Recent posts

Ariwara no Narihira Poems

 

Ariwara no Narihira was a 9th century Japanese poet who was one of the waka poets of that time. He wrote a long piece of work called The Tales of Ise which featured a character who enjoyed a series of love affairs based, if legend is to be believed, on Narihira’s own experiences. An aristocrat by birth, he was certainly named in ...

Carolyn Wells Poems

 

Carolyn Wells was an American poet and novelist whose earlier writing covered areas such as children’s stories and nonsense poetry. She changed direction when, in 1910, she heard an Anna Katherine Green mystery novel read out loud and decided that this was her preferred style from now on. She was a prolific writer, publishing some 170 books during her lifetime, as well ...

John Gould Fletcher Poems

 

John Gould Fletcher was an innovative American poet who wrote much of his poetry in the imagist style. This was reinforced when he met the “imagist champion” Amy Lowell while in London. Fletcher holds the honour of being the first “southern” poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, for his 1938 collection called Selected Poems. He was also well known as being ...

Antoine de Saint-Exupery Poems

 

Born into aristocracy in Lyon, France, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a poet and writer who won a number of literary awards and is probably best remembered for his enduring novella The Little Prince. Saint-Exupery’s father died before he had reached the age of 4 and it had a huge impact on the whole family, leaving them in financial difficulty at the time. Saint-Exupery ...

August Stramm Poems

 

Born in 1874 in Munster, Germany, August Stramm was an expressionist poet and playwright but was a relative late comer to writing poetry. His father was a civil servant and Stramm’s early life found him working in a similar field as a clerk for the post office although his mother wanted him to enter clergy and become a priest. In 1896 he ...

A.S.J. Tessimond Poems

 

Born in Birkenhead near Liverpool in 1902, poet A.S.J. Tessimond is perhaps not the most well-known British poets of the 20th Century and suffered for most of his life from bipolar disorder. His father was known to be a member of the Church Association and once gave a lecture on the influence of poetry which may have led the young Tessimond ...

Ada Cambridge Poems

 

Ada Cambridge was a prolific novelist and poet who was born in Norfolk in 1844 and many of her works were published in serial form in Australian and British newspapers under the title AC. Her father was what would be considered a gentleman farmer at the time and she was educated at home by a governess, something which she did not ...

Anna Seward Poems

 

Born in 1747 in Derbyshire, Anna Seward was a poet and writer of some renown, particularly for women in that era. Her father was a clergyman and she was the only one of four children to reach adulthood. She did not attend school but was tutored by her father and was introduced to classical works such as Milton at a very ...

William Langland Poems

 

William Langland was a 14th century English poet who is most famous for his epic tale of The Vision of Piers Plowman, a long poem written in unrhymed, alliterative verse. Critics have compared this work favourably with the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer who was alive at about the same time. The main problem with this piece of work though is the ...

Ali Sardar Jafri Poems

 

Ali Sardar Jafri’s life spanned most of the 20th century and he was a multi-award winning Indian poet, writing in Urdu, while also working as a literary critic and occasional lyricist for the Indian film industry. Because of his strong political activities he got on the wrong side of the university authorities while studying at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) during the ...