"Life Lines 2: Poets for Oxfam" by Todd Swift (ed) (Oxfam, 2007)

This CD of 56 poets reading their own work continues the series started last year. Combined with Padel's The Poem and the Journey it makes a useful kit if you want to get into contemporary UK poetry. Though the list of names suggests a range slightly wider than what appears on the disc, the collection's still pretty broad, and all the readings are ok. I needed to listen to some poems a few times, so you get your money's worth. Classics like Raine's "A Martian sends a postcard home" rub shoulders with work by poets like Katy Evans-Bush whose first book is yet to appear. About 20 of the poems survived my first cull. After a few months all that remained were Korn, Dullingham, Evans-Bush, Roz Barber and Sampson - a rather smaller list than from the first CD.