Poetry

Renowned critic and poet Clive James presents the crowning achievement of his career: a monumental translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. 'Finally I realised that I had been practising for this job every time I wrote a quatrain...I had spent all this time - the greater part of a lifetime - preparing my instruments'. The Divine... read more

Believing, as Ezra Pound did, that real emotion is all that endures, Robert Gray has avoided 'magic realism', whismy, irony and mannered tone in his poetry. Instead, his style is classically direct, clear and concrete, demonstrating an Augustan preference for substantial content. The poems of "Nameless Earth" are richly textu... read more

Leonard Cohen made his name as a poet before he came to worldwide attention as a singer and songwriter. Book of Longing was twenty years in the making and written in Montreal, Mumbai and during his retreat in Mt Baldy. These poems show the full range of one of the most influential and enigmatic writers of his generation.

In The Best Australian Poems 2012, the illustrious poet John Tranter selects the most exceptional Australian poetry of the past year. Tranter casts a discerning eye over the "fragments of dream-work" that reside in poems to create a collection of exquisite beauty and wonder, featuring renowned poets alongside new voices. Prev... read more

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Fire Diary is the first book of poems by Mark Tredinnick, author of The Blue Plateau and The Little Red Writing Book. Fire Diary amounts to a spiritual geography of the poet, an everyday ecology of the "beautiful struggle, the ordinary trouble" he finds himself - we all find ourselves - in.

A collection of poems that is by turns a voice and a chorus: a hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales. It creates world after world, peculiar yet always particular, where the only certainty is the unexpected.

Sylvia Plath was one of the defining voices of twentieth-century poetry, and one of the most appealing: few other poets have introduced as many new readers to poetry. Though she published just one collection in her lifetime, "The Colossus", and a novel, "The Bell Jar", it was following her death in 1963 that her work began to... read more

First published in the 1920's, The Prophet, Gibran's hugely popular guide to living, has sold millions of copies worldwide and is the most famous work of religious fiction of the twentieth century. The Prophet became the bible of 1960s culture and was credited with founding the New Age movement, yet it still continues to insp... read more

A collection of poems from Australia's leading poet.

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The definitive edition of Dylan Thomas's five published volumes of poems: 18 POEMS, TWENTY-FIVE POEMS, THE MAP OF LOVE, DEATHS AND ENTRANCES and IN COUNTRY SLEEP. Dylan Thomas wrote passionately about life in all its moods and moments: from the first thrilling moments of childbirth to the darker moments of death and loss. COL... read more

Taking its inspiration from Shakespeare's idea of the "seven ages" of a human life, this new anthology brings together the best-loved poems in English to inspire, comfort and delight readers for a lifetime. Beginning with babies, the book is divided into sections on childhood, growing up, making a living and making love, fami... read more

Seamus Heaney's new collection elicits continuities and solidarities, between husband and wife, child and parent, then and now, inside an intently remembered present - the stepping stones of the day, the weight and heft of what is passed from hand to hand, lifted and lowered. "Human Chain" also broaches larger questions of tr... read more

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our lit... read more

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our lit... read more

Seamus Heaney's new collection elicits continuities and solidarities, between husband and wife, child and parent, then and now, inside an intently remembered present - the stepping stones of the day, the weight and heft of what is passed from hand to hand, lifted and lowered. "Human Chain" also broaches larger questions of tr... read more

"Short and Sweet" is an inspiring anthology arranged to show how the short poem, defined here as no longer than thirteen lines - and sometimes a lot shorter than that - can tell a story, present a complex argument, and be packed with as much passion, wisdom and music as any more extended piece of writing. In his witty and ins... read more

Tennyson's poetry epitomizes the Victorian age, for which he became a spokesman. His finest poems are often steeped in a sensuous melancholy, as in Maud, or are chivaric, heroic and allegorical, as in "The Lady of Shalot" and "Morte d'Arthur".

"Stag's Leap", Sharon Olds' stunningly poignant new sequence of poems, tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom. In this wise and intimate telling - which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending - Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the fe... read more