We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1890, Christopher Morley was a poet and writer who produced a number of notable works and is more widely known for his novels Parnassus on Wheels and the critically acclaimed Kitty Foyle which was later made into an Oscar winning film. Morley’s father was a mathematician but it was his violinist mother who engendered his love of music ...
Born in Woodford, Essex, in 1823, Coventry Patmore was a critic and poet although he initially wanted to become a painter. His love of literature was encouraged by his father with whom he formed a strong and loving bond from early childhood. Indeed, in his youth Patmore won a prize for his artwork and it wasn’t until he went to school ...
Born in 1893 in California, Clark Ashton Smith was an artist who had many strings to his bow, at once a competent painter and sculptor but also a fine writer of genre fiction such as horror and a notable poet. His talent was all the more surprising because he was largely self-taught as he suffered with a variety of mental ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. Balkrishṇa Sama, and his good friend LakṣmIprasad Devkoṭa, adopted a primarily western style producing short stories, tragic dramas and prose poetry. As writers all over the world ...
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 ...
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 ...
John Gould Fletcher was an innovative American poet who wrote much of his poetry in the imagist style. This was reinforced when he met the “imagist champion” Amy Lowell while in London. Fletcher holds the honour of being the first “southern” poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, for his 1938 collection called Selected Poems. He was also well known as being ...
Born into aristocracy in Lyon, France, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a poet and writer who won a number of literary awards and is probably best remembered for his enduring novella The Little Prince. Saint-Exupery’s father died before he had reached the age of 4 and it had a huge impact on the whole family, leaving them in financial difficulty at the time. Saint-Exupery ...
