Poetry audiobooks

The Odyssey

By: Homer

Narrated by: Ian McKellen

Length: 13 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

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 savoring treasuring for its sheer lyrical mastery. This... Read more

Now We Are Six

By: A. A. Milne

Narrated by: Joel Froomkin

Length: 1 hour

Abridged: No

This second collection of poems from A. A. Milne includes works such as Furry Bear, Sneezles, and Buttercup Days as well as an appearance by the beloved children's character Winnie-the-Pooh. With gentle humor and whimsical lines, Now We Are Six is perfect for anyone—whether you're six or sixty-six. Read more

Beowulf: A New Translation

By: Maria Dahvana Headley

Narrated by: JD Jackson & Maria Dahvana Headley

Length: 4 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

"Narrator JD Jackson addresses his listener as "bro" in this decidedly contemporary retelling of the classic saga...His brilliant performance captures all the artistry, wit, and immediacy of this fresh translation, and breathes new life into what for most has been a literary fossil." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

A new,... Read more

The Totally Not Boring Book of Feelings

By: Jolie Taylor & Brandon Dorman

Narrated by: Jolie Taylor

Length: 50 minutes

Abridged: No

40 fun poems that explore big feelings and emotions. This whimsical journey through verse and illustrations can help children recognize and understand their big emotions. From the imaginative minds of Brandon Dorman, renowned illustrator of Goosebumps, Land of Stories, and Fablehaven, and Booktok creator Jolie Taylor comes a whimsical... Read more

Forest of Noise

By: Mosab Abu Toha

Narrated by: Mosab Abu Toha

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • "A powerful, capacious, and profound" (Ocean Vuong) new collection of poems about life in Gaza by an award-winning Palestinian poet.

You are alive
for a moment
when living people
run after you.

Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli... Read more

Observations of Life in Verse

By: Violet Harrington

Narrated by: Violet Harrington

Length: 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Allow yourself to be inspired by Violet Harrington's enjoyable poetry which springs from a wealth of lived experiences read by this extraordinary person herself.In this special audio version, Violet reads these poems herself at almost a 100 years of age and life experience with her unmistakable and charming East End accent. This makes this... Read more

Devotions

By: Mary Oliver

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

Length: 6 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Now a Read With Jenna Book Club Pick

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career.

“I love [Mary's] work. It’s about nature and love and what it means to be human. . . . I find her poetry to be so cathartic... Read more

Make Me Rain

By: Nikki Giovanni

Narrated by: Nikki Giovanni

Length: 2 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

An extraordinary listening experience! Hear Nikki Giovanni read from her newest collection of poems!One of America’s most celebrated poets challenges us with this powerful and deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society while illuminating the depths of her own heart.For more than fifty years, Nikki Giovanni’s... Read more

The Hurting Kind

By: Ada Limón

Narrated by: Ada Limón

Length: 1 hour 41 minutes

Abridged: No

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.“I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” writes Limón. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it... Read more

Call Us What We Carry

By: Amanda Gorman

Narrated by: Amanda Gorman

Length: 3 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

The instant #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller


The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet... Read more

Metamorphoses

By: Ovid

Narrated by: Martin Jarvis, John Sackville, Maya Saroya & Da...

Length: 18 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by award-winning voice actor Martin Jarvis OBE, as well as John Sackville, Maya Saroya and the translator of this edition, David Raeburn. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Denis Feeney.

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of... Read more

The Iliad

By: Homer

Narrated by: Dan Stevens

Length: 13 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Since it was first published more than forty years ago, Robert Fitzgerald's prizewinning translation of Homer's battle epic has become a classic in its own right: a standard against which all other versions of The Iliad are compared. This definitive translation of Homer's epic is timeless in its authority and always fresh in its vivid rendering... Read more

The Odyssey

By: Homer

Narrated by: Dan Stevens

Length: 10 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

"In classical Greece men called rhapsodes memorized and recited “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” My own rhapsode is the English actor Dan Stevens, whom fans of “Downton Abbey” will know as Matthew Crawley. He’s been performing the Robert Fitzgerald translation, and no Hellene could do it better." — Wall Street Journal

Robert Fitzgerald's... Read more

Apple

By: Eric Gansworth

Narrated by: Eric Gansworth

Length: 8 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

How about a book that makes you barge into your boss's office to read a page of poetry from? That you dream of? That every movie, song, book, moment that follows continues to evoke in some way?The term Apple is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly red on the outside, white on the inside.Eric Gansworth is... Read more

M Archive

By: Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Narrated by: Angel Pean

Length: 4 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Following the innovative collection Spill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's M Archive—the second book in a planned experimental triptych—is a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following a worldwide cataclysm. Engaging with the work of the foundational Black feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander, and... Read more

The Popol Vuh

By: Michael Bazzett

Narrated by: Michael Bazzett

Length: 4 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR
In the beginning, the world is spoken into existence with one word: “Earth.” There are no inhabitants, and no sun—only the broad sky, silent sea, and sovereign Framer and Shaper. Then come the twin heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Wielding blowguns, they begin a journey to hell and back, ready to... Read more

The Great Poets: Lord Byron

By: Lord Byron

Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale

Length: 1 hour 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Today Byron is regarded as the ultimate romantic – a rebel, a Casanova and a man of intense, brooding passion. He was the most famous literary man of his time, and his poetry, endlessly witty and often insightful, was immensely popular and hugely influential. From the delicate romanticism of She Walks in Beauty to the evocative reflections of So... Read more

Helen of Troy, 1993

By: Maria Zoccola

Narrated by: Maria Zoccola

Length: 1 hour 50 minutes

Abridged: No

*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Pick*

“By turns hilarious and provocative, it’s an affecting character study and modern mythic retelling.” —Publishers Weekly, Books That Should Be on Your Radar in 2025

Part myth retelling, part character study, this sharp, visceral debut poetry collection reimagines Helen of Troy from Homer’s... Read more

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

By: Franny Choi

Narrated by: Franny Choi

Length: 1 hour 59 minutes

Abridged: No

From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds—past, present, and future. Choi’s third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending,... Read more

Time Is a Mother

By: Ocean Vuong

Narrated by: Ocean Vuong

Length: 1 hour 43 minutes

Abridged: No

"Take your time with these poems, and return to them often.” —The Washington Post

The New York Times-bestselling collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong

How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part
 
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among... Read more

How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems

By: Mikeas Sánchez

Narrated by: Mikeas Sánchez, Wendy Call & Shook

Length: 3 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

The latest in the Seedbank series, the debut in English of a groundbreaking Indigenous poet of the Americas.In a fiercely personal yet authoritative voice, prolific contemporary poet Mikeas Sánchez explores the worldview of the Zoque people of southern Mexico. Her paced, steely lyrics fuse cosmology, lineage, feminism, and environmental activism... Read more

A Fortune For Your Disaster

By: Hanif Abdurraqib

Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib

Length: 1 hour 36 minutes

Abridged: No

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that... Read more

The Death of Sitting Bear

By: N. Scott Momaday

Narrated by: N. Scott Momaday

Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Pulitzer Prize winner and celebrated American master N. Scott Momaday returns with a radiant collection of more than 200 new and selected poems rooted in Native American tradition. 

“The poems in this book reflect my deep respect for and appreciation of words. . . . I believe that poetry is the highest form of verbal expression. Although I have... Read more

The Hill We Climb

By: Amanda Gorman

Narrated by: Amanda Gorman & Oprah Winfrey

Length: 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Amanda Gorman’s powerful and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration

“Stunning.” —CNN 
“Dynamic.” —NPR
“Deeply rousing and uplifting.” —Vogue


On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th... Read more