As the old saying goes, don’t discuss politics or religion at the dinner table. But extended family is arriving soon and niceties have eliminated most topics of conversation you were hoping to imbibe once the post-turkey wine starts flowing. We’re here to help! Here are eight outstanding contemporary poets we’ll be enthusiastically discussing over the Thanksgiving table.
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Epes Sargent was a 19th century American poet, playwright, novelist and newspaper editor. Probably his best known popular piece of work was the poem A Life on the Ocean Wave which was set to music and turned into a jaunty nautical song which is still sung to this day.
He was born on the 27th September 1813 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. His father, also called ...
Gabriel Harvey was an English writer and scholar of the 16th and 17th centuries who claimed to be the inventor of the English version of the hexameter metre in verse that was a standard of so many classical pieces in Latin and Greek literature. He might have attained greater heights as a writer but for a long-running feud with the influential Elizabethan pamphleteer ...
Erik Johan Stagnelius was a Swedish poet who was a member of the Romantic movement in arts and literature, and also a playwright.
He was born on the 14th October 1793 in Gärdslösa, a town on the island of Öland. His family background was of a religious nature, his father being a minister who eventually rose to the rank of bishop, and the boy’s spiritual thinking was, ...
Ernest Christopher Dowson was a 19th century English writer who aligned himself with other literary and artistic figures of the time who were, collectively, called Decadents. In his short lifetime he was a writer of short stories, novelist and poet and he also carried out a number of translations of French novels into English.
He was born on the 2nd August 1867 in the ...
Ernest Favenc was an English-born Australian poet and also the author of a number of books covering a wide range of subjects, from children’s stories to exploration. He was often commissioned by both the government and the proprietors of the Queenslander newspaper to carry out surveys in different parts of the continent, these journeys usually taking several months to complete. He would ...
Ernest Myers was an English poet, university lecturer and translator of ancient Greek and Roman texts.
He was born Ernest James Myers on the 13th October 1844 in the north western town of Keswick, the son of a clergyman. His education was completed at Cheltenham college before going up to College in Oxford. Here he was an exceptional student of the classics and, ...
Elizabeth Siddal, often known simply as Lizzie Siddal, was a 19th century poet and artist. She was also an artist’s model, especially for her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He used her in many of his paintings but her most famous sitting was for Ophelia, painted by Sir John Everett Millais. During the 1850s, when her own paintings were patronised by ...
Gavrila Derzhavin was a renowned Russian poet, soldier and civil servant who rose to prominence during the reign of Catherine the Great. His work has been compared with that of the great Alexander Pushkin. While some of his poetry was of a classical nature, other elements had metaphysical qualities reminiscent of the Englishman John Donne. Other elements of his work were ...
Gavin Douglas was a Scottish poet, translator of ancient classics and a bishop. He was one of the small group of poets known as The Makars, other members including William Dunbar and Robert Henryson. They wrote in an Anglic language called Middle Scots during the northern renaissance period of the 15th and 16th centuries. Douglas was well known in political and ...
