Paper Boat

New and Selected Poems: 1961-2023

By: Margaret Atwood

Narrated by: Margaret Atwood

An extraordinary career-spanning collection from one of the most revered poets and storytellers of our age

Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood—a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes—Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems, 1961–2023 assembles Atwood’s most vital poems in one essential volume.

In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful, and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voice to remarkably drawn characters—mythological figures, animals, and everyday people—all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. “How can one live with such a heart?” Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the reader and ferrying us through life, death, and whatever comes next. Atwood, in her journey through poetry, illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.

Spanning six decades of work—from her earliest beginnings to brand-new poems—this volume charts the evolution of one of our most iconic and necessary authors.

Critic reviews

“Trenchant, poignant, archly funny, lacerating, and formally fluent, Atwood’s incandescent poems address the timeless and the now, the wild and the cultivated, the radiant and the tragic. A prodigious literary treasure.”
—Booklist, starred

“A grand showcase. . . . [Paper Boat] is classic Atwood—conversational, nearly insouciant, yet with a fierceness of perception and conviction that cuts to the bone. . . . Essential for any serious poetry collection.”
—Library Journal, starred