You can explore the Archive in many different ways. You can look for poets you know, you can let us take you to poets whose work you may not know, you can chose poems on a particular theme, or you can ask our guides to show you the recordings they especially like. As the Archive grows, more guides will be added to the Archive. Some guides will be poets and some will be prominent people from other walks of life. All are poetry lovers who are keen to share with you the recordings they especially enjoy.

To come back to your guide when you've listened to a selection, use your BACK button.

When choosing poems for my tour, I had just one criterion in mind: that each poem must allow me to comment on the quality of the spoken word (after all, that is what makes the Archive such a brilliant resource). Consequently, I have ended up with an interesting and engaging (if not odd) collection of poems and not one that I would have imagined collating from the outset.