English Poetry

The Divine Comedy is Dante's record of his visionary journey through the triple realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. This, the first epic of which its author is the protagonist and his individual imaginings the content, weaves together the three threads of classical and Christian history, contemporary Medieval politics and religion, and Dante's own inner life including his love for Beatrice, to create the most complex and highly structured long poem extant.

Religion once formed the rhythms and structures of society: marking time with calendars, carving out space for contemplation, creating connection, reinforcing legacy and morality. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show. So where shall we find our magic? How do we celebrate milestones? Which texts can focus our attention but still offer space for inquiry, communion, and the chance to dwell for a dazzling instant in what can’t be said?

In the days of Samuel, Israel’s worst enemy is the Philistines: bloodthirsty worshippers of Dagon the fish god. Goliath is but one member of an elite warrior cult of six giants, The Sons of Rapha, whose sole ambition is to kill the promised messiah king of Israel. As David rises, he must flee the demon-possessed King Saul, avoid assassination, withstand the seduction of a Philistine queen, conquer the last of the giants in Israel and overcome his own weakness for many wives.

“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.

Gordon Downie, lead singer and lyricist for the popular Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, released his first solo record, Coke Machine Glow, in spring 2001. Alongside the album, his first book of poetry and prose under the same title was published, including the lyrics to the 16 songs on the record. Now, on the 20th-anniversary year of Coke Machine Glow, fans have more to delight in: the audiobook of Coke Machine Glow and a brand-new album by Downie, released posthumously.

Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts & Poems explores not only Madsen's remarkable life and experiences in and out of Hollywood, but also his familial influences that have participated in crafting and shaping him, including thoughts on his father; his mother and the rumor that he was born without a left hand; ghosts, whiskey, and payback; Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, and "sensitive sons of bitches"; the mentality of actors and growing up to be a man; his first audition; drunken behavior; epic drinkers; and much, much more.

Dive into this collection of poetry and prose inspired by modern dating and broken relationships, perfect for fans of Rupi Kaur and Orion Carloto.

Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award-winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people. In these poems, Reed finds agency in the other-than-human identities assigned to those assaulted by savageries of the state. In doing so, he summons a retaliatory, counterviolent black spirit to revolt and to inhabit the revolting.

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'". It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared.

There were many things that Hollie McNish didn't know before she was pregnant. How her family and friends would react; that Mr Whippy would be off the menu; how quickly ice can melt on a stomach. These were on top of the many other things she didn't know about babies: how to stand while holding one; how to do a poetry gig with your baby as a member of the audience; how drum'n'bass can make a great lullaby. But Hollie learned. And she's still learning, slowly.

Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is revered as one of the great writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Now available on audio for the first time, the poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt, and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions.

Sing along with Julia Donaldson and her latest collection of songs - fun for kids and parents alike. As well as being the UK's most successful picture book author, Julia Donaldson is a gifted songwriter for children. This volume includes nine of her best-loved songs. The songs will be familiar to anyone who has heard them on TV or radio, or enjoyed one of Julia's hugely popular live performances. All nine songs are sung by the author. Now everyone can sing along!

Seventh grader Henrietta Weldon gets to switch schools—finally! She’ll be “mainstreaming” into public school, leaving her special education school behind. She can’t wait for her new schedule, new friends, and new classes. Henri’s dyscalculia, a learning disability that makes math challenging to process and understand, is what she expects to give her problems.

Wordsworth's The Prelude is the consummation of his achievement as the great founder of English romanticism. An autobiography in verse, it tells of his childhood in the Lake District, his student days in Cambridge, his passion for the French Revolution and his later disenchantment with it. It also tells of his personal journey to a belief in Nature as the great moral and spiritual force which shapes human life, but on which human society all too often turns its back.

Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer’s best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed “dirty old man”, Bukowski used alcohol as muse and as fuel, a conflicted relationship responsible for some of his darkest moments, as well as some of his most joyful and inspired. In On Drinking, Bukowski expert Abel Debritto has collected the writer’s most profound, funny, and memorable work on his ups and downs with the hard stuff.

What starts with young Jim Hawkins meeting a beggar and ends in a climactic battle between him and one of the most infamous villains in literature — Long John Silver — has long been revered as the ultimate pirate adventure story. This non - dramatized classic will sweep you off to a world of sly and savvy seafarers as the young Hawkins navigates treachery, assassination and the ominous prophecy of the black spot in the greatest treasure hunt known to literature.

Your inner being wants you to listen to them... and until you do, you're cut off from the peace, love, and fulfillment you deserve. Right now, you’re living in your default self. Ever since you were a little child, you have been constructing the patterns that govern your life, some of them taught, some of them developed to protect you in situations that have long since passed. Your inner child still carries wounds, many of which you’re not even aware of, and your sense of self is built around those wounds and the patterns you created to carry yourself through life with them.

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven into a classic.

The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke addresses the issues of God, death, and "destructive time." Rilke tries to transform these problems into an inner world, what he calls "a whole inner world as if an angel, comprehending all space, were blind and looking into himself." Eminent author and translator Stephen Mitchell brings these ideas vividly to life in this new translation of Rilke's most transcendent works.

The iconic love story of the Middle East, by a 12th-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, Layli and Majnun tells of star-crossed lovers whose union is tragically thwarted by their families and whose passion continues to ripple out across the centuries. Theirs is a love that lasts a lifetime, and in Nezami's immortal telling, erotic longing blends with spiritual self-denial in an allegory of Sufi aspiration, as the amenities of civilization give way to the elemental wilderness.