We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
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 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
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 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’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 ...
Often referred to as “Willie” Soutar, he was a renowned Scottish poet of the early 20th century who wrote in both English and a variant of the Scottish language called “Braid Scots”. Besides writing a great deal of standard form poetry Soutar was well known for his epigrams – short, often humorous or satirical statements that were written to engage a ...
