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Did you know the Vision Australia Library has a large collection of poetry for all ages? Why not pick one up for your next reading?

Not a member of the Vision Australia Library? Membership is free and available to anyone with a print disability. Find out more at the Vision Australia Library webpage or call 1300 654 656.

Children and young adults

The Thirteen Secrets of Poetry

By Adrian Mitchell.

An introduction to writing and understanding poetry. Discusses rhythm, rhyme, words and meanings which are illustrated by poems of various authors.

Birds, Beasts, Flowers: Australian Children’s Poetry

By William Hart-Smith and Brian Dibble. 

A collection of poems celebrating Australia's native flora and fauna

What I like!: Poems for the Very Young

By Gervase Phinn. 

This is a playful collection of verse that celebrates the things closest to a child's heart like food, family, school and animals, with counting rhymes, nonsense verse & finger games. Also available in audio

For older readers and adults

Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry

By Maya Angelou.

From her reflections on African American life and hardship to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in every inspiring word of Maya Angelou's poetry is included in the pages of this volume

Gather Together in My Name (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings)

By Maya Angelou.

War is over and Maya has given birth to a son. Isolated and unemployed, she embarks on a series of brief, lonely affairs and transient jobs. Finally she turns to prostitution and the world of narcotics. But there is no bitterness in her writing; instead a remarkable sense of the richness of life emerges through her warmth and humour.

The Essential Rumi

By Coleman Barks and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī.

A comprehensive collection of ecstatic poetry that delights with its energy and passion, The Essential Rumi brings the vibrant, living words of famed thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi to contemporary readers.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson 

By Emily Dickinson.

The startling originality of Emily Dickinson's style doomed her poetry to obscurity during her lifetime, but her bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations have since won her international recognition.

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