We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Christopher Smart was an 18th century English poet who wrote for various popular magazines using a number of pseudonyms such as "Kit Smart", "Kitty Smart", and "Jack Smart", and he also adopted the persona of midwife "Mrs. Mary Midnight". He was best known though for his high spiritual ideals, bordering on religious fanaticism at times. The fact that he was confined to ...
Amy Clampitt was born in Iowa in 1920 and grew up, in her twilight years, to become one of the most respected American poets of her era. Brought up in a Quaker farming community, she originally went to Grinnell College before getting the qualifications to head for Columbia University. Although she always wanted to be a writer, it wasn’t until the ...
Born in the Tang Dynasty in 772, Bai Juyi was an official of the government and also one of the most famous poets of the age who is still widely read today mainly because of his highly readable style. Bai Juyi lived through an age of political upheaval with no less than 8 emperors coming to the throne during his life ...
Born in 1866 in London, Beatrix Potter is perhaps best known for books such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, tales written for children that are still highly popular today. She was also a talented artist and deeply interested in conservation and the natural world. Potter was brought up in a wealthy but cossetted environment with her brother and spent most ...
Born in 1900, English poet and writer Basil Bunting was brought up with Quaker roots in Northumberland and he was schooled in Yorkshire and the Berkshire. When war broke out and he was called up in 1918, Bunting refused and was imprisoned as a conscientious objector and sent to Wormwood Scrubs. Bunting wrote his poetry with a specific emphasis on the quality ...
Known for his love songs and poetry, Vidyapati was born 1352 in Bisfi, India. His name comes from Sanskrit and denotes a man of learning or knowledge and his poetry was a great influence on many writers over the following centuries. Often written in the Maithili dialect, the 100s of poems collected together in the Padavalli often explore the love between Krishna ...
Despite living a significant part of his life without a home, W H Davies was one of the most popular poets of his time. Born in Newport, Wales, in 1871, the son of an iron worker, Davies lost his father when he was three years old and subsequently went to live with his grandparents. He was a troublesome child, attending ...
Born in County Donegal in 1824, Irishman William Allingham was a poet and scholar who was best known for his Diary that was published after his death. He wrote a large number of verses and his poem The Faeries has been included in many anthologies over the years. His father was a bank manager, English by birth, and Allingham was brought up ...
Famous for writing poems in his native Dorset dialect, writer and poet William Barnes was born into a farming family in Bagber in 1801. He grew up speaking in the dialect of the day and saw his upbringing as idyllic, something which came across in his later pastoral poetry that celebrated the simple folk of the county. Barnes left school at 13 ...
Richard Aldington was an English poet, novelist and biographer and is one of the 16 First World War poets whose name appears on a stone in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. In addition to a volume of war poetry he published a novel in 1929 about the war called Death of a Hero. His popularity took a serious hit with a biography of ...
