Showing titles in Themes & Styles

Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely liveable occupation, Forest of Noise invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination — even as it is watched live. This is an extraordinary and arrestingly whimsical book, that brings us indelible art in a time of terrible suffering.

Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems written over a lifetime, capturing its many forms: from rapture, infatuation and urgency to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. Poetry was de Bernières' first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience.

Allie Esiri’s anthology, A Poet for Every Day of the Year, is the perfect introduction to 366 of the world’s greatest ever verse writers. Perfect for listening and sharing with all the family, it is bursting at the seams with familiar favourites and exciting new discoveries. Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti and Emily Bronte sit alongside Roger McGough, Wendy Cope, Imtiaz Dharker, Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath and Ocean Vuong.

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption. This major translation is published here for the first time in a single volume.

With Professor Esolen you will enter the terrible gates of Hell and progress level by infernal level to its diabolical depths. Professor Esolen places a special emphasis on the drama of the poem, leading you through each canto in succession. Professor Esolen will more than satisfy your curiosity about Hell and the fate of the damned. He will reveal in all its starkness the horror of sin and awaken in your heart a longing for divine love.

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its centre is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader, Agamemnon. But when the Trojan Hector kills Achilles' close friend Patroclus, he storms back into battle to take revenge - although knowing this will ensure his own early death.

Since its debut in 1998, In Our Time has amassed a dedicated following of more than 2 million listeners. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, with a panel of guest experts, each show features a plethora of fascinating facts and inspirational discourse on topics ranging from democracy to dark matter. This specially curated collection celebrates the rich diversity of poetry in English, focusing on 25 major works and writers from the mediaeval era to the 20th Century.

I’ve never seen anyone at a public pool with a memorable enough body, good or bad, that I think about it ever again. If this line sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard it in the background of thousands of videos on social media—a humbling reminder from poet and radio personality Josie Balka that what’s important in our lives now isn’t necessarily what’s important to us in the long run. I Hope You Remember, Josie’s first book of poetry, includes this poem and over eighty others, some previously published and others never shared before.

Eve is a bold, unprecedented exploration of the creation narrative, true to the original texts and centuries of scholarship - yet with breathtaking discoveries that challenge traditional misconceptions about who we are and how we're made. As The Shack awakened listeners to a personal, nonreligious understanding of God, Eve will free us from faulty interpretations that have compromised human relationships since the Garden of Eden.

It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.

A magisterial life of Ted Hughes - identified recently as the only English poet since the First World War with a claim to true greatness and one of Britain's most important writers - to be published on National Poetry Day by prize-winning biographer Jonathan Bate. Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He is one of Britain's most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and Crow. Event and animal are turned to myth in his work.

Poems that ignite the 'human spirit' and lift up your mind to higher heights of wisdom.

In this stunning volume, acclaimed poet Kwame Dawes explores the mythic, ancestral, and spiritual journeys that make up a life. The site of the ruined ancestral home of Kwame Dawes’s family, in one of the earliest post-slavery free villages in Jamaica, Sturge Town is at once a place of myth and, for Dawes, a metaphor of the journeying that has taken him from Ghana, through Jamaica, and to the United States.

Winner of the 2023 Trio Award, Christian Gullette's critically acclaimed Coachella Elegy explores the queer promised lands and poolside utopias of the American West even as they are threatened by environmental destruction. With precision and clarity, Gullette's poems wander the desert landscape of California, reveling in its beauties and challenging its sacred myths. His speaker seamlessly transports us from a hospital room where his husband battles cancer to the Palm Springs oasis where the vacationing couple celebrates survival.

Blake Ritson, David Warner, Hattie Morahan and John Hurt star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Dante's epic poem. Inferno: Thirty-five year old Dante finds himself in the middle of a dark wood, in extreme personal and spiritual crisis. Hope of rescue appears in the form of the venerable poet Virgil, now a shade himself, who offers to lead Dante on an odyssey through the afterlife, beginning in the terrifying depths of Hell.

The most famous, beautiful, and spiritually moving poems of the 20th century, read by the most famous poet. These are historic recordings of the cream of Eliot's poetry. It is always something of a revelation to listen to a poet reading his own words, and these recordings are no exception. Eliot clearly and evenly characterises and reveals the voices of some of his most important works in this excellent reading.

If you never knew disappointment, would you ever grow? If you had never felt loss, could you have compassion for another? Without real heartache, would you ever know the greatness of love? On When the Heart Breaks, David Whyte invites you to join him in an investigation of a question that rests at the center of human experience. With a poet's insight into the landscape of the soul, he offers a deeply moving exploration of how we experience love and loss, and how with resilience and time we can rise again each time we are broken.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history - Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story.

Multi-millionaire Anthony Spencer is trapped in a coma and finds himself in a surreal world that reflects the skewed priorities of the life he's lived on Earth where he meets a stranger who turns out to be Jesus and a grandmother who is the Holy Spirit. Pleading for a second chance, he is sent back to Earth to redeem himself. There he must fight to put right the mess he's created, experiencing events through others' eyes before deciding how to use the miraculous gift he's been given. Before his illness he had set events in motion that he now needs to undo - but will he have the courage to make the right choice?

This story of Lord Rama — the 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu— i s a wondrous tale of cosmic adventure that immerses the listener in a world of heroes, gods, and demons.