Poetry audiobooks

Aednan

By: Linnea Axelsson

Narrated by: Angela Dawe

Length: 2 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • The winner of Sweden’s most prestigious literary award makes her American debut with an epic, multigenerational novel-in-verse about two Sámi families and their quest to stay together across a century of migration, violence, and colonial trauma.

“Crystalline prose that reads like poetry and myth at once.... Read more

Life on Mars

By: Tracy K. Smith

Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith

Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

Abridged: No

In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like "love" and "illness" now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the... Read more

The Aeneid

By: Vergil

Narrated by: Susanna Braund

Length: 10 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

A powerful and poignant translation of Vergil’s epic poem, newly equipped with introduction and notes
"Ruden set the bar for Aeneid translations in 2008, and has raised it now with this revision. I am confident it will be a long time before a translator exceeds the standard that she has set."—A.M. Juster, Athenaeum Review
This is a substantial... Read more

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

Leaves of Grass

By: Walt Whitman

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 4 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of twelve poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting... Read more

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

By: Anonymous

Narrated by: Bill Wallis

Length: 5 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

The famous Middle English poem by an anonymous English poet is beautifully translated by fellow poet Simon Armitage in this edition. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and... Read more

A Child's Christmas In Wales - Abridged

By: Dylan Thomas

Narrated by: Dylan Thomas

Length: 46 minutes

Abridged: Yes

First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago Christmas.Thomas’s wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid performance. Also included are five poems selected and... Read more

The Iliad - Abridged

By: Homer

Narrated by: Derek Jacobi & Maria Tucci

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Dating to the ninth century BC, Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to  the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb Introduction... Read more

Mujer sin vergüenza

By: Sandra Cisneros

Narrated by: Liliana Valenzuela

Length: 2 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Una valiente colección de poemas nuevos de Sandra Cisneros, autora del libro de mayor venta La casa en Mango Street.

Han pasado veintiocho años desde que Sandra Cisneros publicara un libro de poesía. Con decenas de poemas inéditos, Mujer sin vergüenza es una conmovedora colección de canciones, elegías y declaraciones que dan testimonio de su... Read more

The Aeneid (Unabridged)

By: Virgil

Narrated by: AI Marcus

Length: 11 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice. Virgil’s epic poem begins with Aeneas fleeing the ruins of Troy with his father Anchises and his young son Ascanius, with a plan to make a home in Italy. Because of a prophecy foretelling that the descendants of Aeneas will one day destroy Carthage, Juno’s favorite city, Juno orders... Read more

Forest of Noise

By: Mosab Abu Toha

Narrated by: Mosab Abu Toha

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: No

"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 army bombed and destroyed his... 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 Night Before Christmas

By: Clement Moore

Narrated by: Jeff Bridges

Length: 4 minutes

Abridged: No

The Night Before Christmas is an enchanting Christmas story that has brought Santa Claus to life for generations. Celebrate the holiday season with this #1 New York Times bestselling edition of the classic poem read by Jeff Bridges.'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse Carry on... 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

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

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

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

By: Ross Gay

Narrated by: Ross Gay

Length: 1 hour 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry category
Winner, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize
Finalist, 2015 National Book Award, poetry category
Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards, poetry category

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that... Read more

Couplets

By: Maggie Millner

Narrated by: Maggie Millner

Length: 1 hour 29 minutes

Abridged: No

A dazzling love story in poems about one woman’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone.A woman lives an ordinary life in Brooklyn. She has a boyfriend. They share a cat. She writes poems in the prevailing style. She also has dreams: of being seduced by a throng of older women, of kissing a friend in a dorm-room closet. But the dreams are... 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

When the Dark Spoke to Me

By: Christabelle Marbun

Narrated by: Christabelle Marbun

Length: 1 hour 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A profound poetry collection shrouded in tenderness and empathy, created to comfort the growing pains we all experience in life.
Teen breakout poet Christabelle Grace Marbun brings her latest collection When the Dark Spoke to Me to life through words wise beyond her years. Her uniquely positive perspective on life, death, and everything in... Read more

Goldenrod

By: Maggie Smith

Narrated by: Maggie Smith

Length: 1 hour 5 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR

“To read Maggie Smith is to embrace the achingly precious beauty of the present moment.” —Time
“A captivating collection from a wise, accessible poet.” —People

From the award-winning poet and bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Keep Moving, and Good Bones, a... Read more

Small Cures

By: Della Hicks-Wilson

Narrated by: Della Hicks-Wilson

Length: 41 minutes

Abridged: No

From the British viral poet Della Hicks-Wilson comes an empowering and lyrical collection of short, interconnected poems about the heart, letting go, and a healing love, that readers can carry and quote for a lifetime.
Small Cures is at once a compelling reminder to anyone struggling with heartbreak, mental health, or trauma, that they are not... 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