Born into the Elizabethan era, in 1554, Philip Sidney was known as a poet and soldier and was a prominent feature of the court at the time. He came from an influential family and was educated at Shrewsbury School and then Oxford, before being elected to Parliament at the age of just 18. Traveling widely […]

Born in 1913 in the heart of Utah, May Swenson grew up in a Mormon family, the oldest out of 10 children. She realized that she was a lesbian from an early age and was shunned in later life by her family who held strong religious beliefs. As a girl she was greatly influenced by […]

Born in 1940 in Michigan, an orphan who spent his fifteenth year incarcerated in a mental hospital and faked his death at just the age of 26, Bill Knott, also known as Saint Geraud, was one of the most enigmatic American poets of the 20th Century. Often verging on the surreal, Knott’s poetry covers a […]

Born in Italy in 1880, Guillaume Apollinaire was a poet, writer and critic who settled in France and is known as one of the founding fathers of surrealism. Although his father was not known, his mother was from Polish royalty and he was brought up speaking French, Italian and Polish. As a teenager, he moved […]

Born in 1788 in Bulacan, Francisco Balagtas is rightly seen as one of the literary greats of the Philippines, a prolific romantic poet known for his epic Florante at Laura. Born into a life of poverty, from a young age he was hungry for knowledge and, after attending school in Bigaa, went to Manila where […]