New Poetry

The landmark selection of poems from the greatest poet of our age, read on audio by Seamus Heaney himself. 'His is "close-up" poetry - close up to thought, to the world, to the emotions. Few writers at work today, in verse or fiction, can give the sense of rich, fecund, lived life that Heaney does.(John Banville )More than any other poet since Wordsworth he can make us understand that the outside world is not outside, but what we are made of. (John Carey)

In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voices to remarkably drawn characters – mythological figures, animals and everyday people – all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. ‘How can one live with such a heart?’ Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the listener, and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Walking the tightrope between reality and fantasy as only she can, Atwood’s journey through poetry illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.

Kae Tempest is one of the most exciting and innovative performers to have emerged in spoken-word poetry in many years; her dramatic poem "Brand New Ancients" won the prestigious Ted Hughes Prize for innovation in poetry. Tempest's wholly unique blend of street poetry, rap, and storytelling - combined with the spellbinding delivery of an open-air revivalist - has won her legions of followers all over the UK. Her remarkable stage presence is wholly audible in this poem, a spoken story written to be told with live music.

Night Monkey and Day Monkey's worlds are as different as … night and day! What one fears, the other loves, what one understands only confuses the other. But in learning about each other's opposite worlds, they also learn to be the best of friends. Boisterous and rhythmic fun from Julia Donaldson, the creator of The Gruffalo. Read by Imelda Staunton.

New Hampshire features Frost's meditations on rural life, love, and death, delivered in the voice of a soft-spoken New Englander. Critics have long marveled at the poet's gift for capturing the speech of the region's natives and his realistic evocations of the area's landscapes. This compilation, first published in 1923, earned Frost the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes and includes several of his best-known poems: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Nothing Gold Can Stay", and "Fire and Ice".

Everything Comes Next is a treasure chest of Naomi Shihab Nye’s most beloved poems. From favorites such as “Famous” and “A Valentine for Ernest Mann” to the widely shared “Kindness” and “Gate A-4”, this collection celebrates her term as Young People’s Poet Laureate.

New American Monarch is meticulously scored, each audio track crafted to immerse listeners fully. This isn't just a poetry audiobook; it's a journey through sound, where every line and rhythm is meant to be heard as much as read.

The Vita nuova is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems interspersed with his own prose commentary. The poems themselves tell the story of his love for Beatrice, from their first meeting at a May Day party in her father's house, through Dante's sufferings and his attempts to conceal the true object of his devotion by the use of "screen-loves", to his overwhelming grief at her death, ending with the transformative vision of her in heaven.

Lynda Lambert covers a wide terrain of subjects and topics in this new audiobook, from lights to legends to seasons, treating us to images and metaphors about plants, people, and weather. She opens this large collection with the title poem, "Star Signs", which walks us through the alphabet as it digs through thoughts, emotions and observations, “Using star signs to map out new terrain”. Throughout this audiobook of poems, these gems of poetic creation shimmer like beads on her fabric art, like bold brush strokes of color on her paintings.

Our claims to a desire for spiritual advancement do not align with the intensity of the current global chaos. With The Irreducible Primary, Rob Taylor unapologetically examines the stagnating relationship between spirituality, nature, and human conduct and the overall impact on human interactions.

Jay Parini's readings are always an event but too rare. For the first time, Parini has recorded his best known and most recent poems in an audiobook that welcomes the listener to enter his universe, which revolves around his deep connection to nature and underlines his concerns about the impacts of pollution and climate change. The audiobook follows the pattern of his popular readings, with the poet introducing each poem with context and comments, invariably revealing and often amusing.

This is a book about inspiration and motivation; it’s a poetry book on spiritual transformation.

Praise Song for My Children celebrates twenty-one years of poetry by one of the most significant African poets of this century. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley guides us through the complex and intertwined highs and lows of motherhood and all the roles that it encompasses: parent, woman, wife, sister, friend. Her work is deeply personal, drawing from her own life and surroundings to convey grief, the bleakness of war, humor, deep devotion, and the hope of possibility.

L.Hunt presents a bold, fresh new translation of Arthur Rimbaud's classic French poem "The Drunken Boat." By prefacing the poem with the illuminating introduction "The Poet, The Poem, and The Translation," listeners will have all they need to delve deep into the meaning of Rimbaud's vivid imagery and symbolism.

A New Life is written as a fantasy with heart. It portrays the author's love of God, nature, and family. It is my hope that you, the listener, will be transported to a simpler time and place. You may even see a bit of yourself in the characters of the story, but they are actually fashioned after my own family. After suffering a great loss, the characters in the story have to leave the home they love and everything familiar as they begin a new life, in a new place.

Blueprint for New Beginnings puts life on the couch. Through the eyes and ears of this author, the listener will discover an individuation journey, and the extraordinarily rich intersection between collective mythology, nature, and ordinary everyday life.

This is a collection of poetry and commentaries on life experiences and issues of the spirit movement of the latter half of the 20th century that appear relevant in the emerging 21st. Topics include celebration of life transitions, reflections on lifestyle modes, insights into the religious dimension, the aging process, and speculations regarding the revolutionary imperatives for planet earth.

Imagine the poets Wallace Stevens and Anne Sexton met in a bar owned by Michael Robbins. The result might be News In A New World, the first published collection of poems by Tamara Tifareth. Jarringly profound, hilarious, and offensive, highly topical, always insightful, the poems combine a strong lyrical quality with a narrator's capacity for storytelling. In many of the pieces, Ms. Tifareth assumes a persona only to push its attitudes to the limits of sensibility, illustrating the absurdity of life.

Music for a New Depression, songs of a native oracle, slices the political scene to shreds, then wands it back together. The poet with his blues magic makes us realize that the only audience that matters is the land itself. Written on a mountain top in New Mexico, the poems are arrows to the heart of Washington, meant to light the sky as they travel there, by taking to task the national political scene and the current politics of language.

"I have lost my new blue socks. Did I put them in my box?" Simple rhymes - including "socks", "box", "fox, " and "ox"! - spin the tale of a small duck who waddles through the countryside, forlornly searching for his blue socks. "I'm trying not to be depressed. / Without my socks I feel undressed." Finally, a sharp-eyed peacock sees a bit of blue peeking out of duck's lace-up shoes and the mini-mystery is solved! This winsome story shares the familiar experience of not really losing something after all.