Other books that might interest you

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  The Top 10 Poets – The...

  Langston Hughes, Phillis...

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  The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives.  Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives. 
  But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poets, who brim with talent and verse, on a range of subjects and themes that we can all enjoy. 
  In this volume we collect together poets who, by the mere colour of their skin, were treated with such disdain and racism that it is difficult to believe that poetry of such tenderness, beauty and authority could exist.

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  This is not a poem

  L. A. Cunningham

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  This is not a poem. 
  It's barely even a book. 
  It's one page making fun of poems that aren't poems. 
  And now it’s a 42-second audiobook too! Perfect for those long road trips and the busy individual with no time to sit down with a book.

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  A Scent of Heaven

  Nkechi Ani Igwe

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  A Scent of Heaven is food for the soul lost in the dark night of the soul. This body of poems heals the wounds of the hopeless on every level-- many have found freedom in this text. Written as an ekphrastic text, the cover met Igwe with the telling of her story, and the stories of her people. These words are a radically honest approach to the altar of the soul, and the words invite you to join in this recounting of the body, mind and Spirit. Written by a living ancestor for other living ancestors--those who are wading the deep and dark at the bottom of the sea, here they found me a bit of me. This work is heavily influenced by Igwe's spiritual journey and her life existing between cultures: a quintessential, Nigerian brand of Christianity and her forays into the world of Odinani and ancestral veneration.

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  Julia or The Convent of St...

  Amelia Opie

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  Amelia Alderson, an only child, was born on the 12th November 1769 in Norwich, England. 
  After the death of her mother on New Year’s Eve 1784 she became her father's housekeeper and hostess. 
  The young Amelia was energetic, attractive, and an admirer of fashion.  She spent much of her youth writing poetry and plays and putting on local amateur theatricals.  At 18 she had published anonymously ‘The Dangers of Coquetry’. 
  Amelia married in the spring of 1798 to the artist John Opie at the Church of St Marylebone, in Westminster, and together they lived in Berners Street where Amelia was already living. 
  Her next novel in 1801 ‘Father and Daughter’, was very popular even though it dealt with such themes as illegitimacy, a socially difficult subject for its times.  From this point on published works were far more regular.  The following year her volume ‘Poems’ appeared and was again very popular.  Novels continued to flow and she never once abandoned her social activism and her call for better treatment of women and the dispossessed in her works.  She was also keenly involved in a love of society and its attendant frills. 
  Encouraged by her husband to write more she published Adeline Mowbray in 1804, an exploration of women's education, marriage, and the abolition of slavery.  
  Her husband died in 1807 and she paused from writing for a few years before resuming with further novels and poems.  Of particular interest was her short poem ‘The Black Man's Lament’ in 1826.  Her life now was in the main spent travelling and working for charities and against slavery.  She even helped create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich which organised a parliamentary petition of 187,000 names of which hers was the first name. 
  After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom.  
  Amelia Opie died on the 2nd December 1853 in Norwich.  She was 84.

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  Chapters by Tim Key

  Tim Key

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  The audiobook of Tim Key's least ambitious project to date. A slim book of the crap he’s been churning out over the past eighteen months.  
  Poems about men getting stuck in webs, poems about the ancient city of Canterbury, poems about canoodling with a rose.  
  A prolific sod, he’s selected ninety of his trademark vignettes and packed them off to Emily Juniper for her to fling onto pages and shape into a book.  
  Discussions ensued about what, if anything, the point of it all was, and a healthy debate as to whether it should be broken up into chapters and, if so, why. All of these discussions are documented in the leftover space around the poems. The result is a splurge of words which very occasionally shine a light on modern times.  
  It is the third book Tim and Emily have generated together. 
  Chapters by Tim Key. 
  Read by Tim Key with Katy Wix as Emily Juniper. 
  Produced, recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell. 
  Executive producer is Ben Williams.  
  Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 
  Original book published by Utter & Press, copyright Tim Key, 2023. 
  This recording is copyrighted by Plosive Limited, 2023.

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  Sir Ralph Richardson reads...

  William Blake

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  William Blake was largely unrecognised during his lifetime but is now considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". Here a selection of his finest work, starting with "And did those feet in ancient time", is read by Sir Ralph Richardson.

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