These websites are selected to provide a starting point for exploring poetry as voice; their resources include substantial audio material for listening to poetry in different performance styles.

 

The world’s largest, and ever-expanding, online collection of recordings of poets reading their own work, soon to include contemporary poets reading their favourite “classic” poems by poets who lived too long ago to have been recorded.

 

Listen to recordings by poets and actors of a wide array of poems, and subscribe to the free podcast poem of the day.

 

This is a collection of short videos of poems being read, sometimes by the poet who wrote it, sometimes by another poet, sometimes by actors.  The videos are in various styles and include music, film and animation.

 

For Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti, Percy Bysshe Shelley or W.B.Yeats, this is a source of recordings of a selection of their poems by well-known UK actors.

 

LibriVox volunteers record readings of books that are in the public domain.  There are multiple readings of older poems in very diverse styles, suitable for exploring the many factors that can contribute to good readings.

 

Select <Secondary> then <English> for video clips which cover poetry from the 15^th century to the modern day.  The clips that are about modern and contemporary poetry very often include recordings of the poet reading their own work.