Born in 1736 in Ruthven, Scotland, James Macpherson is mostly well-known for his translation of the epic Ossian poems of his native land but was also an accomplished poet in his own right and a leading political figure of the time. Born into a reasonably wealthy family, Macpherson traveled to Aberdeen in his teens where he studied at King’s College with ...
Whilst Chaucer may be the most remembered writer of this era, John Gower was also a noted poet and is known for three epic poems that were both moral and political comments on the times. Born in Kent around 1330, nothing much is known about Gower’s early life although it is thought that he was from a well-to-do Yorkshire family who ...
American John Hall Wheelock was born in Far Rockway, New York, in 1886 to an affluent family, his ancestor having built Dartmouth College. He was a poet influenced by the works of Swinburne and Robinson, and wrote on the time honored themes of romance, society and nature. Wheelock often described his poetry as works that were primarily about feeling and ...
It’s difficult to describe Janis Joplin as just a poet because she was a lot more than that. She was a powerful and unconventional stage performer with a gravelly, unique singing voice that got her millions of album sales worldwide during the 1960s. She grew up as a devotee of the so-called “beat poets” and, in fact, she led the beatnik lifestyle ...
Josh Malihabadi was a great champion of the Urdu language and it was a perceived threat to his mother tongue that prompted his migration from India to Pakistan in 1958. The prime minister of India at that time, Jawaharlal Nehru, tried to insist that he stayed but Malihabadi would have none of it. The Hindu majority in India spoke Hindi and Urdu ...
