We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
John Greenleaf Whittier was born on the 17th December 1807 in Massachusetts to a farming Quaker family. His was a poor upbringing. The farm made little money but had to support Whittier’s extended family plus farm employees. He suffered ill-health throughout his life. Despite a lack of formal education he was an avid reader of books and fell in love ...
Born in 1898, in a little town called Fuente Vaqueros which is not far from the southern Spanish city of Granada, Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca became one of his country’s most celebrated poets. His talents extended to writing plays as well as directing them and he was a part of the famous Generación del 27, a group of ...
Born in the middle of the 16th Century, Edmund Spenser was a poet who managed to portray a distinctive voice at a time when classical literature as we know it in England was still in its formative stages. He is probably best known for an unfinished epic poem, steeped in allegory, entitled The Faerie Queene that is also notable for being ...
Born out of Moscow’s nobility in 1799, Alexander Pushkin has long been thought of as the founding father of Russian literature and one the greatest poets of all time. For a man who barely lived 38 years before his untimely death, following an ill judged duel in 1937, it is a testament to his poetic vitality that he is still much ...
Considered to be the greatest modernist Russian woman poet she was born Anna Andreyevna Gorenko on June 23rd 1889 in Bolshoy Fontan, close to the port of Odesa, on the Black Sea. Her father was a naval engineer named Andrey Antonovich Gorenko, and her mother was named Inna Erazmovna Stogova, and both were said to be descended from Russian nobility. The family ...
Looking at the picture of Spike Milligan (1918-2002) one can hardly deny the presence of a laugh behind the eyes and smile. Completely severed from the classical poets such as Milton and Donne, and estranged from modern poets, Milligan has been mostly viewed as a poetic comic rather than a serious poet. This conclusion is not without some merit. His works, apart ...
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) started writing poetry at a young age. From the repetition in the art of poetry her work is vast and well known. As an African American poet who grew up in Chicago, Illinois, during a time of strong racial contrasts, her work has become inspirational to a great many people. Her talents in poetry marked her as the first ...
American writer, poet and clergyman Henry Van Dyke was born in 1852 in Germantown, in the State of Pennsylvania. His father was a member of the Presbyterian church and, as a minister, was the main influence on the young Van Dyke in his formative years. As well as two nationally known stories for Christmas, The Other Wise Man and The ...
Irish novelist and poet James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the oldest of ten children, and became one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Probably best known for his novels Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegan’s Wake, he was also an accomplished poet. Joyce was considered a highly intelligent child although ...
Margaret Atwood is a poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist and environmental activist. The daughter of Carl Edmund, a forest entomologist and Margaret Dorothy, a nutritionist and dietician, she was born on the 18th of November, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The family moved to Toronto when she was seven years old. Her childhood was divided between English-speaking Ottawa and French-speaking Quebec. ...
