Poets have been, historically, essential creators of the art form of the spoken word. Audiobooks of poetry give readers and listeners a unique opportunity to hear poets share their work. Whether we hear the poets themselves or a skilled audiobook narrator, listening can transform how we experience a work of poetry. To celebrate National Poetry Month, here are 10 exceptional poetry audiobooks, all reviewed and recommended by AudioFile magazine. For even more picks, see AudioFile’s curated list, “Poetry on Audio.”

An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, read by the author (Blackstone Audio, 1.75 hours): Teacher, saxophonist, and former poet laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo does not just read her poems. She performs them with passion and music; some are literally songs, and she sings them. This collection focuses on the many trails of tears, from those of her Cherokee and Muscogee ancestors to those of Central American natives today. The poems are beautiful, made more beautiful by the author’s vivid and emotional interpretations. 

Duende: Poems by Tracy K. Smith, read by the author (HighBridge Audio, 1.5 hours): Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith has a voice that is almost as beautiful as the imagery in this second collection of her work. Her reading is helped, of course, by the outstanding quality of her poetry—which stands at the front of contemporary American literature. If you already know her work, this is a chance to hear her interpret it; if you don’t, this is a chance to discover something wonderful. 

The Hurting Kind: Poems by Ada Limón, read by the author (Milkweed Editions, 1.75 hours): Former poet laureate Ada Limón delivers her own marvelous poetry very well indeed. Nearly all the poems involve, in one way or another, the relationship between humans and the natural world—through images, ideas, or acute observation. Her calm, confiding voice invites us into the poems and shares the emotions that inspired them, as well as the poetic structures that help them to work on us. 

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes, read by Dion Graham (Brilliance Audio, 48 minutes): Dion Graham’s deep, melodious voice and natural sense of story give this classic book of Hughes’s early poems a revelatory power. His sense of timing, clear timbre, and syncopated cadence elevate this remarkably diverse collection. Voicing the poet’s jazz style, Graham smartly hooks onto Hughes’s musicality. Written in a frequently intimate tone, read with measured power and empathy, this audiobook ends too soon.  

The Tiny Journalist by Naomi Shihab Nye, read by the author (BOA Editions Ltd., 2 hours): Naomi Shihab Nye delivers her remarkable poems with understated yet fierce urgency. The 2019 audiobook’s inspiration is Janna Jihad Ayyad, the “youngest journalist in Palestine,” a 7-year-old girl who recorded smartphone videos of anti-occupation protests. Nye’s vision combined with her finely crafted language creates tangible images for the listener and gives each work subtle simplicity. Listening is a must. 

Electric Arches by Eve L. Ewing, read by the author (Haymarket Books, 1.5 hours): Eve L. Ewing reads her first poetry collection with a brio and a tang that hook the listener from the get-go. She has a youthful lilting voice that lifts listeners into the funny poems and carries them safely over the tough ones. The poems are simultaneously specific and universal—the childhood freedom of a bicycle; the first time she was called that ugly racist word; the most astonishing what-if: What if there were a machine that let you speak to your enslaved ancestors?

Light for the World To See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope by Kwame Alexander, read by the author (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 13 minutes): Kwame Alexander delivers three of his poems about the struggles of Black Americans. He begins with a stirring foreword in which he remembers a time in November 1978 when his father—also his school principal— brought the entire student body out to protest the police killing of Arthur Miller in Brooklyn. Alexander’s three wonderfully performed poems, set to original music, are a potent combination of elegy, protest, and celebration of Black triumph.

Selected Poems by Ai Qing, trans. by Robert Dorsett, foreword by Ai Weiwei. Read by David Shih, Nancy Wu, and Robert Dorsett (Random House Audio, 1.75 hours): Ai Qing is considered by many to be one of the most important Chinese poets of the last century, and this audiobook of poems from his career helps explain why. Devoted to the land and people of China, he was imprisoned by both the Kuomintang and the Communists. Some poetry is designed for bravura performance, but this is not, and the narrators respect its quiet self-control.

This Wound Is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt, read by the author (Blackstone Audio, 2.5 hours): Cree poet and scholar Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut poetry collection is a captivating listen. Narrating with a blend of steadiness and emotion, he delivers this memoir-manifesto-meditation in a voice uniquely his. Expressing themes of queerness, indigeneity, the corporeal, and the ethereal, Belcourt’s lines are at once accessible and challenging. 

Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry by Brad Leithauser, read by Kevin R. Free (Random House Audio, 11.25 hours): Poetry is meant to be heard, and this detailed explanation of its pistons and gears finds its natural form as an audiobook. Poet and critic Brad Leithauser’s analysis of rhyme and meter is designed for a general audience and is illuminated with a succession of sharp, inventive similes and metaphors. Given some of the greatest lines in literature, narrator Kevin R. Free is refreshingly plain and unaffected, performing with ease, clarity, and precision.

Robin Whitten is editor and founder of AudioFile magazine.