We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Probably best known for his work as a literary critic, Sir William Empson was also a gifted, though sporadic, poet in his own right. He was born in Yorkshire in 1906 and his father died when he was young, Empson being sent to public school shortly after. He was initially more interested in mathematics than in literary works, something that earned ...
Japanese poet Yosa Buson was born in 1716 in Settsu Province, during the Edo period where society was under the control of the Tokugawa shogunate. He is rightly considered one of the great poets and painters of the era, mentioned in the same breath as Issa and Basho, and his haiku have been translated into many languages including English and French. As ...
Most well-known for the part he played in the Russian Futurist movement, Velimir Khlebnikov was born in 1885 in Malye Derbety, Republic of Kalmykia. His father was head of the local authority in the lower Volga and his mother was from noble stock and the young Khlebnikov received a good education, developing an interest in mathematics at an early age. When he ...
Walther von der Vogelweide was a medieval poet and “minnesinger” who travelled around the various courts of Middle High Germany in the late 12th century. It is very likely that he had been knighted at some point for military service but this did not come with any land or material wealth. He wrote a lot of poetry which could be categorised as religious, ...
Walter Savage Landor was a controversial English writer of poetry and prose who often took to writing in Latin to attack or criticise his enemies. Mostly he got away with this ploy except when his barbs were aimed at those of equal academic status to himself who could, thus, read what was being written about them. He was a fiery character who ...
Samuel Butler was a 17th century English poet who favoured a satirical, sometimes humorous style of writing. He is best known for an epic piece of work that cruelly satirised sectarian religions. Hudibras was begun in 1658 and two further parts were written and published, the final section not been completed until 20 years after it had begun. The diarist Samuel Pepys, ...
Sir Francis Bacon is remembered by historians as a great philosopher, scientist and politician. His life seemed to be a constant series of peaks and troughs where he was, at one time, the Lord Chancellor of England and therefore the most powerful man in the land. But then there were times when he was mired in debt and, in fact, he had ...
Sir John Suckling lived a very short life in the first half of the 17th century and has been described, by many historians, in terms such as “cavalier playboy” or “fop”. He was much more than that though and, at the tender age of 18, was sent abroad in an ambassadorial role by King Charles I. He also carried out military service ...
Born in 1802 in Keswick, Sara Coleridge was the daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and an accomplished writer in her own right. She was brought up under the literary security of Greta Hall, brushing shoulders with the Wordsworths and their son William who lived nearby, and this environment seems to have been the prime source of her education. Coleridge was largely ...
Born in 1897 in the Essex town of Ilford, Ruth Pitter was an English poet who for most of the 20th Century contributed to the literary landscape of the United Kingdom. Her life brought her into contact with such literary greats as C. S. Lewis, George Orwell and even Hilaire Belloc, who helped her to publish her first ...
