Showing results by publisher "Macmillan Digital Audio" in Poetry

‘Funny but serious, accessible but rich in meaning, consistently surprising – the world looks slightly different after reading a Billy Collins poem. He’s a one-off, an American treasure’ Nick Laird These are poems of whimsy and imaginative acrobatics, but they are grounded in the...

Please note, this audio edition alternates between sections written and performed in the Orkney dialect, and their English translations. Astrid is returning home from art school on Mars, looking for inspiration. Darling is fleeing a life that never fit, searching for somewhere to hide. They meet...

The Keelie Hawk is a landmark collection from Kathleen Jamie, the current Makar (National Poet) of Scotland. For the first time, Kathleen Jamie has brought her astonishing lyric talent to the language of her homeland, with outstanding results. The Keelie Hawk is a deeply resonant collection...

I want to sing you early songs. Go deeper. I want to take you back where you began, Find the scraps of you you hid in secret And bring them back to life beneath my tongue. Divisible by Itself and One is the powerful new collection from our foremost truth-teller Kae Tempest. Ruminative, wise...

It’s that time of year again . . . With his signature wit, Brian Bilston returns with And So This is Christmas, fifty-one poems in celebration of the festive season: from bizarre family traditions to the office Christmas party; from voting day for turkeys to the impossible art of gift-giving...

"I’ve grown old– now my own name rings a bell." In each of the short poems in Billy Collins’s Musical Tables, the former United States Poet Laureate tempers his characteristically jocular voice with what he calls the “thrill of mortality” – flashes of profundity amongst the mundane...

Read by the author, Jackie Kay. A deeply moving and searching enquiry into all forms of human friendship, Fiere is a brilliant collection of poems by Jackie Kay, as well as a lyric counterpart to her memoir, Red Dust Road: the extraordinary story of the search for her Nigerian and Highland...

‘I became fatherless at 26 and a father at 35 and whenever I look out the living room window I feel myself become the child left alone in the house’ Centred around two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a book about masculinity, fatherhood, and love...

In her prize-winning fourth collection, Mean Time, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy dramatizes scenes from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, finding moments of grace or consolation in memory, love and language amid the complexities of life. These are powerful poems of loss, betrayal and desire...

Denise Riley has pursued her singular path with a determined disregard for poetic fashion: a poet of immense musical gifts and formal skill, as happy in traditional forms as experimental, her non-alignment with any ‘tribe’ has led to a rich and various poetry that, while densely allusive and...

With more from his acclaimed 1986 collection, Artificial Horizon is the second audio volume of Poems From The Book of My Enemy, read by the poet himself, Clive James. 'He rejoices in language, and he shows enormous skill in using it' – Sunday Telegraph After The Book of My Enemy, Clive James...

On a frosty winter evening, the Baron watches the snow fall. He is bored and worried. It will soon be Christmas and everything is too quiet. What can he do to bring excitement to the Manor? His wife, the Baroness, has an idea: he can appoint a King of Christmas, a peasant to take his place. And...

Down at the Front, on a cold winter's night in 1914, amidst the worst war the world had ever seen, an inexplicable silence spread from man to man. Belief was in the air. Then the soldiers ceased fire and the magic of Christmas took hold . . . Carol Ann Duffy's brilliant poem celebrates the...

Jackie Kay’s first collection as Scottish Makar is a book about the fighting spirit – one, the poet argues, that we need now more than ever. Bantam brings three generations into sharp focus – Kay’s own, her father’s, and his own father’s – to show us how the body holds its own...

A wise, rude, sharp poetry collection encompassing a life from childhood to attempted adulthood, from one of the most important poets of the new generation. 'She writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love. She points out the absurdities we've grown too used to and lets us see the world...

It is Christmas Eve, 1799, and Dorothy Wordsworth is awake in the dead of night. She stands outside in the winter cold, waiting patiently. When the new day breaks it will bring family and friends to Dorothy's door. For tomorrow is a double joy: tomorrow is her Christmas Birthday. Carol Ann...

In a gorgeous pocket-sized hardback, Another Night Before Christmas is Carol Ann Duffy's magical contemporary reworking of the famous poem by Clement C. Moore. Beautifully presented, this wonderful festive poem, illustrated with Rob Ryan's paper cut artwork, is the perfect Christmas gift. On the...

Beginning with the King's Cook, who is preparing a sumptuous Christmas Pie, Wenceslas takes us to a medieval feast. The lords and ladies are at their places, the wine is in full flow, the musicians are playing in the gallery and the entertainment has begun. All should be perfect. But when the...

Bethlehem is normally a quiet little town on the edge of the desert. But tonight, as dusk falls, there is a sense of something special in the air. An inn packed with revellers, shepherds sprawled on the grass, animals in their stables: everything will be changed when a bright star bearing news...

It is a cold day in Ireland, the 26th of December; frost lies thick on the blackthorn. A man walks the just-waking village, banging on every door, summoning the boys. Today is St. Stephen's Day, when legend has it that the Saint was betrayed by a wren's call, and the boys are off to the forest...