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The Classics
Frost at Midnight
Read by Kit Wright
Frost at Midnight - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Read by Kit Wright
The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings:…
Poem
(for Mar, d. 1985) Now that peasantry is in vogue, Poetry bubbles from peat bogs, People strain for the old folk’s fatal gobs Coughed up in grates North or North East ‘Tween bouts o’ living dialect, It should be…
Poem
born in africa but breastfed another mother tongue put to sleep on foreign lullabies praying for a jesus-heaven when i die born in africa but into a designated cultivated patch flung far from the indigenous tree strategy for carving out…
Poem
The front seats filled last. Laggards, buffoons, and kiss-ups falling in beside local politicos, the about to be honored, and the hard of hearing. No help from the middle, blenders and criminals. And the back rows: restless, intelligent, unable…
Poem
Hurricane Hits England - Grace Nichols
It took a hurricane, to bring her closer To the landscape Half the night she lay awake, The howling ship of the wind, Its gathering rage, Like some dark ancestral spectre, Fearful and reassuring: Talk to me Huracan Talk to…
Poem
Child with Pillar Box and Bin Bags - Kathleen Jamie
But it was the shadowed street-side she chose While Victor Gold the bookies based In conquered sunlight, and though Dair Road Licensed Grocer gloried and cast Fascinating shadows she chose The side dark in the shade of tenements: That corner…
The Classics
Verses Upon the Burning of Our House
Read by Denise Riley
Verses Upon the Burning of Our House - Anne Bradstreet - Read by Denise Riley
In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow near I did not look, I waken’d was with thund’ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of ‘fire’ and ‘fire,’ Let no man know is my Desire….
The Classics
The Burning Babe
Read by Jacob Sam-La Rose
The Burning Babe - Robert Southwell - Read by Jacob Sam-La Rose
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning…
Poet
Charlotte Mew
B. 1869 D. 1928
Charlotte Mew was surrounded by mental ill health and death from a young age. Three brothers died while she was still a child and two other siblings were committed to mental institutions. She vowed never to marry, fearful of the…
The Classics
Sonnet 65
Read by Alan Brownjohn
Sonnet 65 - William Shakespeare - Read by Alan Brownjohn
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out…
Poet
Matthew Sweeney
B. 1952 D. 2018
“Matthew Sweeney is a force for good in British poetry,” wrote Ruth Padel. “The work is one large metaphor: a parable for the human condition…He was one of our finest poets of the unconscious; of darkness brought to light….” A…
Poem
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1994 In the eleventh century Wei T’ai has told us how a poem concentrates upon the thing the better to convey the feeling. Be precise, said wise Wei T’ai, about the thing but reticent about the…
Poet
Hannah Sullivan
B. 1979
Hannah Sullivan is an accomplished poet and academic. She was born in London and studied Classics at Cambridge; she has a PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard and is currently an Associate Professor at New College, Oxford, where she has taught since 2012, having previously taught at Stanford.
Poet
Luke Davies
B. 1962
Luke Davies (b.1962) is a critically acclaimed poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. Davies was raised in the Sydney suburb of West Pymble, and studied Arts at the University of Sydney. His third volume Running With Light won the 2000 Judith…
Poet
R. S. Thomas
B. 1913 D. 2000
R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) teemed with contradictions: a passionate advocate of Welsh nationalism he wrote in English and sent his son to boarding school in England; an undemonstrative man he composed the most tender elegies for his wife; a man…
Poem
So there we were, like every year, just up the road from Clacton pier the summer coughing up its last the whiff of burger, clink of glass at Bab’s and Brian’s caravan (the children palmed off on their nan) about…
Poet
Brian Johnstone
B. 1950 D. 2021
Brian Johnstone was a Scottish poet, born in Edinburgh in 1950. Before his death he lived in Fife with his wife, the artist Jean Johnstone. Working as a primary school teacher for over twenty years, Johnstone began work as a…
Collection
Richard Berengarten (b. London 1943) is an English poet with multicultural perspectives. He has received multiple international awards. This anthology, which marks Poetry Archive’s first publication of poems in languages other than English, consists of an array of translations of…