Andrew Scott reads Derek Mahon's Everything is Going to be All Right in Instagram poetry series

Andrew Scott wants you to know that everything is going to be alright, as he reads a poem by Derek Mahon.

Actress Emilia Clarke shared the poem on her Instagram as part of a series with The Poetry Pharmacy, an initiative and series of books that prescribe poems “for the heart, mind and soul”.

Scott performed Mahon’s poem of “reassurance” Everything is Going to be All Right in aid of Men Against Cancer Ireland.

He is the latest actor after Stephen Fry, Idris Elba, Helena Bonham Carter and Clarke herself to read from the Poetry Pharmacy anthology to raise money for charity and offer comfort in these hard times.

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The beautiful, breathtaking talent that is Andrew Scott reads for us ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’ by Derek Mahon. Andrew has asked to dedicate this to Men Against Cancer Ireland @menagainstcancer Andrew we salute you! 🕺 It comes under the prescription for need for reassurance. Here’s how it reads as written in the book @thepoetrypharmacy @thepoetryremedy There are moments in life when the banal suddenly, and quite without warning, becomes the transcendent. Perhaps a shaft of afternoon light paints a familiar view an unfamiliar gold; perhaps dust in a sunbeam or the dance of sparks above a fire transport you, for a long instant, to somewhere else altogether. The almost magical-seeming reflections of ripples on a ceiling are transfixing in just the same way. In moments like these- awe-struck moments when the ferocious beauty of the everyday catches us unawares- we are often moved to a reassessment. One flash of sunlight can be all it takes to give us the sense of possibility that can change everything. As a great sufferer from depression myself, I find a small moment like this, a sudden splash of serenity and beauty, can provide the impetus needed to run my mood around. Not completely, perhaps, and not permanently- but sometimes a small push is all any of us is waiting for. Derek Mahon’s poem ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’ describes wonderfully the feeling of that little push and reassessment. And there’s something hugely powerful, too, about its final line. When my children are suffering and I hold them in my arms, it seems to be the most natural mantra in the world: Everything will be all right. There’s a comfort to those words, whether or not they’ll prove to be true. OF course, some wounds don’t heal, and some wrongs go un-righted. But in the grander sense, in the everything sense, things to tend to be all right. Too often, our pain is either in our heads or magnified beyond all proportion. If we can learn to manage it, if we can find that oasis of calm in the reflection of the waves, then we might find that out problems are not as all-consuming as we imagined. Thank you thank you Andrew! 😘

A post shared by @ emilia_clarke on May 18, 2020 at 9:10am PDT

The Poetry Pharmacy was a created by William Sieghart as a project to prescribe poems to individuals based on their own ailments, from loneliness and heartbreak to self-doubt and hopelessness. He then collected these poems into a number of anthologies.

Writing about Mahon's poem in the book, which Clarke quotes in her post, he says: "One flash of sunlight can be all it takes to give us the sense of possibility that can change everything. As a great sufferer from depression myself, I find a small moment like this, a sudden splash of serenity and beauty, can provide the impetus needed to run my mood around. Not completely, perhaps, and not permanently- but sometimes a small push is all any of us is waiting for."

Scott's performance in solo show Sea Wall by Simon Stephens is also available to watch until Monday.