Poetry Archive

The Poetry Archive is looking to appoint a Fund-Raising & Communications Manager

Applications must be received by June 1st

We need a self-starter with excellent communication skills to work independently alongside the Archive's directors and our business development manager to develop creative and imaginative ways in which the Archive can increase its donated income.

See the full job description

Watch a video introduction

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The Poetry Archive is a registered charity. Your support can help us to record more poets.

Please help us to expand and improve the Archive

We depend upon donations from our visitors to make new recordings and to add new features to the Archive. All donations, large and small, are gratefully received and are acknowledged on the site.

Find out more

If you're using Firefox 10 and the latest version of Flash, you may experience problems with our audio

A new Flash Player update, when it comes, will solve the problem

The latest Flash upgrade from Adobe (version 11.1.102.62) seems to be preventing visitors who use Firefox 10 from making the Archive's recordings play properly. If this is happening to you, please try using a different browser or an earlier version of Flash.

Poems about work

An introduction to the Archive.

The Poetry Archive is the world's premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work.

You can enjoy listening here, free of charge, to the voices of contemporary English-language poets and of poets from the past. The Archive is growing all the time. Please come back regularly to enjoy our latest recordings.

Watch a video introduction by Andrew Motion

Edmund
Blunden

View all Historic Recordings

Teachers
Bring poetry to life in your school! These pages are specially designed to help you and your students to get the most out of the Poetry Archive.

Students
The Poetry Archive is a great place for students to research and learn about poetry.

Librarians
Support and practical ideas to help you and your readers enjoy the Archive.

New to Poetry?
Tips on using the Archive for less confident readers, and for those who are unfamiliar with reading poetry.

Many of the books and recordings featured in the Archive can be bought at the Poetry Bookshop Online

Tour by:
Robert Cole

Poetry springs to life in recordings such as those curated in the Archive. Poems have a perfectly respectable existence lying largely undisturbed betw...

Robert Cole's tour

This part of the Archive is full of poems chosen specially for children. Meet old favourites and make new discoveries.

J D McClatchy

Use the player below to hear poems by this poet.

Or try a different poet

Lucky dip

To listen to the Archive's recordings, software called Adobe Flash Player (version 10) needs to be installed on your computer and you need to enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Adobe Flash Player can be downloaded, free of charge, here.

My Archive

Browse all poems by theme

Browse all poems by form

Browse all poets by name

Browse all poems by title

Glossary of poetic terms