Showing titles in Poetry

What is poetry? 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. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world.

Prepare to be transported into the thunderous sweep of Persian history. This section of Shahnameh (Chapters 16-27 in Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings) moves from myth to history, chronicling the dramatic rise of the Sassanian dynasty and its eventual fall. Through masterful storytelling, the epic brings to life royal ambition, political intrigue, heroic resistance, and cultural transformation—culminating in the Arab conquest of Iran in the seventh century. Performed by award-winning voice actor Marc Thompson, this performative audiobook places you at the heart of the action.

Brought to you by Penguin The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. These deceptively simple lines from the title poem of this collection suggest Robert Frost at his most representative: the language is simple, clear and colloquial, yet dense with meaning and wider significance. Drawing upon everyday incidents, common situations and rural imagery, Frost fashioned poetry of great lyrical beauty and potent symbolism. Now a selection of the best of his early works is available in this volume, originally published in 1916 under the title Mountain Interval.

In his debut poetry collection Sex and Oatmeal, Eric Guilmette explores the complexities of love, identity, and what it means to feel deeply in a world that often asks us not to. This is a book that lives in contrast: the warm, honeyed rush of intimacy and the thick, cold quiet that follows... the ache of absence, the weight of longing, the emotional staleness of something once comforting, now unfinished and forgotten.

Naxos AudioBooks continues its new series of Great Poets, represented by collections of their most popular poems in one program. W. B. Yeats was one of the most beloved poets of the 20th century. He left a large legacy of outstanding poems, and the finest are collected here: "Down by the Salley Gardens," "The Lake Isle of Inisfree," "The Secret Rose," and "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven". They are read by a strong cast, led by Olivier award-winner Jim Norton.

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and central figure in American poetry, a landmark collection of new and selected poems chronicling five decades of work marked by moral courage, radical empathy, and unflinching witness. Over half a century, Carolyn Forché has exemplified how a poet’s voice can...

A career-spanning volume of the poet’s work charts the seasons of a woman’s life through desire and motherhood, grief and the consolations of poetry “Reading Jill Bialosky’s poems feels like taking a slow and lone journey into the depth of the human heart, yet all the while being...

English literature is a treasure trove of wonderful poetry. From Shakespeare to Milton, Keats to Shelley and Tennyson to Yeats, this accessible history (especially written for Naxos Audiobooks) introduces the listener to countless small masterpieces, including all the old favorites and some lesser-known gems. Whitfield explores this most expressive of art forms and traces the historical development of a rich and diverse canon of poetical works.

In words remarkable for their richness of rhythm and imagery, Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall, and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men". Here, unabridged, and told with exceptional sensitivity and power by Anton Lesser, is the plight of Adam and Eve, the ambition and vengefulness of Satan and his cohorts.

After the bestselling I Wish I Knew, Donna Ashworth has now produced an extraordinary three-volume collection of poems that will touch and inspire every listener in the ups and downs we all face in love, in life and in loss. These brilliantly accessible poems bring delight, comfort and strength in the height of romance, the darkness of grief and the endlessly unpredictable moments in between.

Though it is for the sparkling epic, Aeneid, that the Roman poet Virgil is best known, it was these two poems, The Eclogues and Georgics, which first established his reputation.

The definitive collection of works on a subject that inspired and haunted Charles Bukowski for his entire life: alcohol. Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer’s best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed...

The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of every man's journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here, the energy and poetry of Homer's original is captured in a bold, contemporary idiom, giving us an edition of The Odyssey that is a joy to listen to, worth...

This study explores how contemporary Canadian Prairie women poets negotiate the silences, gaps, and margins surrounding maternal experience through innovative writing strategies. The audiobook examines how poets from the Prairie provinces challenge dominant narratives of motherhood, giving voice to experiences often excluded from literary and cultural discourse—including maternal ambivalence, loss, Indigenous mothering, queer mothering, and the intersections of motherhood with labor, landscape, and identity.

Under the order of King Pelias, Jason embarks on a perilous journey to steal the Golden Fleece from the Land of Colchis. Far from heroic, Jason is the typical everyman. Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid.

BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please is the longest-running broadcast of verse anywhere in the world. First aired in 1979, the programme, a request show which broadcasts to two million listeners a week, has become a unique record of the country's best-loved poems over the decades since its inception. The BBC has looked back through its rich archive of recordings to produce a poll of the most asked-for and most broadcast pieces ever: 50 of those poems are read here by Adjoa Andoh and Anton Lesser.

The Wandering Paddy, aka Jamie Mooney, has more than 400,000 followers on social media, a following that's growing at the rate of 20,000 a month, with 6 million account interactions and views a month. His unique perspective on life has resonated with people both in his native Ireland and around the world, as The Wandering Paddy shares his thoughts and experiences, his challenges in overcoming cancer, his mental health struggles and the invaluable life lessons he has learned and can now pass on. The Book of Truths captures the essence of what The Wandering Paddy has learned about life.

A wildly original poetry collection written and read by one of the UK’s most exciting young comics. A poet who favours dark suits, lager and long hot baths, he works on BBC Four in Charlie Brooker's Newswipe and on Radio 4, doing his late night poetry show. In 2009 he won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for his poetical recital The Slutcracker and has filmed some of his verse in black and white to overwhelming critical approval.

A formidable follow up to her award-winning debut poetry collection, Len Pennie’s poyums annaw is just like her: defiant, angry and trailblazing. These poems are a call to arms, confronting ideas of patriarchy, gender-based violence and societal injustice with equal parts tenderness, quick-wit and righteous fury. poyums annaw firmly cements Len as a defining voice in contemporary Scots poetry.