Top of my list is The Collected Poems (Atlantic, £30/£27) by Zbigniew Herbert, a magnificent collection. Herbert belongs to that generation of European poets who survived German occupation and Soviet terror with grace and wit. His poems resonate across the language barrier, in part because they do not depend on rhyme or metre in Polish. Many of his images are barely metaphors: for instance, he writes of a clumsy bumblebee trying to push through to the calyx in On translating poetry; or describes a hen, as an example of “what living constantly with human beings leads to”. Most sadly, he writes that “what will remain after us/will be like lovers weeping/in a small dirty hotel/when wallpaper dawns”.

The sequence of poems in Richard Berengarten's The Manager (Salt Modern Poets, £14.99/£13.49) takes the wasteland of our once ebullient capitalist society as a focus. As the title suggests, he is writing about working offices; but he also writes well about the ambiguities of sexual passion. His use of dialogue is riveting. A man at a bar implies a whole mercantile scheme of values even as he orders drinks. Another betrays his own falsities and evasions while making a phone call in traffic. Lyrical phrases arise casually.

Are you there? There's somebody else on the line.
It is the dead. Who will not lie down and rest.

Maureen Duffy deserves serious acclaim as a poet, as much as an original novelist. Pitch perfect, often funny, Family Values (Enitharmon, £8.95/£8.50) addresses familiar topics of ageing - loss of friends, memory, and thoughts of death - with an unsentimental amusement that is never unfeeling. Even people she has never known take on flesh: a grandmother, for instance, who got up at 6am to go out cleaning, or the father who failed to marry her mother. Most arresting is her Lament for the Scribblers, with its love of writers who go on writing to the end, like Hardy, and its compassion for those who can't.

If you only buy one book this Christmas make sure it's...

Michael Parkinson, Sheila Hancock, Roger Moore, Elaine Paige and Andrew Castle pick out some perfect reading for the festive period

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Gifts

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Fiction

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Crime

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Biography and memoir

• Christmas bestsellers

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Art

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Food

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Music

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Travel

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Children's audiobooks

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Film & theatre

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Graphic Novels

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Back to basics

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Poetry

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Children's 2-10

Carol Rumens has often taken on the culture of other language adventurously. In Blind Spots (Bloodaxe, £8.99/£8.54) her poems are coloured by a reading of Eugenio Montale, though none of them are direct translations. A more surprising presence is Phillip Larkin, called up because Rumens was writing these poems in Hull. Her unforced lyricism rises above pastiche. Taking a walk through his village of Cottingham she responds to the question Herbert also posed.

What will survive ? The work, of course, we cried,
The work. But every instinct understood
To those with whom you'd shared
Mere life, you would have turned,
And vanished through the dusk of memory,
Leaving the experts to debate the barely heard.

A surprising discovery was John Ashbery's translations of Pierre Martory in The Landscapist (Carcanet, £12.95/£11.66). The directness of the French poet - there is facing text - disciplines Ashbery's wild imagery while preserving his amazing glitter.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy