In honor of National Poetry Month, the Library of Congress digitized fifty recordings of poetry and prose from its Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature (before only accessible at the library on magnetic tape reels)—which contains over 2,000 recordings from the last 75 years—making them available to stream online for the first time. Five recordings will be added each month going forward.

Most recordings come from literary events that took place at the Library of Congress, which has hosted an annual Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry since 1943. They include readings by former US Poets Laureate and Consultants Elizabeth Bishop, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Frost, as well as Nobel Laureate Czes?aw Mi?osz, among many others.

Catalina Gomez, who is managing the project, told Hyperallergic, “I love when, in some of these sessions, the poet or writer pauses or makes himself or herself start a poem or an excerpt all over again. Those moments show how passionate authors and poets can be about the ways their work sounds.”