We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
The 18th century English romantic poet Ann Yearsley was remarkable in that she had no education to speak of, having grown up in a fairly rustic environment, and yet she was one of the most accomplished, working class female poets of her day. She married a yeoman farmer and worked as a milkmaid on the farm but, despite these humble beginnings, she ...
Allan Ramsay was a great Scottish pastoral poet whose six children included his eldest son (of the same name) who became an accomplished artist, with many examples of his portrait painting hanging in the National Galleries of England and Scotland. Allan Ramsay Snr though was a wig maker by profession, and very successful at it, who also had a number of collections ...
Living most of his life in the agricultural district of Dehu in India, Bhakti poet and visionary Sant Tukaram was born in 1606 and initially lived a normal childhood that was quite unremarkable. Although he was believed to be from what is called a ‘lower caste’ family, they were reasonably well off and afforded a comfortable status within the local community. ...
Greek poet Theognis lived around the sixth century BC and is generally thought of in the same vein as Homer and Hesiod as one of the earliest writers to whom we can ascribe specific works. Indeed, Theognis can be considered one of the first lyric writers who were actually concerned how their works would last in the years to come. As with ...
Born in 1805 in Old Harlow, a well to do part of Essex, poet and writer Sarah Flower Adams was perhaps best known for her epic dramatic poem Vivia Perpetua which was written shortly before her untimely death from tuberculosis and the hymn Nearer, My God, To Thee. She was born into a talented family. Her sister went on to become ...
Born on the shoreline of Maine in 1849, Sarah Orne Jewett was a poet and novel writer who produced a large number of popular works that reflected the local color of the area. Her family had lived in the region for a since the Founding Fathers and were well known. Her father was a respected community doctor whom she regularly ...
Born in 1916 in North Dakota, poet and novelist Thomas McGrath is probably best known for his work long poem Letters to an Imaginary Friend as well as a host of novels and children’s books that set him apart as one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century. His parents were originally from Ireland but were drawn to the ...
Yvor Winters was a 20th century American poet who favoured an experimental style of writing which did not always endear him to his peers. Some pieces consisted of one line and he varied his work from the more formal style to including imagist sections. While teaching at Stanford University he fell out with the Head of the English Department, a man who ...
William Henry Drummond was an Irish-Canadian poet of the second half of the 19th century who lived a relatively short life and yet made a huge impact on the Canadian poetry loving public. He specialised in humorous dialect poems that were instantly appealing and he became "one of the most widely-read and loved poets" in Canada." Alongside this he was a qualified ...
William Dean Howells was an American poet and novelist who wrote in a strictly Realist style. He also contributed to numerous publications with literary reviews of other writers while occasionally writing plays. In later life he made the statement that, in his opinion, “the future of American writing was not in poetry but in novels”. He also believed that the romantic storytelling seen ...
