We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
American poet Erin Belieu was born in 1967 in Nebraska and won an MA at Boston and an MFA at Ohio before going on to teach at various universities and colleges across the States, including as a professor for creative writing. Her works have covered such diverse issues as gender divides and meaning, the idea of love, and how our history ...
From Jewish Romanian descent, poet and writer Paul Celan was born in 1920 in Cernauti (now in what we call the Ukraine). He grew up to learn Hebrew and was brought up speaking German because of his mother’s love of German literature and was fond of writing poetry from a very early age, often in secret. In 1938, Paul Celan moved to ...
William Morris was a poet and writer who was also at the forefront of textile arts in the latter half of the nineteenth century in England. He was born in 1834 in Essex and was from a relatively well-off middle class family. His father was in finance and his mother was descended from a wealthy middle England family. Confined to the ...
Constantine Cavafy was born on 29th April 1863 in Alexandria, Egypt, the youngest of nine siblings, two of whom died in infancy. His father, Petros Ioannes, who held dual Greek and British citizenship, was a wealthy businessman with import/export offices in Constantinople, London and Liverpool. At the time of Petros’ death the family were living in Liverpool but moved back to Alexandria ...
Yehuda Amichai was born 3rd May 1924 in Wurzburg, Germany to an Orthodox Jewish family. When he was twelve the family emigrated to Palestine, then settled in Jerusalem in 1936. Amichai’s native language was German and he could speak fluent Hebrew by the time they arrived in Palestine. He attended a religious High School in Jerusalem. During World War Two Amichai fought with ...
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940 and later settled in the United States where he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1991. His early childhood was marked by poverty and the Siege of Leningrad where his family suffered severe starvation and nearly died. Born into a Jewish family, Brodsky suffered the antisemitism of his ...
Born in 1647, John Wilmot was a poet and writer, prominent in the court of King Charles II, and the Second Earl of Rochester. Something of a hell raiser in his day, his proclivity for drink and womanizing were closely linked to his poetry and he often trod a fine line within court circles. Among the poets of the Restoration though, ...
If ever there was an “Anglicised Scotsman”, this was the man! Despite growing up on the remote Scottish island of Wyre, in the Orkneys, Muir had no time for Scottish Nationalism and preferred to write in plain English. His poetry has been described as written in “a calm and neutral tone”. He enraged some of the Scottish literati in 1936 with his ...
Most people who know anything about English literature will have heard of the Brontë sisters. Charlotte, Emily and Anne all wrote novels and poetry and their combined output is safely ensconced amongst the classics of literature, having been read for pleasure or studied as set books by readers and students the world over. Their former family home in Haworth, West Yorkshire has ...
Writer, dramatist and poet, Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564 and was considered to be one of the premier writers of his day, greatly influencing his better known compatriot William Shakespeare. His life was short and ended violently but he is deemed one of the most influential figures in English literary history. Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury. His father was ...
