Born in Kansas in 1868, Edgar Lee Masters was the author of a wide range of novels and books of poetry that set him up as one of the major literary voices of America. His collection of short poems, The Spoon River Anthology, is perhaps his most famous contribution to the art and was composed […]

Born in Pennsylvania in 1879, American Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive turned poet and writer who won the Pulitzer in 1955. He went to public school and fell in love with the classics in Greek and Latin. He originally trained as a lawyer, attending Harvard initially and then a law school in New York. […]

Born in London in 1837, Algernon Swinburne became one of the most well-known poets of the Victorian age, producing verse that often shocked and shook the morals of the conservative elite of the city. The oldest of 6 children in a wealthy family, he was sent to Eton to begin his studies where he discovered […]

At one time considered a poet of the resistance by Israel, Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the West of Galilee and was a potent voice for Palestine over the last 60 years. Though his mother was illiterate, his grandfather taught him to read at an early age. When his family were forced off […]

Born in Tennessee in 1943, Nikki Giovanni has been one of the most influential voices in American literature in the last 60 years, a poet and activist who was influenced by the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s. She was also greatly influenced in her early years by the stories from her grandmother, […]