jones, known for his roles in Mr Bates vs the Post Office and Detectorists, picked Portrait of a Romantic by ASJ Tessimond, in memory of his father, who died a year after Jones introduced him to the poem.
Poems “were like clothing” to his father, said Jones – he “wanted to live inside” them, and memorised a number of them, including Portrait of a Romantic. “We decided to use the second stanza of this poem on his gravestone”, said Jones. “When I read the poem, inevitably I reflect on my Dad, and the huge influence he’s had on both what I do, and how I feel about what I do.”
Bonham Carter chose Don’t Let That Horse in memory of her grandmother, who was known as “Bubbles”. A painter who made “sort of fake Chagalls”, Bonham Carter described her grandmother as an “eternal child” who “always had a sense of play”.
“She died at 89, but frankly she never really grew older emotionally than about seven. A good reminder that no matter how serious it gets, you’ve got to remember to have fun.”
Lost loved ones “remain part of our fabric, our internal world”, the actor added. “We need permission to stop – a day in which we can invoke them and remember them, and let them live again through us.” After losing somebody, “you might lose what you were when you were with them. And that relationship needs to carry on, somehow”.
The actors worked with Esiri, who compiled 365 Poems for Life and A Poem for Every Day of the Year, to choose their poems. Most of us reach for poetry at significant moments in life, like weddings and funerals, because poems “help us express things that most of us find really difficult to express”, said Esiri.
The language of poetry “gives you a path when you’re suffering eviscerating feelings of grief and you’ve lost your hold on the earth and everything’s very very fractured”, she added. The “great poet gives you words, and it’s sort of like holding your hand across time”.
Star pin badges will be on sale at WH Smith stores in the run-up to the 26 May celebration, with proceeds going to charities Mind, the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, Make-A-Wish and Hospice UK. The public are encouraged to share memories of loved ones on social media using the hashtag #ShareYourStar.
Parker, who directed the videos, said the project “was a genuinely memorable experience”.
“Sometimes with a light touch, sometimes deeply moving, they are small, intimate acts of sharing, whether defiant, mournful or inspiring,” he said.
