Family Poetry

Traditional fairytales are full of cliché and gender stereotypes. The silent Rapunzel, the beautiful sweet princesses, ugly, jealous and bitter women, girls that need rescuing, men who take the glory and their new brides being forever grateful and subservient. Good mothers, obliging lovers and pretty objects. Nikita Gill's new prose and poetry collection rewrites the fairytale classics and reworks their old-fashioned tropes into new empowering and inspirational stories.

Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel to Newbery Medal winner The Crossover, Chuck Bell takes center stage, as listeners get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became the jazz music worshiping basketball star his sons look up to. A novel in verse with all the impact and rhythm listeners have come to expect from Kwame Alexander, Rebound will go back in time to visit the childhood of Chuck "Da Man" Bell during one pivotal summer when young Charlie is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers basketball and learns more about his family's past.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Fifty Poems presents the "top 50" poems of all time. Newly revised, and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets, The Classic Fifty Poems is a feast for poetry lovers.

From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between.

After the bestselling I Wish I Knew, Donna Ashworth has now produced an extraordinary three-volume collection of poems that will touch and inspire every listener in the ups and downs we all face in love, in life and in loss. These brilliantly accessible poems bring delight, comfort and strength in the height of romance, the darkness of grief and the endlessly unpredictable moments in between.

In this middle grade novel-in-verse by the Newbery Medal-winning and Coretta Scott King Honor Award-winning author of The Crossover, soccer, family, love, and friendship take center stage as 12-year-old Nick learns the power of words when he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate, Coby; and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.

John Lithgow has compiled an outstanding collection of memorable poems and has gathered his famous friends to read them. The wide variety of carefully selected poetry in this audiobook provides the perfect introduction to reel in those who are new to poetry, and for poetry lovers to experience beloved verses in a fresh, vivid way. Lithgow offers insightful and sometimes poignant commentary to accompany each poem. His essential criterion is that "each poem's light shines more brightly when read aloud".

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.

As people, we are capable of both love and hate; amazement and disgust; fun and misery. So why do we live in a world that is constantly telling us to hate, both ourselves and others? We are told constantly to be repulsed by our own bodies, bodies that let us laugh and sweat and eat toast, amongst other activities; to be ashamed of pleasure; to be embarrassed by fun. In this collection, Hollie McNish brings her inimitable style to the question of what have been taught to hate, and if we might learn to love again.

She Walks in Beauty draws on poetry’s eloquent wisdom to ponder the many joys and challenges of being a woman. Caroline Kennedy has divided the collection into sections that signify to her the most notable milestones, passages, and universal experiences in a woman’s life, and she begins each of these sections with an introduction in which she explores and celebrates the most important elements of life’s journey.

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicentre of the break.

Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects—politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, memory and a fading past, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-travelled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, listeners will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín's unique lens.

The breathtakingly beautiful story of one little girl and her five paper dolls. A string of paper dolls go on a fantastical adventure through the house and out into the garden. They soon escape the clutches of the toy dinosaur and the snapping jaws of the oven-glove crocodile, but then a very real pair of scissors threatens. A stunning, rhythmical story of childhood, memory and the power of imagination from the author of The Gruffalo.

With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a girl who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls.

This is the audio program to play at home over Christmas or during the car journey to see relatives. Dylan Thomas, "The Little Match Girl," and "The Nutcracker" are read by Jenny Agutter with accompanying Tchaikovsky's music - this is a must for Christmas. It contains new recordings as well as some of the finest tracks from the Naxos AudioBooks catalogue.

A poetic portrait of faith, futility, and the joy of this mortal life. In this astoundingly unique audiobook, best-selling author N. D. Wilson reminds each of us that to truly live, we must recognize that we are dying. Every second we create more of our past. Then, we must see the future. We stand in the now. God says create. Live. Choose. Shape the past. Etch your life in stone, and what you make will be forever.

I Had A Brother Once is a brilliant, genre-defying work - both memoir and epic poem - about the struggle for wisdom, grace, and ritual in the face of unspeakable loss. Adam is forced to re-remember a brother he thought he knew and to reckon with a ghost, confronting his unsettled family history, his distant relationship with tradition and faith, and his desperate need to understand an event that always slides just out of his grasp.

Timothy is on probation. It's a strange word - something that happens to other kids, to delinquents, not to kids like him. And yet, he is under house arrest for the next year. He must check in weekly with a probation officer and a therapist and keep a journal for an entire year. And mostly, he has to stay out of trouble. But when he must take drastic measures to help his struggling family, staying out of trouble proves more difficult than Timothy ever thought it would be.

Centred around two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a book about masculinity, fatherhood, and love. The speaker, looking backwards to his late father and forwards to his new son, prepares to become a parent for the first time. Meditating on the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the ‘hypothetical’ and the ‘real’ of becoming a father, this irreversible transition causes the poet’s ‘lines [to] lead towards my father (again!)’.

'They have lightning in their souls, thunder in their hearts, chaos in their bones.' Nikita Gill's poetry has captured hearts and minds all over the world; her inspirational words have been shared hundreds of thousands of times online, plastered across placards on international women's marches and even transformed into tattoos. This collection will showcase mostly unseen poetry and prose, delving into ideas about passion, identity, empowerment and femininity. Written and read by Nikita Gill.