Born in 1849 in New York, Emma Lazarus is perhaps best known for providing the poem adorning the plaque at the bottom of the Empire State Building, entitled The New Colossus. From a wealthy Jewish background, she was a precocious child who was largely tutored at home. Taking an interest in literature and poetry from […]

Irish poet Francis Ledwidge was just 29 years old when he was killed on the battlefields of World War I. He was born in Slane in 1887, one of nine children in a family that lived on the edge of poverty though he was lucky to have the ethos of education drilled into him from […]

Born in 1865 in New South Wales, Dame Mary Gilmore was a socialist first and then a poet, and is one of the few Australians to have featured on their monetary system. The oldest born to a Scottish farmer and an Australian mother with roots in Ireland, she attended public school before the family moved […]

Born in 1886 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Delmira Agustini is one of the most celebrated Latin American poets of the last century, known for her precocious talent and tragically short life. Her work was strictly modernist but she helped to redefine the tradition with her intensely erotic verse that looked at the world from a woman’s […]

Born in 1913 in Taranaki Province, New Zealand, Douglas Stewart was an Australian poet who was more known for his editing career and his promotion of burgeoning writers in the 20th Century. He was born into a well-to-do middle class family and led a fairly happy childhood in New Zealand. Stewart claims he decided to […]