English Poetry

The Gruffalo said that no gruffalo should ever set foot in the deep dark wood. But one wild and windy night the Gruffalo's child disobeys her father's warnings and ventures out into the snow. After all, the Big Bad Mouse doesn't really exist...does he? Perfect for listening to at home, in the car, at bedtime - or any time at all!

Indulge in Rumi's passion with this collection of 13th century love poetry. Become lost in the words of The Love Poems of Rumi. Included in this audiobook is a collection of Jalal al-Din Rumi's passionate love poems, translated by Nader Khalili. Beautifully read by Neil Shah, you'll become spiritually inspired by the words in this audiobook. Perfect for lovers, dreamers, and poets, the poems from this 13th century theologist will leave you wistfully peaceful.

The Odyssey is the greatest adventure story ever written, and one of the great epic masterpieces of Western literature For almost 3,000 years, it has been a storehouse of ancient Greek folklore and myth. It is also our very first novel, if we think of it in terms of romantic plot development, realistic characterizations, frequent change of scene, and heroic dramatic devices.

Sylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination―the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry, a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl. Emily Van Duyne―a superfan and scholar―radically reimagines the last years of Plath’s life, confronts her suicide and the construction of her legacy.

Rumi has been described as "the most popular poet" in the United States. Rumi's popularity has gone beyond national and ethnic borders. He is considered to be one of the greatest classical poets, by the speakers of Persian language in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. His poetry is still read worldwide today and has been translated into a wide variety of languages including Turkish, Persian, Russian, Asian, English, and Spanish languages.

Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth-birthday party, she's been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules - like "no making waves", "avoid eating in public", and "don't move so fast that your body jiggles". And she's found her safe space - her swimming pool - where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It's also where she can get away from her mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie's weight will motivate her to diet.

Grasshoppers, waterstriders, and fireflies light up the pages of this rib-tickling book of poetry for two voices. Written as spirited duets, the poems ring with the love songs of book lice, the serenades of moths, and a choir of cicadas. Each one is a treat, filled with busy insect life. In addition to the voices of these frisky critters, there are also fascinating tidbits about their lives and habits.

Painter and writer Calef Brown pours his boundless creative energy into his poetry. In Flamingos on the Roof, Brown crafts 29 nonsense poems conjuring mythic and contemporary images of everything from gatorflies to light-bulb-topped birthday cakes. Kids will revel in the lively wordplay, while parents and teachers will recognize the value in teaching kids alliterative and assonant sounds.

Little is known about the origin of The Basket of Flowers, except that it is translated from the French by someone known only as J.H. St. A. The value of this excellent volume lies in its content, which is thoroughly God-honoring and scriptural.

Kathryn Tucker Windham begins this montage of stories with the sounds of summer and ends with a joyful Christmas memory. The mixture of tales, from the mouth-watering description of good Southern food to the story of a governor more familiar with Tom Sawyer than Tom Jefferson, comes together to evoke the image of a happy childhood.

Inspired largely by the poet's experiences as a young man working in the Saskatchewan oilfields, Mathew Henderson's The Lease explores masculinity and the roles morality, violence, and hard labor play in it. Equal parts character study, cultural documentary, and coming-of-age narrative, Henderson's poems make it clear that however we may try to stay apart from them, the stubborn and often unflattering realities of masculine culture persist, not just in isolated, dangerous environments like this, but in our very idea of what work is.

Sensual, macabre, joyous and liberating, The Flowers of Evil, or Les Fleurs du Mal, is a beautifully debauched reflection on dreams, sin, life, and death. With subjects ranging from travel to drugs, sex to faith, sleep to contemplation, Baudelaire finds new beauty in the most sinister and corrupt of situations. His morbid and nightmarish Romanticism was completely unique: cynical and bleak, but also inspiring. The book was highly controversial upon its release and Napoleon III’s government prosecuted Baudelaire for "an insult to public decency".

One of the most celebrated poets in the English language, William Blake crafted visions of Heaven, Hell, God, and Apocalypse. Effortlessly leaping from philosophy, to nursery rhymes, to mystic visions, Blake left a body of work that still puzzles scholars, and thrills listeners. So sit beside William Blake, and let him tell you of the Tyger, the Lamb, and the Everlasting Gospel.

When Brianna Pastor released her self-published poetry collection, Good Grief, she was blown away by the outpouring of support from people who reached out and said, “Yes. Me too.” For anyone who has struggled with questions of identity or coped with serious emotional issues, including grief, trauma, anxiety, and depression, this collection will help you find hope on the other side.

If you think often about the past or battle with overthinking and self-esteem, girl made of glass is for you. This collection is about finding yourself, forgiving yourself, and loving yourself. It explores the many ways our past haunts us but will leave you feeling hopeful about your future. girl made of glass is a poetry collection about how our past-past mistakes, relationships, and regrets—can linger into our future. Broken into four parts, this book is about finding, forgiving, and loving ourselves.

Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is revered as one of the great writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Now available on audio for the first time, the poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt, and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions.

Wordsworth's The Prelude is the consummation of his achievement as the great founder of English romanticism. An autobiography in verse, it tells of his childhood in the Lake District, his student days in Cambridge, his passion for the French Revolution and his later disenchantment with it. It also tells of his personal journey to a belief in Nature as the great moral and spiritual force which shapes human life, but on which human society all too often turns its back.

The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers and listeners for 700 years and has entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance.

DI Jade Tanner's new Complex Crimes Unit is finding its feet. DS Mo Uddin is settling into his new Scottish home, Dr. Petra McBride has stopped receiving anonymous calls, and Jade is working to support her son over the loss of his dad.

The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, comprised the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. This carefully selected collection contains: The Odyssey ; The Works and Days ; Theogony ; The Complete Poems of Sappho ; Medea ; Antigone ; Agamemnon ; The Choephori ; Eumenides.