Poetry asks only a few minutes and gives back something a novel can't - attention, music, the right words for a feeling you couldn't name. Eighteen books now, walked from the modern and welcoming end, through the giants, to the anthologies we wrap most often at the counter.
Editor's Picks
- Hold Your Own - Tempest at full power
- Milk and Honey - the phenomenon - judge it yourself
- Night Sky with Exit Wounds - the decade's astonishing debut
Modern & Welcoming
Start here - poems that land on first read, no decoding required.
01Devotions
Oliver's own selection of a lifetime's work - wild geese, grasshoppers and paying attention. The most-gifted poetry book in the shop, for good reason. A book to keep by the bed and open at random rather than read cover to cover.
02Rapture
A whole love affair told in poems, from first spark to last ache, by the former Poet Laureate. Intimate, modern and deeply moving. Reads in sequence like a novel in verse, which is unusual for a collection.
03Serious Concerns
Proof poetry can be laugh-out-loud funny and quietly devastating in the same stanza. The collection for people who think they don't like poetry. Short poems, sharp wit, instantly quotable.
04Hold Your Own
Tiresias re-told for now - gender, youth, prophecy and rage. Tempest at full power; poetry that works aloud and on the page alike. Seek out Tempest performing these aloud; the poems were built for the voice.
05Milk and Honey
The Instagram-era phenomenon: spare lines on hurt and healing that brought millions to poetry. Try it before you judge it. Divisive among poetry readers, and the reason a great many people bought their first collection.
06Night Sky with Exit Wounds
War, family and desire from the most acclaimed poetic debut of its decade. Astonishing image-making - you'll re-read pages immediately. His novel follows the same themes.
The Giants
The twentieth century's essential voices - where the deep water is.
07Ariel
The poems Plath wrote in her final months - savage, controlled and permanently startling. The most influential collection of its century. Read the restored edition if you can, which follows Plath's own intended order.
08Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996
Thirty years of Heaney: bogs, byres, history and grace. The Nobel laureate's own selection - the essential door into the essential poet. His own selection, so nothing wasted.
09Collected Poems
Betjeman's gently funny, deeply English verse - churches, suburbs, tennis and loss. The nation's favourite poet for a reason. The reliable gift for a grandparent, and better company than its gentle reputation suggests.
10The Whitsun Weddings
Larkin at his peak - trains, weddings, loneliness and the terrible exactness of ordinary life. Every poem earns its place in the anthologies. Thirty-two poems, none of them filler.
11Birthday Letters
Hughes's late reckoning with Sylvia Plath, published months before his death. Raw, contested and impossible to read unmoved - Ariel's other half. Read Ariel first for the context.
12The Waste Land and Other Poems
April is the cruellest month - the poem that broke poetry open in 1922. Harder work than anything else on this shelf, and worth every re-read. Use an annotated edition, honestly.
Anthologies & Gifts
One-volume libraries - the safest poetry gifts we know.
13Staying Alive
Hundreds of accessible modern poems arranged by theme. The anthology that converts non-readers - our default poetry gift. The anthology to buy if you do not know where to start; the themes do the navigating.
14The Rattle Bag
Heaney and Hughes empty their pockets: ballads, riddles, anon and the greats, A to Z. The most joyfully unpredictable anthology ever assembled. Arranged alphabetically by title, so it works as a book to dip into rather than read through.
15A Poem for Every Night of the Year
366 poems matched to the calendar, from Shakespeare to Michael Rosen. The family anthology - bedtime-tested and endlessly giftable. Companion volumes cover morning and Shakespeare.
16She Is Fierce
150 bold, brave poems by women, from Sappho to now. The anthology to give a teenage girl - or anyone who needs backbone in verse. Short poems, strong voices, and a good fit for reading aloud at fourteen and up.
17Poems to Live Your Life By
Riddell picks and illustrates the poems he lives by. As much an art object as an anthology - the prettiest gift on the shelf. Handsome enough for a coffee table.
18The Nation's Favourite Poems
The BBC's famous poll in book form - If, Daffodils, Do Not Go Gentle and a hundred more. Every poem someone's about to quote, in one place. Cheap, cheerful and surprisingly durable.
Frequently Asked Questions
I don't 'get' poetry - where do I start?
Serious Concerns or Devotions - funny and luminous respectively, and neither needs decoding. Poetry is meant to be enjoyed, not solved.
What's the best poetry gift?
Staying Alive for an adult, A Poem for Every Night of the Year for a family, She Is Fierce for a teenager. Wrapped, they never fail.
Which of the giants should I read first?
Opened Ground - Heaney is the most welcoming of the greats. Save The Waste Land for when you're feeling ambitious.
How should I read a poetry collection?
Not straight through like a novel. A few poems at a time, read slowly and preferably aloud, works far better - and there is no obligation to start at page one or to finish. Most readers who say they dislike poetry have only ever tried to read it the way they read prose.
Shelf 01Fiction
Literary novels, contemporary storytelling and the books everyone's talking about.
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Shelf 02Crime & Mystery
Cosy crime, gritty thrillers and a good whodunnit for a wet afternoon.
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Shelf 03Nature & Countryside
Nature writing, walking, farming and the wild places - our house speciality.
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Shelf 04History
Popular history, biography and the stories behind the stories.
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