Despite living a significant part of his life without a home, W H Davies was one of the most popular poets of his time. Born in Newport, Wales, in 1871, the son of an iron worker, Davies lost his father when he was three years old and subsequently went to live with his grandparents. He […]

Born in County Donegal in 1824, Irishman William Allingham was a poet and scholar who was best known for his Diary that was published after his death. He wrote a large number of verses and his poem The Faeries has been included in many anthologies over the years. His father was a bank manager, English […]

Famous for writing poems in his native Dorset dialect, writer and poet William Barnes was born into a farming family in Bagber in 1801. He grew up speaking in the dialect of the day and saw his upbringing as idyllic, something which came across in his later pastoral poetry that celebrated the simple folk of […]

Activist, journalist and poet Subramania Bharati was born in Ettayapuram, India, in 1882. Brought up in the Tamil religion, he was one of their literary leading lights and his verses were characterized by their potent nationalism and patriotic fervour. Educated at the local Hindu college he was a precocious student who turned to poetry when […]

Born in Bristol in 1752, Thomas Chatterton was one of the most enigmatic characters of 18th Century poetry, mostly in part because he took his own life at the tender age of just 17 and wrote the fake ‘Rowley poems’ that caused such controversy at the time. He became a the focal point for many […]