Austrian poet, writer and pharmacist Georg Trakl was one of the expressionist poets. Expressionism gained momentum with 20th century European poets. It draws on raw emotion; sometimes dramatic, apocalyptic even, dealing with the tragedy and darkness of the human condition. It rejected the previous romanticism, eroticism and religious idealism in favour of death, loneliness and catastrophe. His writing was said to be ...
The Polish-Lithuanian Adam Mickiewicz is still regarded by many Polish people as their national poet even though he died in 1855. Such was his reputation throughout the Slavic countries that monuments were erected in his honour in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. He is also known as Adomas Bernardas Mickevicius which is the Lithuanian equivalent. He was a prolific writer of poetry ...
Alan Seeger had only a short life. He was an idealist with, some might say, an unrealistically romantic view of death. He wrote a poem, which has become his most famous piece of work, called I Have a Rendezvous with Death. We will never know if he really and truly believed these words at the time that he wrote it but ...
Born in Essex in 1906, Kathleen Raine was a poet and critic whose work had a profoundly spiritual sense that encompassed all forms of belief including Plato, Jesus and Buddha. Her time spent in Northumberland during World War I was a formative part of her life, as were the Scottish ballads and poems that were handed down to her by her ...
Romanian poet and writer Mihai Eminescu was born in 1850 in Moldavia. He was one of the most prolific and popular poets of his age, publishing his first poem when he was only 16. His enduring masterpiece is considered to be the work Luceafărul or The Evening Star. Born into a wealthy family, Eminescu attended school in Cernauti and wrote a poem ...
