Australian poet David Campbell was born in Adelong, New South Wales, in 1915 and, apart from being a prolific writer, he was also one of the few to also excel at international sports, in this case rugby, where he played two matches for England. Campbell’s father was a doctor and grazier who installed in his third born child a love of learning and education.

At the age of 15, Campbell was sent to the suburbs of Sydney to King’s School where five years later he earned a place at Cambridge University in England. Quickly assimilated into the English way of life after his arrival, Campbell found that he excelled at rugby and was picked for an international match against Wales in 1937.

If he had stayed in England, he may well have become a fully-fledged sportsman rather than a poet, but Campbell returned …

Bayard Taylor was an American born poet of the 19th century who also worked as a translator and literary critic. As well as poetry he wrote a number of travel books. He worked as a journalist on the New York Tribune and other publications and this profession turned out to be his gateway to extensive worldwide travel when sent on assignments abroad. He even turned his hand to lyric writing for famous singers and completed a period of diplomatic service in St Petersburg, Russia.

Bayard was born on the 11th January 1825 in the small town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania into a Quaker family. His parents were reasonably well off farmers and could afford to give their son a decent education at academies in West Chester and Unionville. Although he entered the printing business as an apprentice he was a keen writer of poetry …

The history of literature in Nepal shows that work was predominantly written in Sanskrit. This changed in the 1920s and 1930s when two Nepalese writers combined the old ways with an English style of writing. Bālkrishṇa Sama, and his good friend Lakṣmīprasād Devkoṭā, adopted a primarily western style producing short stories, tragic dramas and prose poetry. As writers all over the world have done for centuries, Sama wanted to highlight the social problems in his country by writing about them, in verse. He was inspired by the likes of Henrik Ibsen and his work portrayed the agonies of love and relationships, tyranny and oppression as well as patriotism towards their mother country.

Bālkrishṇa Sama was born in February 1903 into a wealthy, aristocratic military family. His father was a general and it was inevitable that the son would follow the father into the Army. …

Ariwara no Narihira was a 9th century Japanese poet who was one of the waka poets of that time. He wrote a long piece of work called The Tales of Ise which featured a character who enjoyed a series of love affairs based, if legend is to be believed, on Narihira’s own experiences. An aristocrat by birth, he was certainly named in a number of scandals involving ladies of the Japanese royal court and it is likely that his adventures will have prevented any elevation in status of a political nature throughout his life. His poetry though DID bring him much acclaim and he was recognised as one of the “Six Best Waka Poets” – rokkasen in Japanese. Some even confer the term “genius” upon him. A further accolade placed him among Japan’s “Thirty Six Poetry Immortals”.

It is believed that Narihira was …

Carolyn Wells was an American poet and novelist whose earlier writing covered areas such as children’s stories and nonsense poetry. She changed direction when, in 1910, she heard an Anna Katherine Green mystery novel read out loud and decided that this was her preferred style from now on. She was a prolific writer, publishing some 170 books during her lifetime, as well as having stories and poems published in such British publications as Punch and The Lark and a number of American newspapers.

Carolyn was born in June 1862 in Rahway, New Jersey. Her childhood development was seriously curtailed when, at the age of six, she contracted scarlet fever and lost her hearing as a result, although it is not certain if this was a permanent affliction.   Despite this she graduated from high school as a valedictorian and went on to study humanities …