We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Joyce Kilmer was born on 6 December 1886 and was christened Alfred Joyce Kilmer but he chose to shorten it when he became a published writer. Growing up in New Brunswick, New Jersey Kilmer enjoyed a comfortable, middle class existence. His father was an analytical chemist working for the big company Johnson and Johnson and it was his invention of a new ...
“The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” was how John Clare is remembered. Born in 1793, the son of a farm labourer, he grew up in a small village called Helpston, close to the Cambridgeshire border. It was only six miles from Peterborough at a time when the old, agricultural ways were changing forever as the wheels of industry turned all over Europe. So many ...
Walter de la Mare is one of England’s best known writers, producing great works that were often atmospheric, slightly scary and with a touch of mystery. Born in south east London in 1873 into fairly privileged circumstances he was accorded, on his death in 1956, the honour of having his ashes buried in the crypt of St Pauls Cathedral. He had, ...
Perhaps one of the most well-known writers of the late 19th century, Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and his appeal has endured to the present day. Known mainly for his short satirical statements and cutting wit as well as the seminal novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, he was also a prolific poet. Wilde came from an intellectual family ...
Mirza Ghalib was the pen name of Urdu poet Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan who was born in colonial India in 1797. Considered one of the most popular and influential poets of the later days of the Persian Mughal Era before British rule took full hold, he wrote several ghazals – poetic forms that incorporate rhyming couplets with a refrain, each line ...
A contemporary novelist and poet, Vikram Seth spent his early years in India and London, graduating from the prestigious Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He went on to further studies at Stanford University where he achieved a master’s degree (economics) in 1978, following this up with some post-graduate study at Nanking University in China. After Nanking he embarked on the long ...
Kazi Nazrul Islam came in to this world in 1899 in Bengal (the Burdwan district) into an influential Muslim quazi (justice) family. His father was the imam and also the caretaker of their local mosque so it was clear what path this young boy would follow. Attendance at a religious school saw him study Islamic philosophy, biology, theology, ...
A sentimental and children’s poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) has established himself as of America’s literary giants. Born the third in a line of six children in a simpler time, the life of James Whitcomb Riley was characterized by his peculiarities. His lack of education would bring one to believe that his work would be inapt for the poetic world, but the ...
Sharon Olds (Born 1942) is known for the bluntness in her poetry. Raised Calvinist but fully atheist, one will quickly realize that there is an aggressive opposition to the religious and socially acceptable standards. Where this is admirable to a point, especially in poetic works where one strives to go beyond that of the common man and definitively wants to ...
A poet with suicidal tendencies and a literary subtlety that outweighed many of her contemporaries, Sara Teasdale was born in 1884 in Missouri. From an early age she suffered from poor health and it wasn’t until she was 14 that she began to attend school. She received great exposure for her lyrical poems that seemed to reflect the changing perspectives of women ...
