Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain, 1911–1996) is widely recognized as the most significant writer in Scots Gaelic of the 20th century, who brought this ancient poetic tradition into the modern world. This definitive edition includes everything MacLean published in his lifetime, restoring suppressed passages from his love sequence Dain do Eimhir and his political epic about the Highland clearances An Cuilithionn. The Gaelic originals are presented opposite their English translations, many by the poet himself.

This anthology brings together poetic responses to 80 great composers, from the Renaissance to the 21st century. The texts include John Dryden’s ode on the death of Purcell, Elizabeth Jennings’ poem on Mozart’s Horn Concertos and Michael Longley on Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.

‘To the agnostic as well as the devout,’ writes Kevin Gardner, ‘the need to remember what is almost forgotten has remained a powerful poetic urge.’ His anthology comprises more than 90 poems on English churches, written by post-war poets including Sir John Betjeman, Philip Larkin, Fleur Adcock and Simon Armitage, and sharing an elegiac mood inspired by the architecture of church buildings, their place in a changing landscape and their significance as sites of collective memory.

This anthology, which was first published in 1964, is designed as an introduction to a cross-section of poetry, in the original Latin, from the late Republic and early Empire. It presents 36 passages, in different genres and styles, by such authors as Catullus, Virgil and Juvenal. There are short introductions to each extract, detailed notes on language and content and a full vocabulary. Off-mint.

Born in Suffolk in 1803, Susanna Moodie was already a successful creative writer when her family emigrated to Canada in 1832 and adjusting to life in the backwoods was hard. Susanna’s book Roughing It in the Bush (1852) was Margaret Atwood’s inspiration for this illustrated book, a collaboration between poet and artist. The book was originally published in a limited edition in 1980; this facsimile edition includes a memoir by the artist, Charles Pachter. Slipcased. Off-mint.

The response of one writer to the work of another can be doubly illuminating. In this series a contemporary poet introduces and selects works by a poet of the past that they have particularly admired.

Beginning with Wings (1906), Russia’s first gay-themed novel, this selection of works by Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936) includes 13 short stories, two collections of poetry (The Trout Breaks the Ice and Alexandrian Songs) and a play. Translated, edited and introduced by Michael Green.

In this collaboration between poet and painter, Derek Walcott, born and living in St Lucia, responds to each of 50 paintings by Peter Doig, the Scottish-born figurative artist now resident in Trinidad. Together, their works enter a dialogue on the Caribbean’s colonial legacy, home and the boundaries of art.

'Once upon a time there were three little foxes Who didn’t wear stockings, and they didn’t wear sockses, But they all had handkerchiefs to blow their noses, And they kept their handkerchiefs in cardboard boxes.' The sheer fun of AA Milne’s poems, with their child’s view of the world and irresistible wordplay, has easily survived the century since they first appeared, while remaining evocative of British life in the 1920s. This book presents a selection from the two volumes of poetry on which Milne and his illustrator, EH Shepard collaborated: Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young.

This anthology brings together poems by 21 authors, including Wilfred Owen, DH Lawrence and Katharine Tynan, to illustrate how contemporary responses to the First World War changed from an initial excitement at the opportunity to display courage and chivalry, through years of bitterness and rage, to calls for compassion and reconciliation. The poems are juxtaposed with paintings, mostly from the Imperial War Museum’s collection, which depict wartime scenes on and off the battlefield.

Selected by the late poet and scholar Suheil Bushrui, the 200 poems in this anthology include Arabic masterpieces by Rumi and Omar Khayyam, and Western classics from Sappho and Homer to Shakespeare and Donne. Ancient Chinese verses also feature, and examples from the indigenous peoples of Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Grouped by theme, they explore the many facets of love – desire and longing, joy and sorrow, and sensual and spiritual love.

Since 1609, when they were first published, Shakespeare’s sonnets have fascinated readers, both with the depth of the poet’s insight into the variety of love and the passage time and with the mysteries of the beautiful Young Man, the Rival Poet and the Dark Lady. This volume presents all 154 sonnets, with a brief introduction.

Although famous now for his Gothic horror tales, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was, first and foremost, a poet: The Raven and Other Poems brought him fame – but not fortune – when it was published in 1845. This collection covers the full range of Poe’s poetry, and includes a selection of prose poems.

From John Donne, through the great poets of the Romantic era – Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley – to WB Yeats in the early 20th century, this set of ten volumes presents the work of some of the most important and best-loved poets in the English language. Each book comprises a representative collection of poems, with a short introduction, and the set includes an eleventh volume, a journal. The other poets are Emily Dickinson, Edward Lear, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.

Beginning with the songs and sonnets, this collection reflects the diversity of Donne’s poetry, ranging from the subtle argument to persuade his lover to stay in bed in ‘Break of Day’, to a selection of the divine poems on themes including the forgiveness of sin.

As well as the famous ‘Hunting of the Snark’ and verses such as ‘The Mock Turtle’s Song’ from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this little volume brings together less familiar poems from the master of nonsense and wordplay, including ‘Hiawatha’s Photographing’, ‘The Crocodile’ and ‘Phantasmagoria’.

American-cut pages

Slightly off-mint.

Ex-headteacher David Harmer knows how to write poems that appeal to young readers. Basing this collection around themes of school and home life, he puts an imaginative spin on plausible situations – such as dropping Mum’s mobile down the loo – that’s sure to make readers smile. Age 7+