Poetry Recordings

Professional readings on CD recorded by West End and Globe theatre actors

Poems are written to be heard as well as read. Provided on CD, these poetry readings can be played in class or uploaded onto a VLE system. Recordings include female and male readers and Scottish, English and American accents where possible. Bring poetry to life in your classrooms!

Superior sound quality

M McPherson, English Teacher (Ind. Reviewer)

Excellent quality. We ordered this because we wanted to introduce high quality readings to our pupils.

C Tardios, English Teacher (customer)

Authentic voice!

P Metcalf, English Teacher (Ind. Reviewer)
Jump to:
Christina RossettiJohn DonneRime of the Ancient MarinerRobert BrowningScars Upon my HeartThe General Prologue to the Canterbury TalesThe Oxford Book of War PoetryJohn DonneThomas HardyUp the Line to DeathWilfred OwenLyrical Ballads

Christina Rossetti

37 poems, 90 minutes on two CDs:
  1. A Better Resurrection
  2. A Birthday
  3. A Dumb Friend
  4. A Royal Princess
  5. After Death
  6. An Apple-Gathering
  7. Another Spring
  8. Cousin Kate
  9. Despised and Rejected
  10. Echo
  11. Goblin Market
  12. Good Friday
  13. In An Artist's Studio
  1. In the Round Tower of Jhansi
  2. In The Willow Shade
  3. Jessie Cameron
  4. Maude Clare
  5. My Dream
  6. No, Thank You John
  7. On the Wing
  8. Promises like Piecrust
  9. Remember
  10. Shut Out
  11. Sister Maude
  12. 'Song' (Oh roses for the flush of youth)
  13. 'Song' ('When I am dead…)
  1. Spring Quiet
  2. Summer is Ended
  3. Symbols
  4. The Convent Threshold
  5. The Key-Note
  6. The Lowest Place
  7. The World
  8. To Lalla, reading my verses topsy-turvy
  9. Twice
  10. Uphill
  11. Winter: My Secret

John Donne

30 Poems, 74 minutes on two CDs:
  1. A Hymn To God The Father
  2. A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day
  3. A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
  4. A Valediction of Weeping
  5. Air and Angels
  6. Elegy XVII: Elegy On His Mistress
  7. Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed
  8. Holy Sonnets: Sonnet IV
  9. Holy Sonnets: Sonnet VII
  10. Holy Sonnets: Sonnet X
  1. Holy Sonnets: Sonnet XIV
  2. Holy Sonnets: Sonnet XIX
  3. Holy Sonnets: Sonnet XVIII
  4. Love's Alchemy
  5. Love's Growth
  6. Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
  7. Song: Sweetest Love I Do Not Go
  8. The Anniversary
  9. The Apparition
  10. The Canonization
  1. The Ecstacy
  2. The Flea
  3. The Funeral
  4. The Good Morrow
  5. The Indifferent
  6. The Legacy
  7. The Relic
  8. The Sunne Rising
  9. Twickenham Garden
  10. Woman's Constancy

Lyrical Ballads

4 poems, 10 parts, 85 minutes on two CDs:
  1. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  2. Goody Blake and Harry Gill
  3. The Idiot Boy
  4. The Thorn

Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge

7 parts, 38 minutes on two CDs.

Robert Browning

34 poems, 138 minutes on three CDs:
  1. A Grammarian’s Funeral
  2. A Toccata of Galuppi’s
  3. A Woman’s Last Word
  4. Apparent Failure
  5. Confessions
  6. Dubiety
  7. Evelyn Hope
  8. Fra Lippo Lippi
  9. Home-Thoughts, From Abroad
  10. 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'
  11. James Lee's Wife: III - In the Doorway
  1. Love Among the Ruins
  2. Love in a Life
  3. Life in a Love
  4. Meeting at Night
  5. My Last Duchess
  6. Never the Time and the Place
  7. Now
  8. Parting at Morning
  9. Pictor Ignotus
  10. Porphyria's Lover
  11. Prospice
  12. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
  1. The Bishop Orders his Tomb
  2. The Laboratory
  3. The Last Ride Together
  4. The Lost Leader
  5. The Lost Mistress
  6. The Patriot
  7. The Pied Piper of Hamelin
  8. Two in the Campagna
  9. Up at a Villa, Down in the City
  10. Women and Roses
  11. You'll Love Me Yet

Scars Upon my Heart

18 poems, 30 minutes on one CD:
  1. From A Trench by Maude Anna Bell
  2. Drafts by Nora Bomford
  3. A Volunteer by Helen Parry Eden
  4. The Wykehamist by Nora Griffiths
  5. Convalescence by Amy Lowell
  6. The Cenotaph, September 1919 by Charlotte Mew
  7. May, 1915 by Charlotte Mew
  1. June, 1915 by Charlotte Mew
  2. In A Restaurant, 1917 by Eleanour Norton
  3. The Minority: 1917 by May O’Rourke
  4. ‘SALL,’ (In Aid of the Wounded Horses) by Inez Quilter (Aged 11 years)
  5. Y.M.C.A. by C. A. L. T.
  6. Spring in War-Time by Sara Teasdale
  1. ‘There will come soft rains’ by Sara Teasdale
  2. The Broken Soldier by Katherine Tynan
  3. A Girl’s Song by Katherine Tynan
  4. Joining the Colours (West Kents, Dublin, August 1914) by Katherine Tynan
  5. Autumn, 1914 by Mary Webb

The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

27 parts, 48 minutes on one CD:
  1. The Opening
  2. The Knight
  3. The Squire
  4. The Yeoman
  5. The Prioress
  6. The Monk
  7. The Friar
  8. The Merchant
  9. The Clerk of Oxford
  1. The Sergeant of Law
  2. The Franklin
  3. The Haberdasher
  4. The Cook
  5. The Shipman
  6. The Doctor of Physic
  7. The Wife of Bath
  8. The Poor Parson
  9. The Ploughman
  1. The Miller
  2. The Manciple
  3. The Reeve
  4. The Summoner
  5. The Pardoner
  6. The Scene is Set
  7. The Host Harry Bailey
  8. The Conditions of the Competition
  9. The Pilgrims Depart, The Game Begins

The Oxford Book of War Poetry

34 poems, 62 minutes on two CDs:
  1. Men Who March Away by Thomas Hardy
  2. In Time of The Breaking of Nations by Thomas Hardy
  3. Peace by Rupert Brooke
  4. The Dead by Rupert Brooke
  5. The Soldier by Rupert Brooke
  6. Into Battle by Julian Grenfell
  7. In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
  8. All the hills and vales along by Charles Sorley read in an English accent
  9. All the hills and vales along by Charles Sorley read in a Scottish accent
  10. When you see millions of the mouthless dead by Charles Sorley read in an English accent
  11. When you see millions of the mouthless dead by Charles Sorley read in an Scottish accent
  1. Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries by A. E. Housman
  2. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W. B. Yeats
  3. In Memoriam (August 1915) by Edward Thomas
  4. The Cherry Trees by Edward Thomas
  5. Rain by Edward Thomas
  6. As the Team’s Head Brass by Edward Thomas
  7. To His Love by Ivor Gurney
  8. Ballad of the Three Spectres by Ivor Gurney
  9. The Silent One by Ivor Gurney
  10. On Receiving News of the War by Isaac Rosenberg
  11. August 1914 by Isaac Rosenberg
  12. Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac Rosenberg
  1. Dead Man’s Dump by Isaac Rosenberg
  2. Returning, We Hear the Larks by Isaac Rosenberg
  3. Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
  4. Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen
  5. Exposure by Wilfred Owen
  6. Insensibility by Wilfred Owen
  7. The Send-Off by Wilfred Owen
  8. Futility by Wilfred Owen
  9. Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen
  10. Elegy in a Country Churchyard by G. K. Chesterton
  11. Epitaphs of the War by Rudyard Kipling

Thomas Hardy

22 poems, 34 minutes on one CD:
  1. A Broken Appointment
  2. Afterwards
  3. At an Inn
  4. At Castle Boterel
  5. Beeny Cliff
  6. Beyond the Last Lamp
  7. Drummer Hodge
  8. During Wind and Rain
  1. From Men Who March Away (Song of the Soldiers)
  2. In Time of The Breaking of Nations
  3. Neutral Tones
  4. The Convergence of the Twain
  5. The Darkling Thrush
  6. The Going
  7. The Haunter
  8. The Man He Killed
  1. The Oxen
  2. The Ruined Maid
  3. The Voice
  4. Transformations
  5. Under the Waterfall
  6. Your Last Drive

Up the Line to Death

60 poems, 92 minutes on two CDs:
  1. From ‘Men Who March Away (Song of the Soldiers)’ Thomas Hardy
  2. ‘Happy is England Now’ John Freeman
  3. ‘The Call’ W. N. Hodgson
  4. ‘England to her Sons’ W. N. Hodgson
  5. ‘Peace’ Rupert Brooke
  6. ‘Officer’s Mess’ Harold Monroe
  7. ‘No One Cares Less Than I’ Edward Thomas
  8. From an Untitled Poem (‘Light-lipped and singing...’) C. H. Sorley read with an English accent
  9. From an Untitled Poem (‘Light-lipped and singing...’) C. H. Sorley read with a Scottish accent
  10. Untitled (‘All the hills and vales along...’) C. H. Sorley read with an English accent
  11. Untitled (‘All the hills and vales along...’) C. H. Sorley read with a Scottish accent
  12. ‘Magpies in Picardy’ T. P. Cameron Wilson
  13. ‘Soliloquy’ Francis Ledwidge
  14. ‘Before Action’ W. N. Hodgson
  15. ‘The Aisne’ Alan Seegar
  16. ‘Rendezvous’ Alan Seegar
  17. ‘A Listening Post’ R. E. Vernède
  18. ‘Before the Summer’ E. A. Mackintosh
  1. ‘Into Battle’ Julian Grenfell
  2. ‘Chemin des Dames’ Crosbie Garstin
  3. ‘This is no Case of Petty Right or Wrong’ Edward Thomas
  4. Untitled (‘When you see millions...’) C. H. Sorley read with an English accent
  5. Untitled (‘When you see millions...’) C. H. Sorley read with a Scottish accent
  6. ‘To Germany’ C. H. Sorley read with an English accent
  7. ‘To Germany’ C. H. Sorley read with a Scottish accent
  8. ‘The Dead’ Rupert Brooke
  9. ‘The Anxious Dead’ John McCrae
  10. ‘In Flanders Fields’ John McCrae
  11. ‘An Irish Airman foresees his Death’ W. B. Yeats
  12. ‘On the Wings of the Morning’ Jeffrey Day
  13. ‘Outward Bound’ Nowell Oxland
  14. Untitled (‘I saw a man this morning...’) Patrick Shaw-Stewart
  15. ‘Mesapotamia’ Rudyard Kipling
  16. ‘Bombed in London’ Rudyard Kipling
  17. ‘The War Films’ Sir Henry Newbolt
  18. ‘The Verdicts (Jutland)’ Rudyard Kipling
  19. ‘Nineteen-fifteen’ John Drinkwater
  20. ‘In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ Thomas Hardy
  1. ‘From the Somme’ Leslie Coulson
  2. ‘Kismet’ R. B. Marriott-Watson
  3. ‘In Memoriam’ E. A. Mackintosh
  4. ‘To My Daughter Betty’ T. M. Kettle
  5. ‘How Long, O Lord?’ Robert Palmer
  6. ‘Returning, we hear the Larks’ Isaac Rosenberg
  7. ‘The Dying Soldier’ Isaac Rosenberg
  8. ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ Isaac Rosenberg
  9. ‘A Death-bed’ Rudyard Kipling
  10. ‘Recruiting’ E. A. Mackintosh
  11. ‘Home Thoughts in Laventie’ E. W. Tennant
  12. ‘The Mad Soldier’ E. W. Tennant
  13. ‘Louse Hunting’ Isaac Rosenberg
  14. ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ Isaac Rosenberg
  15. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Wilfred Owen
  16. ‘Exposure’ Wilfred Owen
  17. ‘The Sentry’ Wilfred Owen
  18. ‘Strange Meeting’ Wilfred Owen
  19. ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ Wilfred Owen
  20. ‘A Dead Statesman’ Rudyard Kipling
  21. ‘Here Dead we Lie’ A. E. Housman
  22. ‘Common Form’ Rudyard Kipling

Wilfred Owen

22 poems, 47 minutes on one CD:
  1. A Terre
  2. Anthem for Doomed Youth
  3. Apologia Pro Poemate Meo
  4. Arms and the Boy
  5. Conscious
  6. Disabled
  7. Dulce et Decorum est
  8. Exposure
  1. Futility
  2. Insensibility
  3. Inspection
  4. Mental Cases
  5. Miners
  6. Spring Offensive
  7. Strange Meeting
  8. The Chances
  1. The Dead-Beat
  2. The Last Laugh
  3. The Letter
  4. The Send-Off
  5. The Sentry
  6. The Show