English Poetry

"One night I dreamed a dream. I was walking along the beach with my Lord." So begins "Footprints," a poem written in 1964 by a young woman named Margaret Fishback, who was searching for direction at the crossroads of her life.

Following the success of Catching LIfe by the Throat, Josephine Hart compiles more poetry from the like of such poets as Milton, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Browning, Frost and Lowell.

Read by a dazzling cast of actors including Eileen Atkins, Nancy Carroll, Alan Cox, Charles Dance, Joanna David, Lindsay Duncan, Edward Fox, Emilia Fox, Robert Hardy, Tom Hollander, Jeremy Irons, Felicity Kendal, Elizabeth McGovern, Mark Strong, Dominic West, Greg Wise.

In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? has sold more than 30 million copies, and ranks as the 39th best-selling book of all time. The main character is the Rev. Henry Maxwell, pastor of the First Church of Raymond, who challenges his congregation to not do anything for a whole year without first asking: “What would Jesus do?”

Along the centuries numerous interpretations and definitions of Sufism have waxed and waned but the undeniable beauty of their verse in its myriad of forms including the musical Ghazal (love song), Masnavi (narrative) and Rubai (quatrain) always remains. Our chronological volume of the classic Sufi poets helps us understand the spiritual direction of Sufism, starting with Rabia in the 8th century through to Khwaja Ghulam Farid over a thousand years later.

With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls.

Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood now weaves together her own coming-of-age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. At times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant, Life of the Party explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. Gatwood asks, How does a girl grow into a woman in a world racked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim?

Ever since his father died, eight-year-old Jordan has wished his mother, Maggie, could believe in love again. A busy lawyer, she spends long hours at work and has little time for affection. When Maggie enrolls Jordan in the Healing Hearts mentoring program, he is overjoyed. As soon as the boy meets his adult mentor, Casey, Jordan knows this man is the answer to his prayers. But when Maggie meets him, she is haunted by bittersweet memories she just can't place.

The most captivating part of perhaps the greatest epic poem ever written, Dante's Inferno still holds the power to thrill and inspire. The medieval equivalent of a thriller, Inferno follows Dante and his faithful guide, Virgil, as they traverse the complex geography of hell, confronting its many threats, macabre punishments, and historical figures before reaching the deep chamber where Satan himself resides.

If you've ever desperately wanted to memorize poetry but absolutely hate the slings and arrows, the sound and the fury of repeating the same lines hundreds of times until they've become more annoying than beautiful, then this may be the most important audiobook you will ever listen to. Believe it or not, it doesn't matter if you have a good memory or not. Frankly, if you can memorize a short email address or the name of a movie, then you can use this system to memorize poems as short as a sonnet or as long as an epic. But there's really no time to lose.

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, it draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986.

In her first collection of poetry, Jewel deals with such uniquely human themes as first love, the fading of passion, the giving of trust, the lessons of betrayal, and the healing of intimacy. The Alaska native writes with frankness and honesty. She is serious and suddenly playful, but always compelling.

“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.

A spoken word poetry collection for dreamers who crave to explore the unknown, through one young woman’s exploration of her darkest times and her path towards healing. Bridgett Devoue’s poetry takes the listener on a journey into the world of love, lust, heartbreak, abuse, and the lessons learned along the way. This collection combines the author’s original poetry as well as her own commentary on her writing process and the backstory of different poems.

As Soft as Fire collects Upile Chisala’s three acclaimed poetry books—soft magic, nectar, and a fire like you—in audiobook form, complete with the author’s reflections on her inspiration and process. soft magic, Chisala’s debut collection, explores themes of survival and healing; nectar expands on the topics of growth and renewal despite hardship; and a fire like you, her most recent collection, celebrates self-love and desire.

The Maasai people of East Africa comprise one of the most intriguing and resourceful cultures on earth. In Ewaso Village, Duncan tells the story of a small community of Maasai and Samburu people in Laikipia County, Kenya. Using a combination of poetry and prose, Ewaso Village touches on universal themes, including rites of passage, creation myths, death rituals, and childbirth while posing significant questions about climate change, conservation, women’s rights, and the survival of indigenous cultures.

One of the great masterpieces of Western literature, The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars. Though the stormy god of the ocean is determined to keep him off course, Odysseus is clever and has the brilliant goddess Athena on his side.

From the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins comes his first compilation of new and selected poems in 12 years. Aimless Love combines new poems with selections from four previous books— Nine Horses, The Trouble with Poetry, Ballistics, and Horoscopes for the Dead. Collins’s unmistakable voice, which brings together plain speech with imaginative surprise, is clearly heard with every word, reminding us how he has managed to enrich the tapestry of contemporary poetry and greatly expand its audience.

Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection from across the entire arc of his poetry, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to do this in his lifetime, and no edition exists which has such a broad range, drawing from first collection to last.

Gathering inspiration from a life of travel, hope, long-distance relationships, healing, and adventure, Frayne invites listeners into her world. The Gravity Inside Us is an ode to whatever it is we carry that pulls us in and out of place, and speaks so insistently of fate. Through writing about her own experiences, this book is a reach into that space.

Radiant and tender, My Baby First Birthday is a collection that examines innocence, asking us who gets to be loved and who has to deplete themselves just to survive. It's about existence and nonexistence, about being born - without consent. Jenny Zhang writes about accepting pain, about the way we fetishize womanhood and motherhood, and reduce women to their violations, traumas, and body parts.