We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
It has never been an easy ride for African-American people and for those growing up in the 1950s it was particularly hard. There was a lot of racial tension and discrimination to contend with and many found it extremely hard to cope with it. While some integrated, somehow, into predominantly white neighbourhoods, others found themselves segregated, both socially and economically. This happened ...
The Irish poet and novelist James Stephens was born in Dublin in February 1880. His father, Francis Stephens, died two years later. The young lad was taken in by the Collins family, who his mother worked for and adopted by them but was largely living in an orphanage. Known by friends as Tiny Tim due to his small stature at the Meath ...
Louise Bogan has been called by some critics the most accomplished woman poet of the twentieth century and one of the finest lyric poets America has produced. She was born in 1987 as Louise Marie Bogan to her parents who lived in Livermore Falls, MA in the United States. She was the product of a troubled marriage between her mother, Mary Helen Murphy ...
Born in 1822, poet Matthew Arnold is considered one of the major writers of the Victorian era. Over his life he was heavily involved in education as an inspector of schools and his works show a keen interest in addressing the social issues of the day. He was initially educated by his uncle before attending Winchester College and from there went ...
Better known for literary masterpieces such as A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Whilst in later years he gained the reputation as an avid hunter and inveterate drinker, Hemingway wrote a great deal of poetry, especially in his ...
Bertolt Brecht was a well known poet and playwright in Germany before being forced to flee from Nazi oppression. He found a safe haven in the United States of America but did not remain there for the rest of his life. Known more for his theatre work than his poetry he was, nevertheless, responsible for the lyrics of a song that became ...
Bob Hicok is a contemporary American poet who was born in Michigan in 1960. He is a multi-award winning, much-published writer who once ran his own successful automotive die design business, leaving this to go into teaching. He will, no doubt, be proud of his writing output but I wonder if he has a little extra tinge of pride when he thinks ...
American writer Marge Piercy was born in 1936 in Michigan and is known for her vibrant poetry, novels and her deep involvement in the social issues that face us today. She came from working class, Jewish roots, at the tail end of the Great Depression, and was the first person in her family to attend university when she won a scholarship. Marge ...
A man who arguably had one of the greatest effects on the English language, Dr Samuel Johnson was born 1709 in Staffordshire. Credited with producing the first definitive English language dictionary, a feat which took him nine years, he was also a prolific essayist and poet. Samuel Johnson suffered various ailments as a youth, most importantly scrofula which left him with scars ...
Born at the turn of the 20th Century in 1896, Edmund Blunden is best known for his poetry and other writing that was greatly influenced by World War I. Raised in London, he went on to study at Oxford, until, at the age of 19, he was commissioned into the army and saw battle in both Ypres and the Somme, earning ...
