English Poetry Literature

The only thing more beautiful than Beyoncé is God, and God is a black woman sipping rosé and drawing a lavender bath, texting her mom, belly laughing in the therapist's office, feeling unloved, being on display, daring to survive. Morgan Parker stands at the intersections of vulnerability and performance, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence. Unrelentingly feminist, tender, and ruthless, these poems are an altar to the complexities of black American womanhood in an age of non-indictments and déjà vu.

From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America - and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

Warm and witty, direct and droll, the sharply funny Pam Ayres has been amusing and entertaining her many fans for years. Her humorous observations of daily life touch a chord with anybody who's ever been bewildered by the exercise craze or has yearned after the vanished Spotted Dick.

I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that even if no one else does, even if you are a ghost in this bookshop, or just the static floating across the screen of your computer, wherever you’re reading this, I see you. I see you in the dark and I see you in the grey. I see you as a story, as words I have spoken or may yet speak. Maybe only in a memory or a dream. I see your hands and your arms and your body and your legs and your face and I see what you have been and what you will be.

From New York Times best-selling author Karen Kingsbury comes an unforgettable story of love struggling against all odds to snatch hope from the jaws of despair. Annie Warren’s concern for her adult son Josh has intensified ever since a drunk driver careened into him.

Born in Sri Lanka during the Second World War, Ondaatje was sent as a child to school in London, and later moved to Canada. While he has lived here since, these poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world—describing himself as a “mongrel,” someone born out of diverse cultures. Here, rediscovering the influence of every border crossed, he moves back and forth in time.

In The Nectar of Pain, Zebian sheds light on the feelings and experiences that emerge from a painful heartbreak. She writes that the process of cleansing oneself of that pain—day by day, hour by hour, and second by second—is the real work of healing. With uncommon warmth and wisdom, Zebian empowers all who have lost to let go of anger and transform their suffering into the softness, sweetness, and beauty of nectar. She holds her listeners by the hand as they heal.

Emory Hall’s debut poetry collection follows the anatomy of a river, swelling with loss and grief, and dances with the sacred waters of transformation and motherhood. Full of magic and deep emotion, Made of Rivers will wash anew those who come to it, uncovering hidden corners of the self. It draws upon Emory’s wellspring of experiences, hardships, triumphs and revelations.

Enjoy this amazing narration of Robert Frost's poetry, including his most famous poems, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken, among many others.

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus's legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also set out to provide Rome with a literature equal to that of Greece.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

When the mysterious Green Knight arrives unbidden at the Round Table one Christmas, only Gawain is brave enough to take up his challenge.... This story, first told in the 1400s, is one of the most enthralling, dramatic and beloved poems in the English tradition. Now, in Simon Armitage, the poem has found its perfect modern translator. Armitage's retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight captures all of the magic and wonderful storytelling of the original while also revitalising it.

Richard Burton reads from Hardy and Donne, and performs a wonderful unabridged version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (along with Robert Hardy and John Neville).

One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.

Marina’s talent for powerful, evocative song lyrics finds a new outlet in her poetry. Each poem resonates with the same creative melodies and emotional depth that have made her an artistic sensation. Hailed by The New York Times for “redefining songs about coming of age, and the aftermath, with bluntness and crafty intelligence,” Marina delves even further into trauma, youth, and the highs and lows of relationships in these profound, autobiographical poems to form a collection that transcends the boundaries of music and literature.

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of 12 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 nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, this monumental work, now a classic of American poetry, was condemned as immoral upon publication.

Renowned for his inventive mind, ambitious play with language, and dexterity with a wide range of tones and styles, John Ashbery has been a major artistic figure in the cultural life of our time. Parallel Movement of the Hands gathers unpublished, book-length projects and long poems written between 1993 and 2007, along with one (as yet) undated work, to showcase Ashbery’s diverse and multifaceted artistic obsessions and sources, such as children’s literature, cliff-hanger cinema reels, silent films, and classical music variations by Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny.

In this powerful and innovative book of poetry and wisdom, award-winning spoken-word poet, songwriter, and performer IN-Q inspires us to question everything we know and see around us and inside us, to discover what matters most.

“The poet is endemic with life itself,” Will Alexander once said, and in this searing pas de trois, Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten, he has exemplified this vital candescence with a transpersonal amplification worthy of the Cambrian explosion. “This being the ballet of the forgotten,” he writes as diasporic witness, “of refracted boundary points as venom.” The volume’s opening poem pays homage to the innovative Nigerian-Yoruban author Amos Tutuola; it ends with an encomium to the modernist Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo.