We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
The Massachusetts born poet, Anne Sexton, could best be described as a tortured soul who wrote in a highly controversial style. Her poems contained topics that, for the majority of people, were not seen as ‘right and proper’ in 1960s America. A so-called confessional poet, Sexton wrote quite openly and unashamedly about taboo subjects like menstruation, abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery, ...
We often think of the poets who were around during that terrible period in world history, the years covering the First World War, as being very few in number. It is true that only a small number became famous but, in fact, over two thousand soldiers spent their time both trying to survive the grim battlefields while writing poignant verse ...
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) is best known for his children’s stories. There are few individuals that have not been exposed to Roald Dahl. Books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach have become traditional generational literature. Most of his children’s stories have gone on to become screenplays and blockbuster movies. His poetic works are as well-known as ...
A Cambridge Scholar with no degree but exceptional skill in the artistry of the written language, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892) stands among the best known as well as the most criticized poets of all time. The poet quite literally spent his entire life dedicated to pen and parchment. Records indicate that Alfred, Lord Tennyson began writing as early as ...
Where does one start with the briefest of accounts of this man, this great Welsh poet of the twentieth century? Perhaps we should just look at the stark facts of the beginning and ending of a life cut tragically short. They are thus: 27 October 1914, born at home as was the custom then, Dylan Marlais Thomas entered a world ...
Born in America in 1885, Ezra Weston Loomis Pound led an intense and colorful early life, working as a literary editor in London, travelling across Europe and joining Mussolini’s fascist regime in the 30s and 40s. He was an important influence on some of the literary greats of the 20th Century including TS Elliot and Ernest Hemingway, and much loved ...
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is one of the most recognizable poets of all time. During his time, his popularity was greater (arguably) than T.S. Eliot or Robert Frost. His literary works earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. Much influenced by his Irish roots and his zeal towards the occultist practices, his works have captivated ...
Perhaps one of the youngest poets, Sylvia Plath has shown us that it is not the duration of life that makes the quality of life, but the content of that life which makes it memorable or forgotten. Although she only lived to be thirty, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) has become one of the top 100 poets of our time with more than 400 ...
Langston Hughes was born on the first of February 1902. His full name was James Mercer Langston Hughes. He was an African American poet writing during the "Harlem Renaissance" of the 1920s, though he had some white and Native American ancestry that also had some influence on his work. Many poets are shaped at least partly by their childhood, and this was ...
William Shakespeare (1590-1613) is one if not the most recognized poets of all time. His ability to capture both the humanistic nature of man as well as cause the mind the ascend into creative realms unknown has duly earned him the title of "The Bard". Interestingly, when one associates the works of Shakespeare to that of the literary world, generally the connection ...
