Hear great poets of the past via the Poetry Archive

Thanks to the recently relaunched website, you can listen to the likes of Tennyson and Sylvia Plath reading their own verse

• Anna Baddeley -The Observer, Sunday 6 July 2014

Sylvia Plath, whose recording of Parliament Hill Fields is among the Poetry Archive's highlights. Photograph: CSU Archv/Everett / Rex Features

Listening to Andrew Motion on a recent You and Yours talking about the benefits of reading poetry to people with dementia – he's patron of the innovative charity Kissing it Better – brought home the unique power of spoken verse. A decade ago, Motion got chatting to a recording producer, Richard Carrington, about how frustrating it was that many important poets had not been properly recorded. They set up the Poetry Archive, a systematic attempt to record significant poets for posterity, and to make those recordings accessible to the public.

Poetryarchive.org has recently been relaunched, which is great, not only because nine-year-old websites tend to be in need of a facelift, but because I'd totally forgotten about it. As with so many websites, the Poetry Archive was something I stumbled on years ago, rhapsodised about how brilliant it was, then never visited again.
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