Poetry blog

We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.

Recent posts

Eugene O’Neill Poems

 

Eugene O'Neill was essentially an American playwright and sometime poet who received the honour Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1936. Much of his work could be said to have a tragic quality about it but there were light-hearted pieces as well. One strange coincidence in his life that he was born in a hotel room and died in one too, although not ...

Duncan Campbell Scott Poems

 

Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1862, Duncan Campbell Scott served most of his life working for the government as a civil servant but was also one of the country’s most respected and well-known poets. The son of a minister, he was interested in the arts very early on and quickly learned to play the piano, studied hard at school and ...

Christopher Morley Poems

 

Born in Pennsylvania in 1890, Christopher Morley was a poet and writer who produced a number of notable works and is more widely known for his novels Parnassus on Wheels and the critically acclaimed Kitty Foyle which was later made into an Oscar winning film. Morley’s father was a mathematician but it was his violinist mother who engendered his love of music ...

Coventry Patmore Poems

 

Born in Woodford, Essex, in 1823, Coventry Patmore was a critic and poet although he initially wanted to become a painter. His love of literature was encouraged by his father with whom he formed a strong and loving bond from early childhood. Indeed, in his youth Patmore won a prize for his artwork and it wasn’t until he went to school ...

Clark Ashton Smith Poems

 

Born in 1893 in California, Clark Ashton Smith was an artist who had many strings to his bow, at once a competent painter and sculptor but also a fine writer of genre fiction such as horror and a notable poet. His talent was all the more surprising because he was largely self-taught as he suffered with a variety of mental ...

David Campbell Poems

 

Australian poet David Campbell was born in Adelong, New South Wales, in 1915 and, apart from being a prolific writer, he was also one of the few to also excel at international sports, in this case rugby, where he played two matches for England. Campbell’s father was a doctor and grazier who installed in his third born child a love of ...

Bayard Taylor Poems

 

Bayard Taylor was an American born poet of the 19th century who also worked as a translator and literary critic. As well as poetry he wrote a number of travel books. He worked as a journalist on the New York Tribune and other publications and this profession turned out to be his gateway to extensive worldwide travel when sent on assignments abroad. He ...

Balkrishna Sama Poems

 

The history of literature in Nepal shows that work was predominantly written in Sanskrit. This changed in the 1920s and 1930s when two Nepalese writers combined the old ways with an English style of writing. Balkrishṇa Sama, and his good friend LakṣmIprasad Devkoṭa, adopted a primarily western style producing short stories, tragic dramas and prose poetry. As writers all over the world ...

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 ...