Lola Ridge was an Irish-born poet who eventually settled in America. Her writing style was heavily influenced by the difficult circumstances in which she lived all her life. She was an active feminist who contributed regularly to Marxist-based publications and her behaviour often bordered on anarchy. She was a great supporter of lost causes and her Jewish background almost certainly shaped her, ...
Poet and puritan minister Michael Wigglesworth was born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1631 but sailed to the Americas when he was just seven years old, settling first in Massachusetts and then Connecticut. Whilst he enjoyed school for a couple of years, his puritan father later became ill and the young Wigglesworth had to forsake his education for a while to help ...
One of the lesser known Great War poets, Julian Grenfell was born in London in 1888 and was unusual because he had joined the army nearly four years before hostilities broke out. He came from a privileged background, his father a famous sportsman and his mother well known for hosting society occasions. Brought up in Buckinghamshire he fell in love with poetry ...
For many Australians, Louisa Lawson was a major force in allowing women to vote in the country but she was also a talented poet and journalist. She was born in Guntawang in New South Wales, the second of 12 children to Harriet and Henry Albury. Educated at Mudgee National School she was offered a chance to go into teaching when she ...
Poet Julian Tuwim was born into a middle class Jewish family in Lodz, Poland, in 1894 and went on to become one of the major figures in Polish poetry, helping to found the experimental Skamander group in 1918. As a young man he wasn’t considered to be committed to his studies and even had to re-sit his sixth grade at school. Living ...
More widely remembered for his sculpture of David and painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo Buonarroti was also a poet and engineer who was born in Tuscany in 1475. His father worked in a governmental position and his mother suffered from various ailments during his early life and died when he was just 6 years old. Michelangelo was interested in painting ...
Joseph O’Connor is a multi-award winning Dublin-born novelist, playwright, journalist and broadcaster. At the age of 51 he can look back on considerable success over his lifetime. He comes from a talented family of five children including the well-known singer and songwriter Sinead O’Connor who first came to international attention with her haunting song Nothing Compares to You. Another sister has taken ...
It would be fair to say that the Australian poet John Shaw Neilson succeeded as a popular poet despite his lack of sophistication and education. He was raised in a working class environment with very little schooling and spent a good part of his adult life doing manual labour on the construction of roads and dams. This he managed without being a ...
John Ruskin was a leading philanthropist of the 19th century who cared passionately about the poorer people in English society and the effects that the Industrial Revolution was having on their quality of life. He travelled widely, both as a boy with his family, and later in life. He loved the Alpine region and was influenced by the art, culture and architecture ...
Joseph Campbell was a relatively obscure Irish poet born in the late 19th century whose first language was Gaelic. Writing primarily in his native language he did, however, translate traditional poems and songs into English and he became best known for writing the words to accompany two famous Irish airs: My Lagan Love and Gartan Mother's Lullaby. Additionally, some of his poetry was ...
