Archibald Lampman was born in 1861 in a small village called Morpeth, close to the shores of Lake Erie in Canada.  His father was an Anglican priest who moved the family when Archie was six years old to Gore’s Landing on Rice Lake, Ontario but the young boy soon fell ill with a severe rheumatic fever which damaged his heart and left him lame for a long period of time.

Despite his poor health he got through school and graduated from Trinity College in Toronto.  It was here that he first became inspired to write poetry, having marvelled over a borrowed copy of a newly published book of poems by Charles G.D. Roberts called Orion and Other Poems. His own poetry that was published in the college magazine and his work later appeared in such prestigious magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and Scribner’s.

Having …

Denise Levertov was born in Essex in 1923.  Her mother was Welsh while her father was a Russian born Hassidic Safardic Jew who migrated first to Germany and then to England.  He later became an Anglican priest.  At the tender age of five she declared that one day she would be a writer.  True to her word she had a passion for writing from that early age and when 12 years old she submitted a few poems to the famous T S Eliot and he gave her a very encouraging and lengthy written reply.  She was only 17 when she got her first break – a published poem.

While serving as a nurse in war-torn London she continued with her writing and brought out her first book in 1946 – The Double Image.  A year later she met and married an American writer …

English playwright, poet and actor Ben Jonson was born in London June 11th 1572 to a family believed to be of Scottish descent. His clergyman father died before he was born and his mother remarried. He was fortunate to receive a classical education at the prestigious Westminster School, paid for by a family friend. Jonson wanted to continue his education at Cambridge University but instead was compelled to undergo an apprenticeship with his stepfather, a bricklayer. After this he travelled to the Netherlands where he served with the English regiments of Sir Francis Vere, an eminent English military commander who was instrumental in securing Dutch independence from Spain. Jonson married on his return to London and became an actor and playwright.

Although he is nowadays considered the second greatest English playwright after William Shakespeare his early plays are largely forgotten. It is known …

Born Judith Arundell Wright, 31st May 1915 in NSW Australia, she was one of Australia’s foremost poets and writer of short stories and children’s books.  She spent much of her childhood in Brisbane and after the death of her mother, Ethel, was a boarder of a girls school in New England.  After graduating she studied at Sydney University but failed to take a degree. Whilst working as a statistician at Queensland University in 1946 she produced her first collection of poetry, The Moving Image.  Shortly afterwards she met her husband-to-be, philosopher Jack McKinney and they lived together at Mount Tamborine until Jack’s death in 1966.

Her work as a poet had started to become prominent after WW2 when her passion for the environment and her concern for the problems facing the Aboriginal people defined …

Antonio Machado came into the world in Seville, southern Spain in 1875.  He was one of two brothers, only a year apart, and their father moved the family to Madrid when Antonio was 8 years old. While studying, with his older brother, at “Institución Libre de Enseñanza”,  Antonio found he had a talent for writing and a love of literature.

Antonio was so close to his brother that the pair of them went to Paris in 1899 to work for a publishing company as translators.  It was here that he realised that becoming a great poet was his burning ambition and this decision was helped by the associations with already established French poets like Paul Fort, Jean Moréas, and Paul Verlain.  He was undoubtedly inspired by also meeting the likes of Oscar Wilde and Ruben Dario. Two years after arriving in the French …