'Great poems,' David Whyte has said, 'are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.'

Essentials is a collection of his own best poems, each in their way about capturing the experience itself, whether that is in the daily shifts, the ever-turning seasons or the bigger cycle of gain and grief that are part of our journey through life. Each poem is accompanied by a short context on where and when it was written.

Together they form an elegant testament to David Whyte's most closely-held understanding - that human life cannot be apportioned out as one thing or another; rather, it is best seen as a living conversation, a way between and beyond, made beautiful by darkness as well as light, at its essence both deeply solitary and profoundly communal.