We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Born in 1672 in Wiltshire, Joseph Addison was a poet and writer who is most well-known for creating The Spectator, a magazine that had the primary aim of encouraging philosophical conversation. Addison started the magazine with his friend Richard Steele whom he had met first at Charterhouse School. He was a talented student with a liking for the classics that took him ...
Born in 1621 in Champagne, French poet Jean de La Fontaine was perhaps one of the most famous and popular writers of his time and is best known for his work Fables Choisies. His father was a forestry manager and the family would be considered today upper middle class. For most of his childhood, La Fontaine went to school ...
Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio was born near Florence in 1313 and was one of the leading lights of the Renaissance, popular for the realism he brought to his verse compared to some of his contemporaries. His father was a merchant, and Boccaccio grew up in a privileged family, learning about and influenced by the works of Dante at an early age. Although ...
Born at the end of the tenth century in the Heian period, Izumi Shikibu was a Japanese poet who was from an influential family in Echizen. Shikibu was part of a group of Japanese poets who were known as the 36 Immortals, selected from the three main periods of poetry by Fujiwara no Kinto. She is well-known for her romantic and ...
Born in Egypt in 1888, Giuseppe Ungaretti was one of the most influential Italian poets of the last century helping to develop the writing style that was known as Hermeticism, which grew out of the Symbolist school of thought. His first work of published poetry was produced whilst he was on the front line of World War I, fighting in the ...
Born in 1849 in New York, Emma Lazarus is perhaps best known for providing the poem adorning the plaque at the bottom of the Empire State Building, entitled The New Colossus. From a wealthy Jewish background, she was a precocious child who was largely tutored at home. Taking an interest in literature and poetry from early on, she also learned several ...
The poet who became known as Kobayashi Issa was a Japanese exponent of the Haiku form of short poetry. He learned this form at school in Tokyo under master teachers Sogan and Chikua. The basic element of this form of poetry is that the writer is able to cleverly capture a specific image or feeling using sensory language. This might be inspired ...
Katherine Philips was one of the few female writers to emerge during the 17th century and, in her short lifetime, was responsible for a large number of poems which seem to have been written for the pleasure of her friends rather than for publication. She founded The Society of Friendship which had mainly female members. She was a multi-linguist and translated foreign ...
Irish poet Francis Ledwidge was just 29 years old when he was killed on the battlefields of World War I. He was born in Slane in 1887, one of nine children in a family that lived on the edge of poverty though he was lucky to have the ethos of education drilled into him from an early age. His father died ...
Born in 1865 in New South Wales, Dame Mary Gilmore was a socialist first and then a poet, and is one of the few Australians to have featured on their monetary system. The oldest born to a Scottish farmer and an Australian mother with roots in Ireland, she attended public school before the family moved to Downside. At school there, ...
