British Poets: The Spoken Word and American Poets: The Spoken Word

"To celebrate National Poetry Day (7 October 2010), the British Library releases two new additions to its popular series of literary spoken word CDs, featuring many previously unpublished recordings of great British and American poets of the 20th century reading their own poems and often with their own spoken introductions. From T S Eliot's sombre, measured reading from 'The Waste Land' to William Carlos Williams' confident, humorous reading of 'This is Just to Say' and the gravelly purr of Walter de la Mare introducing and reading 'Thomas Hardy', these CDs comprise a wealth of rare historic recordings. Other poets featured include Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, John Betjeman, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, John Masefield, Cecil Day Lewis, Edith Sitwell, Edwin Morgan, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ogden Nash, Gertrude Stein, Amiri Baraka, E E Cummings, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes and Robinson Jeffers"