Showing titles in Poetry

An anthology of over 60 classic poems of war and remembrance. The horrors of war have prompted countless soldiers and civilians to compose poetry, whether to denounce needless slaughter, celebrate courage or honour the dead. Beautifully read by Dean Lennox Kelly, Jenny Agutter, Michael Jayston, Rupert Holliday Evans and Samantha Bond, these timeless poems are poignant and powerful.

Brought to you by Penguin. WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2020 ___________________________________ 'A dreamy, impressionistic offering of reassembled fragments of memories emerging through the misty beauty of a deliciously individualistic poetic sensibility . . . remind[s] us of what has...

Robert Pinsky's new verse translation of the Inferno makes it clear to the contemporary listener, as no other in English has done, why Dante is universally considered a poet of great power, intensity, and strength. This critically acclaimed translation was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book...

You may think you know Vergil’s epic poem, The Aeneid - the story of Aeneas, a Trojan hero, prophesized to found Rome. Or maybe you’ve heard of the fearsome Cyclopes, the tragic queen Dido, the Trojan horse, the River Styx and the three headed dog who guards the underworld. But what of the man who wrote it and why? This is that story.

Beautiful translations of the Ancient 8th century Chinese poets Li Bai and Du Fu by Keith Holyoak. Read by the author and accompanied by background music featuring contemporary and traditional compositions on ancient Chinese instruments.

This translation of The Iliad equals Fitzgerald's earlier Odyssey in power and imagination. It recreates the original action as conceived by Homer, using fresh and flexible blank verse that is both lyrical and dramatic. * This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF containing Notes on the...

A highwayman ravages the countryside, robbing the unsuspecting traveler. He promises to come at midnight for Bess, the landlord’s daughter. But when the redcoats come, and lay a trap for the highwayman at the inn, Bess warns her lover in a method and manner never to be forgotten.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity's time people couldn't read and texts couldn't be published in any great number.

Echoes of Love is a companion for those hardest days and quietest nights. It is a collection of 100 short reflections for the grieving heart: honest, raw, and quietly real. Each reflection offers a soft moment of recognition, something to hold onto when you're not sure what you feel or how to move through it. Some parts may comfort you. Others may bring tears. All were written to meet you where you are.

Whale Nation is a hymn to the beauty, intelligence, and majesty of the largest mammal on earth. A "green classic" read with natural resonance by its author, it rarely fails to strike a chord in the hearts of those concerned with the abuse of our planet.

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.

The Knight's Tale of medieval wars and chivalry is the first tale told to the pilgrims as they set out to Canterbury. It concerns Theseus, returning from fighting at Thebes, and two brother knights Palamon and Arcite, imprisoned but yearning for their loves. But the real hero of this recording is Richard Bebb who, with the help of Professor Derek Brewer, the leading expert on Chaucerian pronunciation, make the original Middle English not only comprehensible to the modern ear, but exciting.

Spoken word artist, rapper, and international best-selling author of Unlearn, Humble the Poet, shares raw and honest stories from his own life – from his rocky start becoming a rapper, nearly going broke to being the victim of racial prejudice – to reveal how a change in mindset can radically alter our outlook. Simple yet profound, Things No One Else Can Teach Us show how our hardest moments can help us flourish, but only if we recognise and seize the opportunity.  

It is clear that the author is madly in love, not only with her partner for whom she writes both idiosyncratic and sultry poems, but in love with language, in love with queerness, in love with the therapeutic process of bankrupting the politics of shame. These poems tackle gun violence, toxic masculinity, LGBTQ* struggles, suicidality, and the oppression of women’s bodies, while maintaining a vivid wildness that the tongue aches to speak aloud.

The basis for the musical phenomenon 'Cats', this collection of 14 inviting rhymes – the mixture of the real and the impossible, the familiar and the fantastic – make for a set of poems that no child or adult can possibly resist. The basis for the musical phenomenon 'Cats', this collection...

Evgenii Onegin is best known in the West through Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. But the original narrative poem (consisting of 389 stanzas, the form of which has become known as the "Pushkin sonnet") is one of the landmarks of Russian literature. In the poem, the eponymous hero repudiates love, only to later experience the pain of rejection himself. Pushkin’s unique style proves timeless in its exploration of love, life, passion, jealousy, and the consequences of social convention.

Like System of a Down's multi-platinum-selling second album, Toxicity - hailed by Rolling Stone as "a bouquet of smart rock and ardent social argument" and by SPIN as "the sound of now" - Tankian's poetic style is willfully eclectic. Sometimes introspective, sometimes direct and cutting, these poems deal with subjects as wide-ranging as euthanasia and the nature of time itself.

I’ll Leave the Light On For When You Come Back is a collection of poems about the quiet weight of loving, losing, and learning to stay.

A new version of The Epic of Gilgamesh by Sebastian Lockwood. This is the story of Gilgamesh, King of Kings, who brought back knowledge from before the flood - who loved and lost his companion Enkidu and had to find out why we die. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written on clay tablets over 4,000 years ago, in what is today Baghdad Iraq - the Biblical Garden of Eden between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Lockwood gives a passionate reading from a text that faithfully follows the original.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Hundred Poems presents the "top 100" poems of all time. The selections are illuminated by the informative notes of editor William Harmon and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets including Alfred Corn and Rita Dove.