You have picked up this book because you are a poetry reader. Or you are about to be one. Because as soon as you read a poem, that's what you are.

Filled with the profound, the lyrical, the consoling, and the curious, The Poetry Reader: An Anthology is the book you would hope to find if you washed up alone on a deserted island: this companionable collection shows how poetry itself is a discussion, alive and flowing, and how poems speak to, with, and sometimes over one another.

If you are a teacher, this is the anthology you wish you had as a student - a text that doesn't try to survey entire time periods or aesthetic areas, but one that places side-by-side carefully selected poems that speak to each other over time as well as to today's readers.

• Section header notes provide critical commentary, framing the poems within their given topic
• Discussion and writing suggestions give interesting and actionable prompts
• Works as a standalone book, or can easily be used alongside Poetry: A Survivor's Guide, 2nd ed.

Drawing on traditional poems and contemporary works, this anthology offers globe-spanning, stylistically diverse poetry, ranging from canonical poems by the likes of Sappho and Shakespeare to those of new voices such as Layli Long Soldier and Mukoma wa Ngugi. As a compact, eclectic, and approachable collection based on specific aspects of poetry and poetic practices - from identity and metaphor to sublimation and spirituality - The Poetry Reader acts as a guide to understanding the essentials of both reading and writing poetry.