Collections & Anthologies

For every moment in your life there is a poem. In Dancing by the Light of the Moon, we have a remarkable collection of over 250 best-loved poems in the English-speaking world....

This inspiring collection, edited by Pádraig ó Tuama, presents fifty poems about what it means to be alive in the world today. Each poem is paired with Pádraig's illuminating commentary that offers personal anecdotes and generous insights into the content of the poem....

In a nationwide poll conducted by BBC Television's Bookworm to find the nation's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling's "If" was voted number one....

A Poem for Every Day of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share on every day of the year....

These are masterly readings, by renowned thespian Paul Schofield, of two substantial works of poetry by T.S. Eliot....

Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all, a space for reflection and that precious realisation - I'm not the only one who feels like this....   

With its intricate structure and imagery, Four Quartets is the achievement of T. S. Eliot's career. Its greatness is done full justice in this rendition by the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes....

Wordsworth's The Prelude is the consummation of his achievement as the great founder of English romanticism....

In Poems to Live Your Life By, Chris Riddell, political cartoonist for the Observer, has selected his very favourite classic and modern poems about life, death and everything in between.... 

If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. This little history is about some....

Here are the extraordinary writings of a generation who fought through a war of unprecedented destructive power, and who had to find new voices to express the horror of what they discovered...

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom....

Book of Longing is Leonard Cohen's first book of new poetry since Book of Mercy was published two decades ago 

This highly entertaining anthology of verse is the comic, tragic, tender, and telling story of life's seven ages, from childhood to old age. Within the framework of Shakespeare's speech...

Seventeen iconic poems from World War One bring the horrors of the Great War vividly to life through the eyes of those living them....

In She Walks in Beauty, Caroline Kennedy has once again marshaled the gifts of our greatest poets to pay a very personal tribute to the human experience....

Here is the quintessence of romance that spans not only the ages but the full range of passionate expression of love in all of its forms and stages. Authors include John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron, William Wordsworth....

The classical poetry of Japan focuses on direct experience of fleeting moments, in total contrast with its Occidental counterpart. Discover a selection...

Do men need poems? Is the gender of brawn and ‘can-do’ really a candidate for honeyed verse? Obviously yes. Men needs words. They need support, understanding as well as goals, ambition and structure. They need purpose, desire; the need to love and be loved....

Two archive BBC Radio programmes in which Judi Dench and Michael Williams, accompanied by friends John Moffatt and Alec McCowen, read a cornucopia of poetry and prose....

A collection of playfully elucidating essays to help reluctant poetry audiences become well-versed in verse....

Eine Sammlung der schönsten deutschen Lyrik aller Zeiten und Epochen...

Every Day Is a Fresh Beginning: Meaningful Poems for Life is a stunning collection of poetry chosen by Aoibhín Garrihy to uplift and inspire, delight and comfort. These powerful verses will guide you through the stresses of modern life....

Words can be a way to unlock our feelings. Poetry allows us to be in touch with our emotions and helps us unlock and explore our vulnerability. This audiobook will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality....

A collection of the greatest poetry from the Romantic period, the battlefield and the Victorian era, read by some of the 20th century’s most renowned actors....

This collection brings together the work of nine inventive and brilliant poets who defined and drove the dub poetry genre. From the Caribbean, Canada and the UK, the poetry in this collection spans forty years, as dub became a powerful cultural and creative force. The poets included in this collection are: Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper.

The intellectual and cultural revival of African-American arts and politics in the 1920s and 1930s was centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. Here are poems from three major contributors to that rebirth: The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes, The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Copper Sun by Countee Cullen, delivered by three multiaward–winning narrators.

A pioneer of the French Romantic movement, beloved poet and statesman Alphonse de Lamartine, rose to prominence with masterpieces such as "Les Méditations Poétiques" and "Histoire des Girondins". This collection, which features 100 of Alphonse de Lamartine’s most famous quotes, celebrates his legacy as a political idealist and passionate author.

This wondrous collection contains 100 of Alfred de Musset’s most celebrated quotes, including ´How glorious it is – and also how painful – to be an exception.´ and ´Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives´. This collection is guaranteed to educate, amuse and surprise, and it is perfect for those who need an extra bit of motivation throughout their day.

The classical poetry of Japan focuses on direct experience of fleeting moments, in total contrast with its Occidental counterpart. These seminal poems were passed down orally, before great collections reassembled works of art spanning several centuries in written form as early as the 8th century, from the Kojiki to the Kokinshu. Later, a number of female writers rose to prominence (Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon); then in the 17th century, the haiku form became extremely popular, in large part due to the work of Matsuo Bashō, a prolific writer and traveler.

Are you a fan of poetry? Do you enjoy poems that have deeper meaning, poems written to make you laugh, or even poems that were just randomly thought up in the shower? If so, this is the book for you! From the author of The Storyteller’s Diary, the beloved collection of short stories by J. Edwards Holt, comes The Reason for Rhyming— a book of poems with many of the same mystical and heart-warming elements.

Do men need poems? Is the gender of brawn and ‘can-do’ really a candidate for honeyed verse? Obviously yes. Through the centuries men seem to dominate the writing of poetry. From books of epics to quatrains of love poetry it seemed to be a man’s world. His domain. A volume purely for men, to show other facets of their personalities and characters seems to be an obvious choice. One verse fits all is, in fact, far removed from the truth. Men needs words. They need support, understanding as well as goals, ambition and structure. They need purpose, desire; the need to love and be loved.

Poetry has over the centuries grouped poets or poems into many different themes and movements. Amongst its most unusual movements are the English wordsmiths, The Silver Poets. This select band lived during the sixteenth century reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Amongst their storied ranks were Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Davies, Michael Drayton and Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke.

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

Here we journey with our classic poets from Christina Georgina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy to Frances W. Harper and Kipling, not only the ways, the wonders and the women who take on the responsibility to raise children no matter the problems or dangers to themselves, but also the difficulties and sometimes desperate tragedies that motherhood can involve. We hope these poems inspire every generation to reach out and better themselves and those around. This is our tribute to mothers everywhere.

Silence is rare in Nature. When we really listen, Nature is conducting symphonies of sound as her world goes about the day and night. Her invisible heartbeat is everywhere, for everyone. Our eyes are constantly bathed in the wonder of her ways, the soft drizzle of rain from soft grey clouds, the bleached harsh desert sand of a noon day, a wave caressing the shore, to the ravenous colours of a departing sunset. Indeed, whenever we look and listen to the vastness of our world Nature’s beauty is always there for us..

In 1890 W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys founded a poetry club. Based mainly at Fleet Street’s immortal ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ pub, with occasional appearances at the Domino room in the Café Royal, poets gathered together to dine and drink. Whilst it was based on a core of poets, many others attended on an ad hoc basis including Oscar Wilde, Francis Thompson & Lord Alfred Douglas. The camaraderie, banter and poetry that played out in their dreams, ambitions and for many, their difficult lives led Yeats to call them ‘the tragic generation’.

Love whether fleeting or of the ages, expressed with a look, a touch, or a thought is wanted by us all. Our classic poets did not surrender to the logic of the group or seek advice from others quick to blame but slow to embrace. Their legacy remains because it is true, because in that look, that touch, that thought, that display of words the heart remembers us and treasures us. Here are words and verse of love. For your ears, your loved one’s ears and hearts everywhere.

Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.

This volume pays tribute to 50 different women poets, some well-known whilst others undeservedly forgotten but all contributing a single poem which we hope might nudge listeners to discover more of their verse.