Poetry

The collected poems of Lewis Carroll, newly edited by Gillian Beer and published in a beautiful clothbound edition. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote Lewis Carroll in his wonderfully playful poem of nonsense verse, Jabberwocky. This new edition collects together the marvellous range of Carroll's poetry, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques,...

Feminist icon bell hooks reminds us of the full spectrum of feeling we spend in love through her inspiring collection of love poetry, with a new introduction by Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies. Written from the heart, When Angels Speak of Love is a book of fifty love poems by bell hooks, one of our most beloved public...

“The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,” Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss's working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and...

The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller Winner of The GoodReads Choice Award for Poetry 2017 From Rupi Kaur, the bestselling author of Milk and Honey, comes her long-awaited second collection of poetry. Illustrated by Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising and blooming. It is a celebration of love in all its forms....

A new selection of poetry from the generation-defining author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated for the first time into English. While Tove Ditlevsen is now famous around the world as an extraordinary prose writer, in Denmark she has also long been celebrated as a poet. She published her first collection in her early twenties, and continued writing and publishing poetry...

A dazzling collection of poetry by the greatest Latin-American Poet of our time The perfect gift for Valentine's Day Selected Poems contains Neruda's resonant, exploratory, intensely individualistic verse, rooted in the physical landscape and people of Chile. Here we find sensuous songs of love, tender odes to the sea, melancholy lyrics of heartache, fiery political statements and a frank celebration...

With a cover design and foreword by Ai Weiwei, to coincide with the publication of his memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows. A timeless, visionary collection of poems from one of China's most acclaimed poets—now available in English for the first time in a generation and featuring a foreword by his son, contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei. One...

Paradise Lost was the first literary work in English written on a planetary scale. In sublimity and magnitude, it comes closer than anything in our language to the swollen red sun sinking in a tropical sea... Guardian Satan is out for revenge. His rebellion has failed, he has been cast out from heaven and is doomed to spend eternity in...

A deluxe 10th anniversary edition of the bestselling poetry collection milk and honey, including an exclusive new chapter of poetry, a new introduction by Rupi, a collage of behind-the-scenes photos and memorabilia illustrating the book’s decade-long journey, handwritten diary entries, and heartfelt annotations from Rupi and some of today’s most respected voices in a selection of fan-favourite poems. Since debuting...

A landmark collection of verse from one of the twentieth century's supreme writers. These masterly poems span the decades of Nabokov's career, from Music, written in 1914, to the short, playful To Vera, composed in 1974. The University Poem, one of Nabokov's major poetic works, is here in English for the first time. This extraordinary autobiographical poem looks back at...

The complete collection of Kingsley Amis's poems, as witty, scabrous and bracing as his celebrated novels. Although best known for his comic novels, Kingsley Amis wrote poetry throughout his career. Collected Poems spans subjects from nature and cricket to love, ageing and literature, brimming with his characteristic wit and irreverence, yet full of compassion. 'The Last War' brings home the...

A widely revered collection from the Nobel prize-winning poet, publishing in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time. This startlingly original reworking of the Persephone myth takes us to the icy shores of Averno, the crater lake regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld. Here, the consolations of rebirth and renewal are eclipsed by the immediacy...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. A Terrible Beauty Is Born features the powerful lines: 'But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet...' By turns joyful and despairing, this collection presents some of the twentieth century's greatest verse,...

Mary Oliver was awarded the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems, Volume One. Since its initial appearance, it has become one of the best-selling volumes of poetry in the country. This collection features thirty poems published only in this volume as well as selections from the poet's first eight books. Mary Oliver's perceptive, brilliantly crafted poems about the...

The first book by content creator, poet and musician David Larbi, who has a combined following of 1.4 million across Instagram and TikTok. 'Filled with such personality and contagious optimism . . . I love this book' — Matt Haig 'A vital handbook for navigating the seasons of life' — Candice Carty-Williams 'This book is a ray of sunshine' —...

From the South Auckland Poets Collective to regional writers festivals, at poetry slams and open mic nights, in theatre works like Show Ponies and Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, performance poetry has taken off in Aotearoa. In this anthology, ninety performance poets, rappers, spoken-word artists, slam poets, theatre makers, genre blenders and storytellers come together to celebrate the diverse voices...

I remember us, my love With plans so young and free Our faces flush like springtime When it was just you and me. A stirring poem of the partnership during parenthood that will give you all the feels. From bestselling author and poet Jessica Urlichs and gorgeously illustrated by Sarah Reinhardt. Also available: You Hung the Moon 'Jess has an...

Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of the seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus,...

Essentials by David Whyte is a masterful collection of poetry that immerses the reader in the very essence of lived experience. These poems traverse the tapestry of human life, capturing moments of profound beauty and raw emotion. Through the subtle shifts of daily life, the transformative power of changing seasons, and the inevitable cycles of joy and sorrow, Whyte's verses...

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass by Lana Del Rey is a stunning debut collection of poetry that captures the essence of thought, emotion, and introspection. Deeply personal and richly lyrical, the poems invite readers into an intimate world where raw honesty intertwines with poetic artistry. Each poem is a glimpse into fleeting moments and profound reflections, presented with a...

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the...

A must-have book for all parents, this illustrated collection of tender, funny, radically honest poems about parenthood, based on a series of popular Instagram posts, is the perfect baby shower or Mother’s Day gift. Modern parenthood can feel indescribable. This poignant collection of poetry and art chronicles the ups and downs of a rollercoaster ride that every parent will recognize....

Collected and annotated lyrics from one of music's most visionary bards, John Darnielle. A work of rapturous beauty, This Year - 365 songs annotated celebrates the creative life and the musical genius of John Darnielle through his most meaningful songs. From his early days recording on a boom box, through the evolution of the Mountain Goats from a solo project...

Explore the enchanting works of Rumi in this beautifully packaged poetry collection. For more than eight centuries, the poems of Persian mystic poet and Sufi master Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi Rumi have enthralled and inspired readers from every faith and background. Rumi's enduring legacy is a testament to the universal themes of love, friendship, and spirituality found in his work. The...

This inspiring collection, curated by the host of the Poetry Unbound, presents fifty poems about what it means to be alive in the world today. Each poem is paired with Pádraig's illuminating commentary that offers personal anecdotes and generous insights into the content of the poem. Engaging, accessible, and inviting, Poetry Unbound is the perfect companion for everyone who loves...

Frost was the first American poet who could honestly be reckoned a master-poet by world standards - Robert Graves A wonderful collection of Robert Frost's writing. No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. Hailed as 'the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet' by T.S. Eliot, he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four...

My all-time favourite collection of poems . . . Gibran's poetry always roots me in my humanity. --Rupi Kaur, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, and Home Body This stunning new hardcover edition features a full linen case, copper stamping, turquoise gilded edges, and coloured endpapers. It is one of the...

For this 75th anniversary edition of Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, editor Tracey Slaughter rounds up essential new poetry, reviews, and essays from both established and emerging New Zealand poets. Another packed issue, #60 showcases the raw and vital in 138 new poems — including from this year’s featured poet, Josiah Morgan — and 29 reviews. Its publication marks 75 years since...

After Inferno and Purgatorio, here is the last cantica (part) of the Divine Comedy, in a new translation by acclaimed translator Robin Kirkpatrick. Having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory in parts one and two of the Divine Comedy, Dante ascends to Heaven in this third and final part, continuing his soul's search...

In this unforgettable first book of poetry by Haro Lee, television—like love—binds us, liberates us, inspires, infuriates, and illuminates us. Watching Television in a Love Motel is a poetic chronicle of Haro’s time in Aotearoa, South Korea, and the United States of America. In four parts—‘Daytime Television’, ‘Primetime Television’, ‘Late Night Television’, and ‘Graveyard Slot’—she looks at her past, family,...

Content in wide, accustomed landscapes I hear the same wind songs there and bird calls too. My wanderings have brought me home, a closing spiral towards the centre of everything I've known. A new poetry collection from master writer Owen Marshall is always to be celebrated, bringing the welcome promise of the same wisdom, subtlety and wit that have won...

Beowulf tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland. Through its blend of myth and history, Beowulf vividly evokes a twilight world in which men and supernatural forces live side by side.

The poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and world literature, expressing a profound and passionate human yearning. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging...

New translation by Alicia Stallings, with an introduction by Richard Jenkyns. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius is a poem that blends scientific inquiry and philosophical exploration with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour, Lucretius seeks to show humanity that there is nothing to fear in death, as the soul is mortal and the...

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had—unwittingly—fulfilled his wish that he should 'be among the English poets after my death'. This wide-ranging selection of Keats's poetry...

Salt Quilt is a portrait of an uneasy stretch of time. The poet looks back at various episodes of her life and then far ahead, to other lives and ways of seeing. She sheds cynicism, celebrates some constraints and rejects others, and keeps rewriting the endings. Poetry has saved her more than once. On the inside maybe she is becoming...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series: beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is one of the best-loved poetry collections of all time, an innovative and groundbreaking experiment in which Blake intertwined text and image to dazzling effect. The volume, published sometimes as two separate collections, juxtaposes the innocent world of childhood with...

Gorgeous, collectable new edition of a great American poet, whose lyricism is often overshadowed by his short stories. A new collectable edition of Poe's poetry which demonstrates his skilful and imaginative command of the English language. Often regarded as the founder of the modern short story, Poe also laid the foundations for the symbolist poets and futurists of the 20th...

The Night is Darkening Round Me is part of the Little Black Classics series, released to celebrate Penguin's 80th anniversary. '... ever-present, phantom thing; My slave, my comrade, and my king'

The Ancient Light of the Dead is a casual stroll through the kind of eclectic village cemetery that each of us designs and builds over the course of a lifetime, and that each of us will one day inhabit. The 84 portraits in this collection are drawn from fragmentary beams of light that crossed the author’s experience—beautiful people, plain ones,...

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2024 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Published here in a stunning edition with images created by Carson, several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker and The Paris Review....

Te Reo version of I Gaze up at the Trees, with Dirt on my Knees Te huhuatanga o ngai kirehe, me te mahi matatoa e noho pu ana i te puihi. Ka whakakipakipa tenei pukapuka miharo i te arotau ki te taiao me te matemate a-one ki te whenua. This wonderful book fosters a love of nature and our sense...

In Plastic, Stacey Teague reaches beyond the frame of her known world to find a way back to te ao Māori. Hers is a complicated, joyful route, full of conversations with ancestors, old places and herself. In form, these poems range from plain-speaking prose and concrete poetry to odes and spells; in mood they are just as restless, taking in...

The New Yorker, The Best Books of Poetry of 2016 Critics PickBest Books listingBest LGBTQ BooksTop 100 Books of the YearBest Books of 2016 "There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong's sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the...

To find solace from grief, we have always turned to the written word. With poetry and prose spanning continents, religions and cultures, this moving anthology examines loss, celebrates lives well lived and offers words of consolation. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning clothbound pocket-sized classics with gilt edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect...

Strange Beach is the debut collection from poet and choreographer Oluwaseun Olayiwola. Intimate and erotic, ecological and philosophical, the poems in Strange Beach illuminate the body as a porous landscape across which existential dramas, filial fractures, and sexual reckonings occur. The collection ventures across the same 'Atlantic Ocean' as Claudia Rankine's Citizen, which is the same 'Atlantic Ocean' in Lowell's...

By conjuring aspects of a shared Northern European experience—its peculiar landscapes and weathers, its sea-faring incursions, the vernaculars of its buried and living peoples—Heaney found a way of articulating a vision of Ireland in which the disruptions and violences of the Troubles could be reflected too. North is set apart from the rest of Heaney's oeuvre because of its brilliant...

A record of daily bewilderments and accidental concessions to hope after a momentous loss. In this follow-up to her award-winning collection, Toxicon and Arachne, Joyelle McSweeney proposes a link between style and survival, even in the gravest of circumstances. Setting herself the task of writing a poem a day and accepting a single icon as her starting point, however unlikely—River...

One of Time's Must-Read Books of 2024 One of Electric Lit's Best Poetry Collections of 2024 One of LitHub's Poetry Books to Read in 2024 One of The Millions's Must-Read Poetry Books of Winter 2024 National Book Award finalist Diana Khoi Nguyen's second poetry collection, a haunting of a family's past upon its present, and a frank reckoning with how...

Schizophrene traces the intersections of migration and mental illness as they unfold in post-Partition diasporic communities. Bhanu Kapil brings forward the question of a healing narrative and explores trauma and place through a somatic, poetic, and cross-cultural psychiatric enquiry. Who was here? Who will never be here? Who has not yet arrived and never will? Towards an arrival without being,...

Ghost Of is a mourning song, not an exorcism or un-haunting of that which haunts, but attuned attention, unidirectional reaching across time, space, and distance to reach loved ones, ancestors, and strangers. By working with, in, and around the photographs that her brother left behind (from which he cut himself out before his death), Nguyen wrestles with what remains: memory,...

‘To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour’ - William Blake William Blake was a poet and artist. Born in Soho in the eighteenth century, the son of a shopkeeper, he is now acclaimed as a radical left-field...

Clive James read, learned and recited poetry aloud for most of his life. In this book, completed just before his death, he offers a selection of his favourite poems and a personal commentary on each. In the last months of his life, his vision impaired by surgery and unable to read, Clive James explored the treasure-house of his mind: the...

Fresh, beautiful new translations of one of the most important poets of all time, publishing in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke's birth. Fifty Poems presents fresh, beautiful new translations of one of the most important poets of all time, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke's birth. Rilke is one of the greatest...

American poet Emily Dickinson is revered around the world and influenced many feminist artists and writers. Her work is some of the best known and most quoted or adapted: 'Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all' - Emily Dickinson Dickinson received a very good...

The award-winning poet reckons with feminine archetypes, erotic love, and the shifting boundary between power and surrender. Fury is very lustful A body concealing its heart's desire Has a certain texture A tang or an edge if you will That the openhearted cannot match & when exactly does the deceitful Heart open? At climax. -from 'The Hanged Man' The force...

Dan Hogan's Secret Third Thing is a hyper-real comment on this hyper-real moment: it is suffused with internet culture and reflections on the lives we live, now, largely online. What characterises Hogan's poetry is the way that, each time we come close to fully apprehending the impending collapse of capitalism, we are waylaid by something more urgent and mundane. To...

The Second World War has shaped the modern world more than any other single event. This generous and haunting selection of English-language and translated poems includes verse written by servicemen who participated in the war—Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Randall Jarrell—as well as by survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust—Primo Levi, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan—and civilians across Europe and beyond. It...

From the highly controversial Leaves of Grass, with its overt sexual imagery and delight of sensual pleasures, to the iconic Captain, oh my captain immortalised in the film Dead Poets Society, this short collection is the ideal introduction to the poetry of Walt Whitman. One of the greats, he was celebrated both during his lifetime and ever since - he...

Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry In this graceful, elegant translation (Guardian), Poet Laureate Simon Armitage communicates the energy and humour of the Middle English tale with all the cut and thrust of the original. An unnamed narrator overhears a fiery verbal contest between the two eponymous birds, which moves entertainingly from the eloquent and philosophical to the...

Edward Mendelson has significantly expanded his authoritative, chronologically ordered edition of Auden's Selected Poems (first published in 1979), adding twenty items to the hundred in the original edition. This new edition broadens the focus to reflect the wealth of forms, the rhetorical and tonal range, and the variousness of content in Auden's poetry, all within the confines of one volume....

Funerals happen. You walk past one and call it a Tuesday afternoon; the sun comes down. This is how it happens.  A crowd gathers like black water, the mind forgets the mind, memories come knocking in the hallway, a pair of hands perfect the moon: Portrait is the darkly lucid debut poetry collection by Jackson McCarthy. Desire, time, vision, beauty,...

A new collection of Pushkin's great narrative and lyric verse, translated by Antony Wood WINNER OF THE READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2020 Alexander Pushkin established what we know as Russian literature. This collection includes his strongly personal lyric verse, which springs spontaneously from his everyday life – his numerous loves, his exile, his hectic life in St Petersburg – while the...

Self-seeding wind is a wind of ever-replenishing breath. -from 'The Walk, or The Principle of Rapid Peering' The title of Sylvia Legris' melopoeic collection The Principle of Rapid Peering comes from a phrase the nineteenth-century ornithologist and field biologist Joseph Grinnell used to describe the feeding behaviour of certain birds. Rather than waiting passively for food to approach them, these...

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness - between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves - from National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist Ada Limon.'I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,' writes Limon. 'I am the hurting kind.' What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To...

See the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts; With a tiger-leap half way Now she meets her coming prey. Lets it go as fast and then Has it in her power again. From 'The Kitten at Play' by William Wordsworth Curious, enigmatic and playful, cats have often inspired the literary imagination. This beautifully illustrated anthology of cat...

James Norcliffe, awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2022, is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most distinguished and beloved contemporary poets. A Day Like No Other gathers poems from his remarkable career, which includes eleven collections spanning nearly four decades. Often conversational in tone – talking (it may seem) of you and me – these...

An enchanting collection of the very best of Russian poetry, edited by acclaimed translator Robert Chandler. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, poetry's pre-eminence in Russia was unchallenged, with Pushkin and his contemporaries ushering in the 'Golden Age' of Russian literature. Although prose briefly gained the high ground, poetry again became dominant with the 'Silver Age', which held...

Selected Poems is a new edition of the selected poems of Russia's greatest twentieth-century poet, published to celebrate her 120th anniversary. With an Introduction by Carol Ann Duffy Anna Akhmatova is one of the most accomplished and well-loved poets Russia has ever produced. Her moving and passionate writing has won her an ardent readership all over the world. This selection,...

Collectable, beautifully presented hardback of Anna Akhmatova's greatest poems, edited by D. M. Thomas. His translations of Akhmatova have been described by John Bayley as 'a masterly achievement'. He has translated 19 additional poems especially for this Everyman edition. From her appearance in a small magazine in 1906 to her death in 1965, Anna Akhmatova was a dominant presence in...

An exciting new selection of poems exploring faith, the divine and doubt, written by poets across the world from antiquity to the present Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology is...

'Ruthlessly unguarded, surgically self-parodic and infinitely funny ... An indispensable book about friendship and intimacy; I alternately laughed and shivered as I turned the pages' Guardian From the prolific poet, activist and writer Eileen Myles, a Working Life unerringly captures the measure of life. Exploring permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder, these poems arise in the close...

A light revision of our definitive collection, translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite. Poetry remains a living part of the culture of Japan today. The clichés of everyday speech are often to be traced to famous ancient poems, and the traditional forms of poetry are widely known and loved. This congenial attitude comes from a poetical...

Newly discovered, an intimate collection of poems that shine a light on Iris Murdoch's own life and loves. Poems from an Attic is a definitive collection of poems by the major twentieth-century novelist and philosopher, newly discovered in the attic of Murdoch's former home. While she is pre-eminent as one of the twentieth century's great novelists and philosophers, Murdoch's life...

Poems: 1968-2020 presents a new selection of Nikki Giovanni's poetry, spanning from 1968 to the present day. For more than fifty years, Nikki Giovanni's poetry has dazzled and inspired readers. Emerging from the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s, she quickly became one of the most celebrated and controversial poets of the era. Now considered a living legend, this...

Donna Ashworth is the wordsmith behind the social media phenomenon LADIES PASS IT ON, and her community of more than 680,000 followers across two platforms is growing by 10,000 every month. Life is a collection of poems which address the issues we all face, like ageing, mental health, and body image issues as we learn to navigate the bumpiest of...

A celebration of the moon, of life and of love from one of Australia’s most acclaimed authors. By turns romantic and realist, Bruce Pascoe explores the urgency of the contemporary climate crisis and the need to love Country in his haunting, slow-burning and classical poetry style. This is startlingly vulnerable poetry to heal the earth, to navigate heartache, to provoke...

Poems to make your blood run cold. Poems to make your heart beat faster. Poems to sink your teeth into...Seductively sinister, both frightening and alluring, the undead have always been the perfect vessel for humanity's fears and desires. The poems in this collection of dark delights range across centuries and languages; poems that tell stories, offer warnings, and imagine life...

In the introduction to his selection of some of the greatest sonnets ever written, Paul Muldoon reminds us that part of the reason for the 'durability' of the sonnet is its 'very specific duration'. It is the perfect length for what Dante Gabriel Rossetti described as 'a moment's monument' or William Wordsworth as a 'scanty plot of ground' offering 'brief...