Whether we understand it or recognise it, it is women who have shaped the course and journey of humanity. We are all born from women and usually raised by women. Half the world’s population is female but many of them are trodden down by misogyny, religious misinterpretation, failing systems of education and welfare and all manner of other ills that shame us all. In a world where, gender, colour, race and orientation are still stumbling blocks to inclusion, women’s words are too often unheard and neglected.

Whilst the world has moved measurably forward in recent decades, although not enough, some progress has been made. Our poets wrote at a time when their basic rights as human beings were restrictive and oppressive. Against the odds, they were able to write verse, which in varying degrees, moved the literary needle and perhaps influenced their society in positive ways.

This volume pays tribute to 50 different women poets, some well-known whilst others undeservedly forgotten but all contributing a single poem which we hope might nudge listeners to discover more of their verse.

1 - Sixty Women That Changed the Word. The Classic Poets - An Introduction

2 - "Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend" by Jane Austen

3 - "The Disappointment" by Aphra Behn

4 - "To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet

5 - "Night" by Anne Bronte

6 - "Speak of the North, a Lonely Moor" by Charlotte Bronte

7 - "Remembrance" by Emily Jane Bronte

8 - "How Do I Love Thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

9 - "What Constitutes a Negro" by Eva Carter Buckner

10 - "Prairie" Dawn by Willa Cather

11 - "The Hunting of the Hare" by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

12 - "Wild Nights, Wild Nights" by Emily Dickinson

13 - "Hermes of the Ways" by Hilda Doolttle

14 - "In a London Drawingroom" by George Eliot

15 - "Ardelia to Melancholy" by Anne Kingsmill Finch

16 - "In Memorium. Alphonse Campbell Fordham" by Mary Weston Fordham

17 - "The Little Waves of Breffney" by Eva Gore-Booth

18 - "Song of the Worker's Wife" by Alice Gray Jones

19 - "Expecting the Lord" by Ann Griffiths

20 - "The Angel's Visit" by Charlotte L Forten Grimke

21 - "A Twilight Fancy" by Radclyffe Hall

22 - "Bury Me in a Free Land" by Frances E W Harper

23 - "Acceptance" by Janabai

24 - "You Men" by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

25 - "Tears Ere Thy Death" by Khansa

26 - "Love, the Soul of Poetry" by Anne Killigrew

27 - "Vakh - They Who Have Gained Experience" by Lal Ded

28 - "Revenge" by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

29 - "Afterword" by Emily Lawless

30 - "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus

31 - "Lilacs" by Amy Lowell

32 - "Would a Circling Surface Vulture" by Akka Mahadevi

33 - "Night Scented Stock" by Katherine Mansfield

34 - "Infelix" by Adah Isaacs Menken

35 - "The Farmer's Bride" by Charlotte Mew

36 - "Regrets" by Alice Meynell

37 - "Drink the Nectar" by Mirabai

38 - "Negro Heroines" by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

39 - "Before Winter" by Edith Nesbit

40 - "The Gift" of India by Sarojini Naidu

41 - "Impressionist" by Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson

42 - "The Natives of America" by Ann Plato

43 - "Envy" by Adelaide Anne Proctor

44 - "In Love" by Rabia al Basri

45 - "A Birthday" by Christina Rosseti

46 - "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" by Edna St Vincent Millay

47 - "Hymn to Aphrodite" by Sappho

48 - "Stanzas" by Mary Shelley

49 - "Sonnet LXX - On Being Cautioned..." by Charlotte Smith

50 - "On Foot I Had to Cross the Solar System" by Edith Sodergran

51 - "Colored Hats from Tender Buttons" by Gertrude Stein

52 - "O Lord in Me there Lieth Naught" by Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke

53 - "There Will Come Soft Rain" by Sara Teasdale

54 - "To Mother" by Marina Ivanova Tsvetaeva

55 - "Any Woman" by Katharine Tynan

56 - "An Autumn Sunset" by Edith Wharton

57 - "To a Lady and Her Children on the Death of Her Son and Their Brother" by Phyllis Wheatley

58 - "Solitude" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

59 - "For the Courtesan Ch'ing Lin" by Wu Zao

60 - "A Crowded Trolly Car" by Elinor Wylie

61 - "Black Hair" by Akiko Yosano