National Poetry Month

Wires that Sputter

Poems

By: Britta Badour
Narrated by: Britta Badour
Length: 1 hour 2 minutes

A powerful debut collection from an award-winning artist, public speaker, and poet.

Trillium Book Award for Poetry, Finalist
Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Shortlist
Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Shortlist
Raymond Souster Award, Longlist

With propulsive, intimate stylings and an eye toward Black liberations, pop culture, sports, and familial fractures,... Read more

Goldenrod

Poems

By: Maggie Smith
Narrated by: Maggie Smith
Length: 1 hour 5 minutes

“Maggie Smith is the kind of magician who can make a poem breathe and sing. Goldenrod leaves the reader feeling as though the poet has gently struck their heart with a mallet, sending vibrations echoing throughout them for a long time. Read more

all of it is you.

poetry

By: Nico Tortorella
Narrated by: Nico Tortorella
Length: 3 hours 16 minutes

A debut poetry collection from actor Nico Tortorella exploring “all of it,” from the smallest cells in our bodies to the outer limits of our universe. 
 
Nico Tortorella's debut poetry collection presents a singular voice honed through years as an actor, podcaster, and advocate, one colored with love, wonder, and endless curiosity. But it is also... Read more

Poukahangatus

Poems

By: Tayi Tibble
Narrated by: Tayi Tibble
Length: 1 hour 18 minutes

The American debut of an acclaimed young poet as she explores her identity as a twenty-first-century Indigenous woman. Poem by poem, Tibble carves out a bold new way of engaging history, of straddling modernity and ancestry, desire and exploitation.

Intimate, moving, virtuosic, and hilarious, Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in... Read more

The Poet X

By: Elizabeth Acevedo
Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
Length: 3 hours 30 minutes

“Getting to listen to the author herself read her poetry, which are clearly a testament to the spoken word and the art of slam, is absolutely the best way to devour this novel-in-verse. Acevedo puts everything into her words, and no one else could do them justice the way she does herself. Despite possible age/cultural/religious differences, any... Read more

Black Girl You Are Atlas

By: Renée Watson
Narrated by: Renée Watson
Length: 51 minutes

A thoughtful celebration of Black girlhood by award-winning author and poet Renée Watson.

In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes
about her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender.

Using a variety of poetic forms, from haiku to free verse, Watson shares recollections... Read more

The Moon That Turns You Back

Poems

By: Hala Alyan
Narrated by: Hala Alyan
Length: 1 hour 37 minutes

From the author of The Arsonists’ City and The Twenty-Ninth Year, a new collection of poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family–past, present, future–in the face of displacement and war. A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one... Read more

A Year of Last Things

Poems

By: Michael Ondaatje
Narrated by: Michael Ondaatje
Length: 2 hours 10 minutes

From one of the most influential writers of his generation, a gorgeously surprising poetry collection about memory, history, and the act of looking back

Following several of his internationally acclaimed novels, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje’s long-awaited return to poetry. In pieces that are sometimes witty, sometimes moving, and... Read more

The Essential Rumi, New Expanded Edition

By: Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than eighty never-before-published poems.Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of readers, making the ecstatic, spiritual poetry of... Read more

Stranger Music

Selected Poems and Songs

By: Leonard Cohen
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
Length: 5 hours 45 minutes

With the appearance of his first record album in 1967, Leonard Cohen—already well known in his native Canada as a poet and novelist—was introduced to audiences in the United States, where he quickly took his place among the preeminent singer–songwriters of the time. Over the years, and through the release of more than a dozen studio albums,... Read more

Life on Mars

Poems

By: Tracy K. Smith
Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

“One of my all-time favorite books of poetry. Tracy K Smith is a lyrical and narrative mastermind, managing to capture and utilize the spirit of all good science fiction in her still incredibly grounded poetry. Read more

This Is the Honey

An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets

By: Kwame Alexander
Narrated by: Mahogany L. Brown & Joel Damany Steingold
Length: 4 hours 11 minutes

A breathtaking poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, edited by Why Fathers Cry at Night author and #1 New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander. In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a... Read more

Above Ground

By: Clint Smith
Narrated by: Clint Smith
Length: 1 hour 29 minutes

A remarkable poetry collection from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world.... Read more

A Poetry Handbook

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
Length: 3 hours 33 minutes

“Mary Oliver would probably never admit to anything so grandiose as an effort to connect the conscious mind and the heart (that’s what she says poetry can do), but that is exactly what she accomplishes in this stunning little handbook.”—Los Angeles TimesFrom the beloved, legendary poet, the ultimate guide to writing and understanding poetry.With... Read more

Time Is a Mother

By: Ocean Vuong
Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
Length: 1 hour 43 minutes

“I was stunned by Vuong’s gorgeous prose and raw revelations. Time is a Mother was an intense experience. The audiobook is less that two hours, but I have spent days thinking about Vuong’s words. I highly recommend this incredible poetry collection. Read more

The Hill We Climb

An Inaugural Poem for the Country

By: Amanda Gorman
Narrated by: Amanda Gorman & Oprah Winfrey
Length: 9 minutes

Amanda Gorman’s powerful and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration

“Stunning.” —CNN 
“Dynamic.” —NPR
“Deeply rousing and uplifting.” —Vogue


On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th... Read more

And Still I Rise

A Book of Poems

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 22 minutes

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.
 
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my... Read more

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

By: Lana Del Rey
Narrated by: Lana Del Rey
Length: 38 minutes

The New York Times bestselling debut book of poetry from Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.

“Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each... Read more

Many Miles

Mary Oliver reads Mary Oliver

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Mary Oliver
Length: 41 minutes

Following the success of At Blackwater Pond, this second audio reccording from bestselling poet Mary Oliver contains a selection of thirty-seven previously published poems and four new, read by the poet in her steady, magnetic voice. Oliver recites from the full range of her poetry—from her classic nature writing to her verses for her... Read more

Postcolonial Love Poem

Poems

By: Natalie Diaz
Narrated by: Natalie Diaz
Length: 1 hour 59 minutes

“Pulitzer Prize-winning Postcolonial Love Poem will make you want Natalie Diaz to write a love poem about you. Here, she writes sensual lesbian poems and warm platonic ones, poems about water and basketball and things lost in translation. Her elegant poetry begs to be studied—add this stunner from a Mexican Mojave poet to your shelf, and eat it... Read more