Poetry

A new translation of one of the literary wonders of the medieval world and the greatest source of knowledge of Viking lore in existence. Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era—the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed Völsung...

Guided by the poet Virgil, Dante plunges to the very depths of Hell and embarks on his arduous journey towards God. Together they descend through the twenty-four circles of the underworld and encounter the tormented souls of the damned—from heretics and pagans to gluttons, criminals, and seducers—who tell of their sad fates and predict events still to come in Dante's...

A collection of poems exemplifying Romantic aesthetic ideals, whose unique beauty lies in their revolutionary exploration of the 'overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility', Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads is edited with a note on the text by Michael Schmidt in Penguin Classics. Published in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by...

The first collected and annotated edition of Carroll's brilliant, witty poems, edited by Gillian Beer. '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 and Other Nonsense. This new edition collects together the marvellous range of Carroll's poetry, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques,...

Maya Angelou's poetry – lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful – speaks of love, longing, and partings; of Saturday night partying, and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams. 'The caged bird sings/ with a fearful trill/ of things unknown/ but longed for still/ and his tune is heard/ on the distant hill/ for the...

Doggedly Onward is the ultimate Pam Ayres collection, showcasing Britain's favourite poet's lifetime of work that stretches back over more than 50 years. 'Pam Ayres is a proper poet, whose wistful, funny, and perceptive verse captures both the joy and unfairness of life.' The Sunday Times Pam Ayres has spent a lifetime bringing joy to the nation with her poetry,...

A timeless and comprehensive anthology of enduring English language poetry, featuring entries from 150 British and American poets, including Alexander Pope, Lord Byron, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Emily Dickinson. The last six hundred years in British and American literature have given us some of the most moving and memorable poems in all literature. Now, discover many of these same...

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...

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...

I Thought We’d Be Famous is a line in the sand. It's a look back on Dominic’s days pre chronic illness, and a new life of blood tests and cancer scares. It’s about the dreams that rusted in the backyard and the ones he ended up living. It's about the guilt in his blood after escaping a life of welfare and...

The poems in this book, including many of her best known such as Lady Lazarus, Daddy, and Fever 103, were all written between the publication in 1960 of Sylvia Plath's first book, The Colossus, and her death in 1963. If the poems are despairing, vengeful, and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually...

A work of tremendous influence that has inspired writers from his ancient Greek contemporaries to modernist writers such as T.S. Eliot, Homer's epic poem The Iliad is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox in Penguin Classics. One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's The Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode...

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...

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...

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 to...

Clumsy Beauty is filled with warmth, wit, and a dash of irreverence. This exquisitely illustrated collection of bite-size poems from J. K. Kennedy invites you to hear the "I love you" in every little moment. An enchantingly illustrated collection of poems designed to inspire and empower, Clumsy Beauty invites you to hear the "I love you" in every little moment....

From international bestselling poet Rupi Kaur, a beautifully designed, three-book boxed set of the poetry collections that solidified her as the voice of a generation: milk and honey, the sun and her flowers, and home body.

The Space Between Us explores the trials of love and what it's like to live a life separated by distance from someone you care about. Its content is thoughtfully divided into five chapters, or phases, of the long-distance experience: At First Glance, Living for Tomorrow, Lonely Nights, Grow Together/Grow Apart, and When I See You. A combination of poems and...

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...

A gift to bring joy and comfort to your days, from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Wild Hope Joy Chose You is a beautiful, colour-illustrated collection of Donna's most loved poems to bring more joy into our imperfect lives. When we allow joy to wrap her quiet warmth around us, we find ourselves opening up to more...

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...

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...

AUP New Poets 12 brings together three careful observers of the everyday and the ineffable. Anuja Mitra, Loretta Riach and Zephyr Zhang tell of wandering through cities, ghostworking from office cubicles and sweating through heat waves and tax season; of grappling with questions of alienation, belonging, lust and grief. Though irreverence and a generational malaise might hover at the poems’...

Words About Birds by Mike Howell is a sequel to Fur to Feathers & Taniwha & Taonga. This illustrated guide blends native birds with Māori whakataukī, encouraging young (and old) readers to observe, question, and connect with Aotearoa's environment. By combining science, language, and creativity, it turns birdwatching into a rich learning experience. Over thousands of years through sunshine and...

Countless writers have been inspired by the beauty of birds - their colours, their easy flight, their lightness and softness, and the grace and whimsicality of their ways. Our literature, especially our poetry, is full of them. This annotated edition of Poems About Birds selects the very best from H. J. Massingham's original collection which was first published in 1922....

“The Brontës had their moors, I have my marshes,” Lorine Niedecker wrote of flood-prone Black Hawk Island in Wisconsin, where she lived most of her life. Her life by water, as she called it, could not have been further removed from the avant-garde poetry scene where she also made a home. Niedecker is one of the most important poets of...

What would Greek and Roman myth look like if women had written the stories? asks Tara Welch in her illuminating Introduction to this volume. Stanley Lombardo and Melina McClure's faithful translation of Ovid's famous letters, purportedly written by heroines of classical antiquity to their absent lovers, offers an inkling of one intriguing possibility. This compelling translation brings the voices of...

An anthology of some of the greatest poetry in the English language. Poetry and music have been associated with each other from the very beginning. The Penguin Book of English Song draws together a great variety of English poetry (including Irish, Scots and Welsh writers) that has reached a wider audience through the magic of music. Richard Stokes's rich anthology...

An entrancing, illustrated edition of one of the most celebrated poems of all time. With an introduction by Marina Warner The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge's celebrated poem, was written at the suggestion of William Wordsworth in the early days of their friendship and published for the first time in 1798. It is the story of a nightmare voyage...

An award-winning collection from one of America's most distinguished twentieth-century poets. Blessing the Boats draws together poems from across Lucille Clifton's career, showcasing the stunning simplicity and grace with which she addressed the whole of human experience—birth, death, children, family, illness, sexuality, and injustice in antebellum and contemporary America. Hers is a poetry that is passionate and wise, not afraid...

This selection of poems covers the period 1972 to 2002. This beautifully elegant volume excludes the cartoon element, focusing on Leunig's brilliant texts, with all their absurdity, hilarity, poignancy, and joyfulness. Michael Leunig pokes fun at human folly and pretentiousness, deplores the idiocy of war, and revels in the redeeming power of love. Curly Verse: Selected Poems stands out as...

First Penguin volume Of best Japanese haiku Vivid translations Now a global poetry, the haiku was originally a Japanese verse form that flourished from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Although renowned for its brevity, usually running over three lines in seventeen syllables, and by its use of natural imagery to make Zen-like observations about reality, in fact, the haiku is...

Bringing together 31 of his poems as a meditation on the work of the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, New Zealand poet Bernard Cadogan recommends that you read one poem each day for a month, allowing yourself the time to engage with it. Each poem is a response either to reading a poem by Hölderlin, or to his situation. He uses...

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...

The comprehensive guide to a deeply human tradition of memory, mourning and consolation. Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practised by the Romans, revitalised by the poets of the Renaissance and continuing down to the present day, it speaks eloquently and affectingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. It...

An important new selection of First World War poetry, edited by Jon Stallworthy and Jane Potter. This new selection brings together the poetry of three of the most distinctive and moving voices to emerge from the First World War. Here are the controlled passion and rich metaphors of Wilfred Owen's celebrated verses such as Anthem for Doomed Youth and Strange...

One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, including extracts from his masterpiece, The Prelude, and the best-loved of his shorter poems such as 'Composed Upon Westminster...

Published for the centenary of his birth, a gathering of lucid, intensely lyrical poetry from one of the twentieth century's pre-eminent literary voices. be courageous when reason fails you be courageous in the final reckoning it is the only thing that counts Zbigniew Herbert was one of the best-known and most-translated poets of post-war Poland, opposed alike to Communism, Fascism,...

For every woman who's ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone. The Size of Your Joy is an intimate and empowering exploration of the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood, offering an unflinching look at how identity, resilience, and self-worth are shaped by the intersections of...

A new selection of John Donne's endlessly innovative and fascinating verse, from the witty conceit of 'The Flea' to the instense spirituality of his divine poems. Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, John Donne (1572-1631) was also among the most intriguing figures of the Elizabethan age. A sensualist who composed erotic and playful love poetry in...

I write not to communicate or reveal but to mull and conceal, but I guess that’s a form of communication too, of connection, of little anchors, little hooks, little holes you can put your eye up to, your heart up to, and maybe you will see something you will recognise.In her new collection – a poetic collage-essay-memoir – Helen Rickerby...

I am an unmade bed. I am a single thing made up of many other things. I am a reason, a raising, a roof to be raised. I am a song you sing in your sleep. I am a collection of dots. I am a need you buried in the back garden. I am a literal spray of light across...

Dracula in the Colonies by Tim Jones transports readers to Aotearoa, where Dracula finds himself on a stolen estate between a braided river and the Main Divide. Sophisticated and devious, Dracula positions himself at the centre of power, attempting to influence the future of a nation. Tim Jones arrives in Aotearoa by ship from Lincolnshire, encountering a land of treacherous...

Between can be the fertile space where one person ends and another begins, the anxiety after a wave lands on a beleaguered shore and before the next begins, the quiet after a neighbour’s machine finishes its clatter and beetles start to buzz. It can be a certain place as when a dear friend lies dying and an uncertain place when...

From actress Haley Lu Richardson—a raw, beautiful, and playful debut collection of poetry about the chaos of being a twenty-something girl in this world. i always wanted to be a pop star so i could catharize my woes, heartbreak and general experience of life in whatever vulnerable, valiant, or petty ways i wished unfortunately i’m tone deaf so instead, i...

In her full-length poetry debut, Overseas Experience, Nicola Andrews (Ngati Paoa, Pakeha) finds herself on two sides of the Pacific Ocean, writing to and from Tamaki Makaurau and San Francisco. From Overseas, billionaires, the digital world, Dr. Ropata, and a rogue pohutukawa collide. It's a world beyond the long white cloud, examined through its eccentricities and familiarities. The Experience is...

"If sometimes I think of thoughts as being behind the eyes, sometimes I think of them more as floating, in a kind of cloud around the outside of my head." Part autobiography of thought, part philosophical tract, part poetics, a book about chickens and family and seasons, Terrier, Worrier is a literary sequence to be relished as language and as...

If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale. This rich, elegiac compilation of work from the late Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his marvellous poetry and deeply human writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family. The renowned poet and literature professor Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City...

From TikTok phenomenon Whitney Hanson, a revised edition of her bestselling Home, now with a new introduction and more than a dozen new poems "the bees aren't going to go away but they are going to change with you sometimes they will be chaotic sometimes they will rest sometimes they will give you sweet honey and sometimes they will remind...

And just like that, like a simpleneighbourhood event, a miracle istaking place. "If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger," Mary Oliver once said in an interview. Finally, in Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in Oliver's love poems. Here, great happiness abounds. Our most delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described...

Francis Aschoff’s debut poetry collection is a time machine trip from the heights of first love to the yellow days of infancy, from crying in club bathrooms to a future not yet known. These poems are a magnifying glass, a tender eye and a flame thrower. They are love poems to the difficulties of love – love that is absent...

Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War not in any conventional way but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolise the war's tragic arc and lethal fury. His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, "the handsomest young man in...

'The world is blood-hot and personal': in her moving and illuminating introduction, the poet Emily Berry remembers her own teenage encounters with Ariel and offers a personal way into this definitive collection. She shows us how Plath can crystallise our most volatile emotions, transforming them into images so potent and precise that they resonate with us all. Plath has been...

A stunning new edition with deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers, and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. The poetry of W.B. Yeats is among the most-loved literature of the twentieth century. At times dream-like, at others political, his verse has a rich sense of...

A petite, beautifully packaged collection of poems about motherhood, this is the perfect gift for mothers of all ages. This beautifully illustrated, empowering collection features more than 25 poignant poems about the incredible experience of being a mother. Filled with inspiring and moving poetry exploring motherhood in all its dimensions—from pregnancy and birth to the countless joys, struggles, and hilarious...

Life has a habit of tripping us up at times, usually when we least expect (or can cope) with it. In The Emergency Poet, Deborah Alma (the Emergency Poet herself) presents a thoughtful and highly therapeutic selection of poems, designed to lift your mood, helping you relax and take stock. We've all experienced moments when life feels overwhelming, and it...

A lavish collector's edition of the complete poems of eminent Japanese master of the haiku, Matsuo Bashō—with a new index that contains the full Japanese text of the original poems. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is arguably the greatest figure in the history of Japanese literature and the master of the haiku. Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō offers in English...

A wonderfully readable anthology of our greatest poetry, chosen by the author of A Little History of Poetry "Does anyone know more about poetry than John Carey? Almost certainly not."—The Times A poem seems a fragile thing. Change a word and it is broken. But poems outlive empires and survive the devastation of conquests. Celebrated author John Carey here presents...

There isn't a timescale for how you should heal Your bad days are valid, your heartache is real But so is the day that your smile will return That fire within you continues to burn You will overcome this and continue to thrive You are here, you are loved, you are whole, you're alive. A formidable follow-up to her award-winning...

The critically acclaimed exploration of mounting racial aggressions in 21st-century daily life and in the media. In this moving, critical, and fiercely intelligent collection of prose poems, Claudia Rankine examines the experience of race and racism in Western society through sharp vignettes of everyday discrimination and prejudice, and longer meditations on the violence—whether linguistic or physical—which has impacted the lives...

A new verse translation of one of the foundational ancient Greek works by the award-winning poet Alicia Stallings. The ancient Greeks revered Hesiod, believing he had beaten Homer in a singing contest, and that after his dead body was thrown to sea it was brought back by dolphins. His Works and Days is one of the most important early works...

C. P. Cavafy is one of the most singular and poignant voices of twentieth-century European poetry, conjuring a magical interior world through lyrical evocations of remembered passions, imagined monologues, and dramatic retellings of his native Alexandria's ancient past. Figures from antiquity speak with telling interruptions from the author in such poems as Anna Comnena and You did not understand, while...

Fifty new books at €1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. 'I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided . . .' By turns comical, grouchy and exalted, and including his tragic masterpiece The Great Hunger, some of the key poems by the...

Member of Parliament, tutor to Oliver Cromwell's ward, satirist and friend of John Milton, Andrew Marvell was one of the most interesting and important poets of the seventeenth century. The Complete Poems demonstrates his unique skill and immense diversity to the full, and includes lyrical love-poetry, religious works and biting satire. From the passionately erotic To his Coy Mistress, to...

Michael Hamburger's distinguished translation of a selection of poems by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is now recognised as one of Europe's supreme poets. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious sequence of...

Part of a series of new editions of Lawrence's works From early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets. This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some of his...

"Really, what other book would anyone ever need?" -Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Honeybee "Elegant and exquisite." -Deepak Chopra, author of Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha The Big Red Book is a poetic masterpiece from Jalaluddin Rumi, the medieval Sufi mystic whom Time magazine calls "the most popular poet in America." Readers continue to be awed and inspired by Rumi's masterfully...

Selected and arranged by the author, How To Be Invisible presents the lyrics of Kate Bush in a beautiful new paperback edition featuring a new cover by illustrator Jim Kay. 'The greatest singer-songwriter of the past 40 years, whose work is complex, ethereal and filled with so many secrets that one can listen to the albums for decades and still...

A beautiful, skilfully crafted work of chivalric romance. Written by an unknown author in the twelfth century, this powerful tale of murder and revenge reaches back to the earliest epochs of German antiquity, transforming centuries-old legend into a masterpiece of chivalric drama. Siegfried, a great prince of the Netherlands, wins the hand of the beautiful princess Kriemhild of Burgundy by...

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.’ One hot summer’s day in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway sets out to buy...

Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This volume brings together the poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counter-culture. The apocalyptic Howl became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, it shows why Ginsberg was one of...

Byron's exotic poem on the love life and adventures of Don Juan. Byron's exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, beginning with his illicit love affair at the age of sixteen in his native Spain and his subsequent exile to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave,...

Translated by renowned Rumi expert Nader Khalili, over 120 poems about love from the Persian mystic poet and Sufi master have been carefully collected and curated in this beautifully illustrated edition. For more than eight centuries, Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi Rumi—commonly referred to simply as Rumi—has enchanted and enthralled readers from every faith and background with his universal themes of love,...

The greatest classic of Vietnamese literature in a stunning new verse translation. "This manuscript is ancient, priceless, bamboo-rolled, perfumed with musty spices. Sit comfortably by this good light, that you may learn the hard-won lesson that these characters contain." The Song of Kieu is the greatest classic of Vietnamese literature. It tells the story of the beautiful Vuong Thoy Kieu,...

Global sensation and internationally renowned author, Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey celebrates the challenges and triumphs facing the modern woman. In strikingly personal, yet widely relatable poems accompanied by original illustrations, Kaur challenges the idea that women should be quiet, gentle, and submissive and instead encourages women to be strong, powerful, and proud. Each of the four chapters (“the hurting,”...

The essential poems of Emily Dickinson selected and introduced by Joyce Carol Oates “Between them, our great visionary poets of the American nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, have come to represent the extreme, idiosyncratic poles of the American psyche. . . . Dickinson never shied away from the great subjects of human suffering, loss, death, even madness, but...

First time in Black Classics Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils, wrote Edward Lear (1812-88), and this collection demonstrates the wonderfully varied ways in which he pursued his philosophy of life. He created an extraordinary world filled with bizarre creatures - from the Dong with a luminous nose to the Pobble who has no toes - who misbehave with...

On Love and Barley by Matsuo Basho presents the work of one of the greatest Japanese poets, a master of haiku. Known not only for his literary genius, Basho was also a Buddhist monk and a lifelong traveller. His poems embody 'karumi', or lightness of touch, and embrace the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each verse beautifully evokes aspects...

One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each offers a new translation of the most widely known and popular collection of Japanese poetry. 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...