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National Poetry Library

Name: National Poetry Library
Address: Level 5, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London SE1 8XX, UK, London, GB
Telephone: +44 20 7921 0943
Price range: ££
Rating: 4.6

A sprawling poetry collection on Level 5 of Royal Festival Hall where you can lose hours among 40,000+ volumes and rare manuscripts.

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Head up to the fifth floor of the Southbank Centre and you'll find yourself in a reader's paradise that actually feels like a living, breathing space rather than a dusty archive. The National Poetry Library houses one of the most comprehensive collections of modern and contemporary poetry in the world—40,000+ volumes, plus letters, recordings, and manuscripts from poets you've heard of and plenty you haven't. It's the kind of place where you can stumble from Sylvia Plath to some brilliant 90s zine poetry in the same afternoon, all without paying a penny. The views over the Thames don't hurt either.