Allie Esiri: The Woman Who Brought Poetry Back
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A decade on from its publication, Allie Esiri's A Poem For Every Night Of The Year has sold more than150,000 copies and transformed how Britain reads verse. Ahead of a celebration at Chelsea Arts Festival, we chart her journey from actress to poetry's most influential curator.
On Friday 18 September, Allie Esiri will take to the stage at Chelsea Arts Festival alongside Sir Derek Jacobi and Tamsin Greig (with more to be announced) for a live celebration of poetry. This year marks a decade since the publication of A Poem For Every Night Of The Year, the anthology that transformed Esiri from a former actress into one of Britain’s most influential curators of contemporary verse. Below, we trace the journey so far.
A Decade Of Daily Verse
Published by Pan Macmillan, A Poem For Every Night Of The Year arrived in September 2016 with a deceptively simple premise. Esiri had selected 366 poems – one for every night of the year, even a leap year – each paired with a brief introductory note that linked the verse to its calendar date. Shakespeare’s works marked midsummer night, Maya Angelou sat alongside International Women’s Day, Lewis Carroll decorated April Fool’s day.
The collection pulled from across the literary canon. Familiar favourites like Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W.B. Yeats, A.A. Milne and Christina Rossetti shared pages with contemporary voices: Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy, Benjamin Zephaniah. Pulling from across time, Esiri proved that poetry need not be the preserve of the academic study or the university seminar room. It can live on bedside tables, be read aloud to children and be a daily companion, something to return to for comfort or provocation or simple pleasure.
Because of that elegant simplicity, it caught on in a way few poetry books ever do. In a genre where a new collection selling 2,000 copies is considered a major achievement, A Poem For Every Night Of The Year has sold more than 150,000 hardback copies. It won the Independent Bookshop Week Award in 2017 and became one of the decade’s bestselling poetry books. The Times, The Guardian, The Observer and The New Statesman all selected it as one of the year’s best.
Who Is Allie Esiri?
Esiri’s path to anthology curation was unconventional. Born Allison Burns, she read Modern and Medieval Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where she discovered acting. She worked as an actress for a decade under the stage name Allie Byrne, appearing in television programmes including Sharpe’s Battle, Men Behaving Badly and the Agatha Christie adaptation of The Mysterious Affair At Styles. She featured in Merchant Ivory’s Howards End and Kenneth Branagh’s In the Bleak Midwinter. On stage, she played Olivia in an English Shakespeare Company production of Twelfth Night.
In 1999, she stepped away from acting to pursue journalism; her work appeared across American Vogue, The New York Times and London’s Evening Standard, but it was poetry that ultimately captured her attention. Under her married name, Esiri began to curate anthologies and create digital projects dedicated to verse.
An Explosion Of Poetry
The success of A Poem For Every Night Of The Year led to a series. A Poem For Every Day Of The Year followed in 2017, with its audiobook read by Helena Bonham Carter and Sir Simon Russell Beale. The Guardian named it one of the ten best-ever poetry books. Shakespeare For Every Day Of The Year arrived in 2019, featuring a stellar audiobook cast including Damian Lewis, Paapa Essiedu and Helen McCrory. Each successive title added to Esiri’s reputation as someone who could chop down poetry’s barriers to entry and open it up to all.
Her bibliography has since expanded to include A Poet For Every Day Of The Year (2023), A Nursery Rhyme For Every Night Of The Year (2024), 365 Poems For Life (2023), and A Poem For Every Day Of Christmas (2024). She has also pioneered two poetry apps: iF Poems and The Love Book, an Apple-recommended collection of 300 poems on love and loss illustrated by designer Kate Moross.
A performance for 365 Poems for Life. (Billie Charity/Hay Festival)
But our favourite part of Esiri’s roster has been her live events. Since 2016, Esiri has hosted annual readings at the National Theatre celebrating poetry with the help of acclaimed actors who bring verse to life. Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and countless others have lent their voices to Esiri’s vision of poetry as something to be heard, shared and felt. In 2025, Susan Wokoma, David Morrissey, Kate O’Flynn and Rory Kinnear joined Esiri on stage at the Royal Court Theatre, bringing A Poem For Every Night Of The Year to the inaugural Chelsea Arts Festival. And in 2026, she’s back again – this time to celebrate a full decade.
In that decade, Esiri has reframed poetry in popular culture. She has taken it out of the margins and placed it at the centre of how we think about language, loss, love and meaning. That achievement deserves a night of celebration indeed.
A Poem For Every Night Of The Year: 10 Year Celebration
On Friday 18 September, Chelsea Arts Festival brings Allie Esiri, Sir Derek Jacobi, Tamsin Greig and more (to be announced) to Cadogan Hall for an evening celebrating 10 years of A Poem For Every Night Of The Year.
- Where? Cadogan Hall (5 Sloane Terrace, London SW1X 9DQ)
- When? 7pm, Friday 18 September 2026
- Tickets:Â From ÂŁ22.50
