Poetry audiobooks

Life of the Party

By: Olivia Gatwood

Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood

Length: 2 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A dazzling debut collection of raw and explosive poems about growing up in a sexist, sensationalized world, from a thrilling new feminist voice.

i’m a good girl, bad girl, dream girl, sad girl
girl next door sunbathing in the driveway
i wanna be them all at once, i wanna be
all the girls I’ve ever loved
—from “Girl”

Lauded for the power of her... Read more

How to Read a Book

By: Kwame Alexander

Narrated by: Kwame Alexander

Length: 5 minutes

Abridged: No

2020 Audie Awards® Finalist - Young Reader Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander narrates the audiobook version of his How to Read a Book, a poetic journey about the experience of reading.Find a tree—ablack tupelo ordawn redwood will do—andplant yourself.(It’s okay if you prefer a stoop, like Langston Hughes.)With these words, an adventure begins.... Read more

The Stuff of Stars

By: Marion Dane Bauer

Narrated by: Christina Moore

Length: 5 minutes

Abridged: No

In an astonishing unfurling of our universe, Newbery Honor winner Marion Dane Bauer and Caldecott Honor winner Ekua Holmes celebrate the birth of every child. Before the universe was formed, before time and space existed, there was . . . nothing. But then . . . BANG! Stars caught fire and burned so long that they exploded, flinging stardust... Read more

Dear Mother

By: Bunmi Laditan

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 1 hour 4 minutes

Abridged: No

The first collection of poetry from Bunmi Laditan, bestselling author of Confessions of a Domestic Failure and creator of The Honest Toddler, capturing the honesty, rawness, sheer joy and total madness of motherhood. With the compassion and wit that have made her a social media sensation among mothers around the world, Bunmi Laditan puts into... Read more

Us

By: Zaffar Kunial

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Debut collection of poems from Zaffar Kunial. Read more

Kingdomland

By: Rachael Allen

Narrated by: Rachael Allen

Length: 45 minutes

Abridged: No

Kingdomland is the debut poetry collection of Rachael Allen - a writer of rare vision and flair. The world she creates is suffused with surreal images and uncanny incidents. Unexplained violences and strange metamorphoses take shape in the 'glowering dusk'. And yet, all too clearly, we recognise life here on earth, its everyday griefs,... Read more

Girlhood

By: Julia Copus

Narrated by: Andrew Stevenson & Julia Copus

Length: 1 hour 12 minutes

Abridged: No

WINNER OF THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY Julia Copus's new collection, Girlhood, is a book of transgressed boundaries and seductive veneers. Restlessly inquisitive, it exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them. Reading these poems, we have the sense of... Read more

Poetry Please

By: Various Poets

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh & Anton Lesser

Length: 2 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

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 best-loved poems over the decades since its inception.

The BBC has looked back through its rich archive of recordings to... Read more

Enter, Fleeing

By: Mark Ford

Narrated by: Mark Ford

Length: 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Enter, Fleeing is an enthralling new volume by one of the UK's most distinctive poets. The work gathered here displays Ford's power to amuse and startle, to move and disconcert. Some poems recreate moments from the poet's peripatetic childhood in Africa, America, Asia and the Gulf, while others dramatise anarchic or violent encounters with a... Read more

The Thought-Fox and Other Poems

By: Ted Hughes

Narrated by: Ted Hughes

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: No

From his remarkable debut The Hawk in the Rain (1957) to his death in 1998, Ted Hughes was a colossal presence in the English literary landscape. He was also admired as a performer of his own work. In this 1994 recording, The Thought Fox and Other Poems, he reads a selection of poems from The Hawk in the Rain; Lupercal; Wodwo; Crow; Moortown;,... Read more

Old Toffer's Book of Consequential Dogs

By: Christopher Reid

Narrated by: ROBERT BATHURST

Length: 51 minutes

Abridged: No

I've rounded up a rowdy assembly
Of my own Consequential Dogs
As counterparts to Eliot's mogs.
Mine are a rough and ready bunch:
You wouldn't take them out to lunch . . .
But if they strike you as friendly, funny,
Full of bounce and fond of a romp,
Forgetful of poetic pomp,
I trust you'll take them as you find them
And, at the very least, not mind... Read more

Seamus Heaney III Collected Poems (published 1996-2010)

By: Seamus Heaney

Narrated by: Seamus Heaney

Length: 4 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Volume Three of the definitive collection of Seamus Heaney reading his own work, recorded in in 2009 by RTE. Volume Three contains four collections published between 1996 and 2010: The Spirit Level, Electric Light, District and Circle and Human Chain. To the RTE recordings Faber has added live readings by the poet of eleven poems from his... Read more

Seamus Heaney II Collected Poems (published 1979-1991)

By: Seamus Heaney

Narrated by: Seamus Heaney

Length: 5 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Volume Two of the definitive collection of Seamus Heaney reading his own work, recorded in 2009 by RTE. Volume Two contains four collections published between 1979 and 1991: Field Work, Station Island, The Haw Lantern and Seeing Things. Read more

Seamus Heaney I Collected Poems (published 1966-1975)

By: Seamus Heaney

Narrated by: Seamus Heaney

Length: 3 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

Volume One of the definitive collection of Seamus Heaney reading his own work, recorded in 2009 by RTE. Volume One contains four collections published between 1966 and 1975: Death of a Naturalist, Door into the Dark, Wintering Out and North. Read more

The Poetry Remedy

By: William Sieghart

Narrated by: William Sieghart

Length: 4 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

The US edition of the bestselling The Poetry Pharmacy

A beautiful collection of curated poems each individually selected to provide hope, comfort, and inspiration—for all of life's most difficult moments

Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice are tailored to those moments in life when we need them... Read more

The IG

By: Hey Jude Saint Jude

Narrated by: Kenneth Toles

Length: 34 minutes

Abridged: No

His first ever book, spoken word artist Hey Jude Saint Jude has compiled a number of his fans favorite poems, poems he has post on his Instagram. These poems follow the ups and downs of relationships, mental illness, faith, and everything in between. Read more

Odyssey, One Day In His Courts

By: Stephanie Dale

Narrated by: James Masterton

Length: 26 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of twenty-five poems on faith and ocd. Intrusive thoughts come up with what seems like a million flashing warning lights like those coming up all at once on a car's faulty dashboard. None of them make sense but they all feel so real, so personal, yet so alien to the person's heart, nature and beliefs. Suffering in silence, unable to... Read more

Hillbilly Drug Baby: The Poems

By: Jesse-Ray Lewis

Narrated by: Daniel Etti-Williams

Length: 42 minutes

Abridged: No

The prevalence of drugs in the Appalachian area of our country is no secret, but it is rare to be able to step into the mind and thoughts of someone caught in the middle of a drug-infested life and culture and see life as they see it. Jesse-Ray Lewis gives us the opportunity to do just that. The words are sometimes harsh and the visualizations... Read more

Loki Ragnarok

By: Mark Binder

Narrated by: Mark Binder

Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

Abridged: No

In the shadow of prophecy, a family is torn asunder, leading to betrayal, torture, madness and revenge."Lively and entertaining tales…" – AudioFile MagazineNominated for 2019 Audie Audiobook for Best Original Work… The story Marvel and Disney don't want told… Based on the original Norse myths, this short epic tells the story of Ragnarok from... Read more

The Truth About Magic

By: Atticus

Narrated by: Atticus

Length: 38 minutes

Abridged: No

From the internationally bestselling author of The Dark Between Stars and Love Her Wild, Instagram sensation Atticus returns with another romantic and deeply moving collection.

The Truth About Magic builds on the pains and joys of romance explored in Love Her Wild and the New York Times bestseller, The Dark Between Stars—heartbreaks and... Read more

The Gilded Auction Block

By: Shane McCrae

Narrated by: Shane McCrae

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

An incisive new collection of poetry on political and contemporary themes

I’m made of murderers I’m made
Of nobodies and immigrants and the poor

and a whole / Family the mother’s
liver and her lungs

In The Gilded Auction Block, the acclaimed poet Shane McCrae considers the present moment in America on its own terms... Read more

A Piece of Good News

By: Katie Peterson

Narrated by: Katie Peterson

Length: 1 hour

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

A rich and challenging new collection from the young award-winning poet.

In those days I began to see light under every
bushel basket, light nearly splitting
the sides of the bushel basket. Light came
through the rafters of the dairy where the grackles
congregated like well-taxed citizens
untransfigured even by hope.... Read more

Walking Backwards

By: John Koethe

Narrated by: John Koethe

Length: 2 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Collected poems from America’s searching and thoughtful philosopher-poet.

...There’s something
Comforting about rituals renewed, even adolescents’ pipe dreams:
They’ll find out soon enough, and meanwhile find their places
In the eternal scenery, less auguries or cautionary tales

Than parts of an unchanging whole, as ripe for contemplation
As a... Read more

Like

By: A. E. Stallings

Narrated by: A. E. Stallings

Length: 2 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

A stunning new collection by the award-winning young poet and translator.

Like, that currency of social media, is a little word with infinite potential; it can be nearly any part of speech. Without it, there is no simile, that engine of the lyric poem, the lyre’s note in the epic. A poem can hardly... Read more