Great English Poetry

This anthology of Kipling's most famous poems - including "If", "Mandalay", "Gunga Din" - is taken from Naxos AudioBooks' Great Poets series. Though sometimes still regarded as a product of the colonial era, Kipling touches a very popular nerve in Britain's literary tradition and is regarded more generously now as a master of popular verse. It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

This is a selection of works by three famous Irishmen: Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and Bram Stoker. It includes: the short story by Bram Stoker, "Dracula's Guest"; Oscar Wilde's poem "Humanitad" and three versions of his "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"; and finally, an early collection of poetry called The Rose by W. B. Yeats. There is a general introduction by the writer and actor Tim Dalgleish and other additional material.

In this collection, you’ll find stories conveyed through poetry and song. Some of them will no doubt be familiar to you - like Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner and Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic (although many people are only familiar with the first verse). Other poems will be entirely new to you. My hope is that you’ll embrace both the familiar and the unfamiliar as pieces of the American story that deserve to be remembered.

The idiosyncratic Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall has the unusual reputation as one of the worst poets in the English language with rhymes and rhythms that produce mirth rather than wonder. His masterpiece is The Tay Bridge Disaster. Scottish-born Gregor Fisher, who starred in Love Actually and other film and TV programs, reads the key poems and passages from the autobiography - and gets deep into character!

Beloved and trailblazing author Judy Blume comes to life in this poetic picture book about her childhood. Judy Blume is known for fearlessly discussing topics that were once considered taboo. As a young girl, Judy was not encouraged to share her feelings, so instead she invented stories as a...

Charlie Shoe finds tying his laces confusing. Whenever he tries, he gets in a muddle and often gives up. But without his shoelaces tied, Charlie trips and falls, and Sophie can’t bear to watch.

Acclaimed writer Henry Van Dyke presents a staller collection of poems that also served as hymns in churches in the early 1900s. One is still sung today. Encouragement found in each stanza.

Over the years while writing, directing, and acting at radio theater workshops and in the Mark Time Radio Show performances at Minneapolis' CONvergence science fiction conventions, Brian Price and Jerry Stearns found that they shared a love for classic Beat poetry, Lord Buckley, and prose poems, so they started doing some of their own. This is a collection of their unique hybrid of humor, music, character, and performance.