Wife-and-husband duo Kate Armon and Craig Smith recently published Poetry for Funerals, a collection of inspiring, motivational poetry the Australian couple wrote during their 15 years serving as celebrants. The book contains 34 bespoke poems written for funeral services – as well as customization tips to help officiants better reflect the deceased – in various styles, such as tender, loving, humorous, lighthearted, etc. In addition, the 101-page book includes 10 blessings to close a service and 15 haiku.

Explaining the origin of their poetry, Armon said: “As funeral celebrants, we understand the process of writing a service and looking for suitable poetry and prose that suits the family you are working with. Over our 15 years as celebrants, we often struggled to find the right poem for a family and, on one particular occasion, we instead offered to write one for the family. We panicked but came up with something the family loved, and that was the start of our poetry journey.”

On the decision to publish the book, she added: “During our time as funeral celebrants, we have written many bespoke poems for families. We then started getting emails from around the world from celebrants asking if they could use our poems for their services. We finally decided to put our first collection together and the result is our new book. It is our greatest hope that this poetry book will be useful and a wonderful new resource for other celebrants, officiants, funeral professionals and families around the world.” poetryforfunerals.com