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Inspiring Young Learners

Poetry doesn't just live in books - it lives in the sounds that words make. When we read poems out loud we breathe life into them and we can picture them in our imagination. The Children’s Poetry Archive is a place where you can listen to poems read out loud. We have poems read by the poets who wrote them as well as poems which other people have recorded for us. We think everyone has a favourite poem, it’s just that they haven’t heard it out loud yet. We hope you find your favourite here.

Poetry was spoken out loud a long time before people started to write it down but we didn’t have any way to make recordings of it. This is why we can’t listen to Shakespeare or Wordsworth now, however much we might like to. The Children’s Poetry Archive has promised to record as many poets and poems as we can and to put those recordings here so you can explore them.

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