Poetry Bookshop Online

Gift Ideas - Contemporary Poetry

Poetry books make ideal gifts for both aficionados as well as for those coming to poetry fresh or hoping to re-kindle a love for the genre diminished by the pace of modern living. Reading poetry creates a space in the hustle-bustle; it provokes thought; it makes us look anew at the everyday things that we encounter and it can amuse and entertain.

On the following pages, we have attempted to provide you with a range of gift-buying options - a selection of books of love poetry that will make the recipient go weak at the knees; half-a-dozen beautiful collections of the work of some of the greatest and best-loved poets of the 20th century; some of the best of recently published contemporary poetry; a selection of anthologies showcasing the finest English poetry; the work of the much-loved Romantic poets and a smile-inducing selection of books of humorous verse.

Make someone happy - buy them some poetry.

• Rain
  Don Paterson
  Faber & Faber
  £12.99

Don Paterson's first new collection for six years displays not just the depth of his poetic vision but also the brilliant craft and technique he brings to his work. Often deceptively simple, poems such as 'The Swing' are heartbreaking. Always readable and sometimes artfully humorous (as in his long poem to Natalie Beridze, aka TBA, an electropop singer/songwriter from Georgia), this is an extraordinary collection.

• Wrecking Light
  Robin Robertson
  Picador
  £8.99

The Wrecking Light, Forward Prize-winning poet Robin Robertson's fourth collection, is a haunting and sometimes shocking examination of the power of nature and the disappointment of human frailty. Stunning language and imagery and disarming humour, Robertson's trademarks, are present in this powerful collection.

• The World's Wife
  Carol Ann Duffy
  Picador
  £8.99

A wonderfully playful and subversive set of poems with a startling cast of characters, including Mrs. Darwin, Frau Freud, Anne Hathaway, the Kray sisters and Mrs. Midas. Duffy blows history and our preconceptions to smithereens in a collection of startling brilliance.

• Tell Me Lies
  Adrian Mitchell
  Bloodaxe
  £10.95

The conscience of the nation since the 1960s, the late Adrian Mitchell's last poems are as quintessentially passionate, funny, human and thought-provoking as we had come to expect from the Shadow Poet Laureate. The collection includes a re-working - or remix - of his famous anti-war poem ‘To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam)', re-told in the light of modern conflict.

• Grain
  John Glenday
  Picador
  £8.99

John Glenday's delicate, emotionally charged poems possess a quiet beauty but the stories they tell are often unsettlingly surreal - the tale of the Beauty and the Beast told in reverse or a tin of peaches frustrated by the wait for the invention of the tin opener, for instance. This, his third collection, secures his place as an important voice in contemporary British poetry.

• Look We Have Coming to Dover
  Daljit Nagra
  Faber & Faber
  £9.99

English teacher Daljit Nagra won the Best Individual Poem award at the 2007 Forward Prize for this book's title poem. This, his first collection of poetry, recounts what it is like to fall between the two stools of being Indian and being English. An entertaining and thoroughly accessible first collection.


Gordon Kerr has worked in marketing and branding for Waterstones and Oddbins. He is the author of more than 30 books in the areas of art, history, poetry, travel, humour and crime.


We have a range of poetry gift guides to suit every taste. Why not check out collected poetry, contemporary poetry, anthologies, Romantic poetry and humorous poetry?