Recent posts

Natasha Trethewey Poems

 

Natasha Trethewey is an American prize-winning poet who also had the honour of serving as United States Poet Laureate for two terms, plus Poet Laureate for her home state of Mississippi.  She is an English and Creative Writing Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She was born on the 26th April 1966 in Gulfport, Mississippi.  Her parents were actually deemed to be illegally married ...

Robert Penn Warren Poems

 

Robert Penn Warren was a triple Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.  Over a thirty-year period he won one for a novel called All the King’s Men (in 1947) and two for his poetry (1958 and 1979).  This feat has never been repeated.  Additionally he was a much-respected literary critic who became one of the founding members of a movement in the middle of the 20th ...

New England Poets to Curl up With This Winter

 

#canvas { border: 1px solid black; position: absolute; z-index: 10000; } #flake { color: #CCC; position: absolute; font-size: 25px; top: -50px; } We’re bundled up to our noses and snow is quietly falling. It’s officially winter. Here at My Poetic Side, we’re paying tribute to the picturesque winters of New England by reading tomes upon tomes of poetry by the writers who call the Northeast home. So light some candles, grab a blanket, and curl up with a book of poetry ...

Mona Van Duyn Poems

 

Mona Van Duyn was a multi-award winning American poet whose most prestigious honour came in 1992 when she was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.  As well as being a prolific writer she served the University College of Washington University for many years as a lecturer and only stopped doing so when she retired in 1990. She was born ...

Hal Gye Poems

 

Hal Gye was chiefly an Australian illustrator of humorous and political cartoons that appeared in a number of journals and newspapers.  Besides this though he wrote poetry and articles, most of which were collected and published towards the end of his life, and posthumously. He was born Harold Frederick Neville Gye on the 22nd May 1887 in Ryde, a suburb of Sydney in New South ...

Hans Sachs Poems

 

Hans Sachs was a 16th century German poet and playwright who also belonged to the exclusive guild of Meistersingers.  These were mostly men of the German middle classes who specialised in unaccompanied singing and lyrical composition.  As an aside he also worked as a shoemaker, a trade that he learned as a boy and that he kept up throughout his life. He was born ...

Frederick Locker-Lampson Poems

 

Frederick Locker-Lampson was a 19th century English poet, collector of rare books, a man of letters and a civil servant for a short period in his life. He was born Frederick Locker some time during the year 1821 at Greenwich Hospital in London, the son of Edward Hawke Locker who was Civil Commissioner of the Hospital.  He had no real plans during his school ...

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman Poems

 

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman was a 19th century American poet and, at least for a short time, he worked as a lawyer.  He became more famous during the next century rather than when he was alive.  He is best known for his considerable output of sonnets although he did write in other forms besides that. His work has often been included in anthologies of ...

51 Immigrant Poets – An interactive map on the ‘Muslim ban’

 

In light of recent events concerning Donald Trump’s refugee ban, which has, for the moment, been stopped in its tracks by US judge James Robart, we decided to delve a bit deeper into the lives of poets that have moved to the U.S. and who, if the ban was effective at the time, may never have been able to tread on US soil. For those who are unaware, America’s ...

Fitz James O’Brien Poems

 

Fitz James O"Brien was an Irish-born writer of the 19th century who emigrated to America in 1852.  His literary output included poetry and what is believed to be amongst the first science fiction stories ever written.  He also dabbled in the writing of plays though to much less a degree. He was born Michael O"Brien on the 25th October 1826 in Cork, the ...