A Poem For Every Day of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share on every day of the year. Reflecting the changing seasons and linking to events on key dates – funny for April Fool's Day, festive for Christmas – these poems are thoughtful, inspiring, humbling, informative, quiet, loud, small, epic,…
The classic collection of poetry from the author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS. ‘A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman’ BARACK OBAMA Maya Angelou’s poetry – lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful – speaks of love, longing, partings; of Saturday night partying, and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and…
Book of Longing is Leonard Cohen's astonishing new collection of poems, the first since Book of Mercy was published nearly three decades ago. Leonard Cohen made his name as a poet before he came to worldwide attention as a singer and songwriter. Book of Longing, his new collection of poetry, was twenty years in the making and written in Montreal,…
Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. This edition of the poetry of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) includes all the poems contained in the Definitive Edition of 1940. In his lifetime, Kipling was widely regarded as the unofficial Poet Laureate, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His poetry is striking…
Allen Ginsberg was the bard of the beat generation, and Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems is a collection of his finest work published in Penguin Modern Classics, including 'Howl', whose vindication at an obscenity trial was a watershed moment in twentieth-century history. 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked' Beat movement icon and visionary poet,…
'I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday' Freewheeling and spontaneous, Mexico City Blues is Jack Kerouac's most significant and emblematic poem. Consisting of 242 loosely linked 'choruses', it takes in life, death, spirituality, jazz improvisation, memory, fantasies and dreams, all infused with the rhythm of the blues, to…
A celebratory 20th anniversary edition of this landmark collection from black writers across the literary spectrum This ground-breaking anthology was first published twenty years ago, into a different literary landscape. Showcasing the work of more than 100 black British authors, this 20th anniversary edition celebrates their lasting contributions to literature and to our wider culture. Including poetry from Roger Robinson,…
The best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu contains 100 short poems on nature, the seasons, travel, and, above all, love. Dating back to the seventh century, these elegant, precisely observed waka poems (the precursor of haiku) express deep emotion through visual images based on a penetrating observation of the natural world. Peter…
n Poems to Live Your Life By, Chris Riddell, political cartoonist for the Observer, has selected his very favourite classic and modern poems about life, death and everything in between. This gorgeously illustrated collection includes forty-six poems and is divided into sections covering: musings, youth, family, love, imaginings, nature, war and endings. Chris Riddell brings them to life with his…
The most beautiful and powerful of Milosz's poems from across his writing life This selection brings together the most beautiful and powerful of Czeslaw Milosz's poems, spanning his writing life. In verses such as 'Café' he considers the upheaval, revolutions and two world wars that he had witnessed, while 'My Faithful Mother Tongue' reflects the loyalty he felt to his…
With an Introduction and Notes by Katherine McGowran. Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerable woman poet in England before the twentieth century. No reading of nineteenth-century poetry can be complete without attention to this prolific and popular poet. Rosetti's inner life dominates her poetry, exploring loss and unattainable hope. Her divine poems have a freshness and toughness…
Lawrence's reputation as a novelist has often meant that his achievements in poetry have failed to receive the recognition they deserve. This edition brings together, in a form he himself sanctioned, his Collected Poems of 1928, the unexpurgated version of Pansies, and Nettles, adding to these volumes the contents of the two notebooks in which he was still writing poetry…
William Blake was an engraver, painter and visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary of the Romantic poets. His writing attracted the astonished admiration of authors as diverse as Wordsworth, Ruskin, W.B.Yeats, and more recently beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the 'flower power' generation. He is one of England's most original artists whose works aim to liberate…
This is one of the greatest collections of love poetry ever published. Inspired by Pablo Neruda's youthful relationships and injected with an expressive eroticism, these poems are as accomplished as they are evocative and sensual. First published in 1924 to international acclaim when Neruda was just nineteen, this book is still adored the world over for being one of the…
