English Poetry

Poet and podcaster Jarod K. Anderson (creator of The CryptoNaturalist podcast and author of Field Guide to the Haunted Forest) celebrates the natural world with warmth and humor. The poetry and prose in this collection are love letters to impermanence, to our kinship with nature, to our strange ability to conjure meaning. Vivid and approachable, the work gathered here invites listeners to rediscover commonplace wonders and find new beauty in topics ranging from moss to mortality.

Beloved by her fans, special to the poet’s own heart, Mary Oliver’s dog poems offer a special window into her world. Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs is a celebration of the special bond between human and dog, as understood through the poet’s relationships to the canines that have accompanied her daily walks, warmed her home, and inspired her work. In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.

In poyums, Len Pennie has created a collection that is as approachable as it is affecting; whether she's writing letters to her younger self, advocating for women's rights or adapting fairy tales to process an abusive relationship, Len's voice is bold, unashamedly frank and unmistakeably hers. She consciously fuses Scots into her poetry, cleverly ensuring that it is accessible to speakers of both languages.

Blood and Kudzu: A Requiem for the Son, written by Seth Ethan Bailey offers a powerful requiem for Southern sons—for the men raised on gospel hymns and grief, for the boys who were told to harden, and the fathers who disappeared into legacy.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘novel in verse’ is an epic poem that voices with enchanting beauty and literary courage the perspective of Victorian women. Aurora Leigh forges her own path to become a poet, successfully proving her worth, defying the ideals of her era, and rescuing her spirit from the suppression of a routine domestic life. Infusing the work with her own experience and passion, Browning produced a true masterpiece.

Something Else in My Veins is a poetic deep dive into the world of paranoia and delusion which hard drug users oftentimes find themselves in. Bagwell captures the experiences of meth addicts and exposes his raw and expressionistic emotions. As a former user and dealer himself, he is unashamed to bring not only his knowledge and perspective on such things to light, but also the emotional devastation that comes from losing one's sense of self-identity along with access to the drug itself.

One tiny snail longs to see the world and hitches a lift on the tail of a whale. Together they go on an amazing journey, past icebergs and volcanoes, sharks and penguins, and the little snail feels so small in the vastness of the world. But when disaster strikes and the whale is beached in a bay, it's the tiny snail who saves the day.

Lucretius was born in 99 BC, and On the Nature of Things is his only surviving work. His aim was to free the Roman world from its two great terrors - the gods and death. Lucretius argues that the gods are not actively involved in life, so need not be appeased; and that death is the end of everything human - body and soul - and therefore should not be feared. But On the Nature of Things is also a poem of striking imagery, intimate natural observation and touching pathos.

This translation of The Iliad equals Fitzgerald's earlier Odyssey in power and imagination. It recreates the original action as conceived by Homer, using fresh and flexible blank verse that is both lyrical and dramatic.

In this exquisite poetry collection, Whitney Hanson chronicles the loss of a loved one, tracing the progression of grief and healing through the lens of music. We each begin with a simple note, but as life progresses, we’re led to the next note, and the next—all of which combine to form the melody of a song and a life. As life becomes more complicated and complex, we find that loss, grief, and heartache can muffle our music, making the world go silent.

Born in Sri Lanka during the Second World War, Ondaatje was sent as a child to school in London, and later moved to Canada. While he has lived here since, these poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world—describing himself as a “mongrel,” someone born out of diverse cultures. Here, rediscovering the influence of every border crossed, he moves back and forth in time.

Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth-birthday party, she's been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules - like "no making waves", "avoid eating in public", and "don't move so fast that your body jiggles". And she's found her safe space - her swimming pool - where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It's also where she can get away from her mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie's weight will motivate her to diet.

Heartbreak Agony & Pain is a collection of poetry and prose that takes the listener on an odyssey of heartache, grief, agony, and pain coping with the aftermath of a breakup.

With a dynamic spirit, these great English poets made a conscious return to nostalgia and spiritual depth. Each chose a different path, but they are united in a love of moods, impressions, scenes, stories, sights and sounds. In this collection of more than forty poems are some of the finest and most memorable works in the English language.

The Iliad is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks.

In his haunting and fearless debut, Ocean Vuong walks a tightrope of historic and personal violences, creating an interrogation of the American body as a borderless space of both failure and triumph. At once vulnerable and redemptive, dreamlike and visceral, compassionate and unforgiving, these poems seek a myriad existence without forgetting the prerequisite of self-preservation in a world bent on extinguishing its othered voices. Vuong's poems show, through breath, cadence, and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the most necessary of hungers.

Enjoy an anthology of short stories, poems, and essays by Tony Martello. Some stories and poems are reprints while others have yet to be discovered. Included is a personal essay on his perspective of the COVID-19 shutdown. Some called it a curse while others discovered opportunities in its wake!

“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.

Serafina has a secret dream. She wants to go to school and become a doctor with her best friend, Julie Marie. But in their rural village outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti, many obstacles stand in Serafina's way - little money, never-ending chores, and Manman's worries. More powerful even than all of these are the heavy rains and the shaking earth that test Serafina's resolve in ways she never dreamed. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, this exquisitely crafted story will leave a lasting impression on your heart.