From Jewish Romanian descent, poet and writer Paul Celan was born in 1920 in Cernauti (now in what we call the Ukraine). He grew up to learn Hebrew and was brought up speaking German because of his mother’s love of German literature and was fond of writing poetry from a very early age, often in secret. In 1938, Paul Celan moved to ...
William Morris was a poet and writer who was also at the forefront of textile arts in the latter half of the nineteenth century in England. He was born in 1834 in Essex and was from a relatively well-off middle class family. His father was in finance and his mother was descended from a wealthy middle England family. Confined to the ...
Constantine Cavafy was born on 29th April 1863 in Alexandria, Egypt, the youngest of nine siblings, two of whom died in infancy. His father, Petros Ioannes, who held dual Greek and British citizenship, was a wealthy businessman with import/export offices in Constantinople, London and Liverpool. At the time of Petros’ death the family were living in Liverpool but moved back to Alexandria ...
Yehuda Amichai was born 3rd May 1924 in Wurzburg, Germany to an Orthodox Jewish family. When he was twelve the family emigrated to Palestine, then settled in Jerusalem in 1936. Amichai’s native language was German and he could speak fluent Hebrew by the time they arrived in Palestine. He attended a religious High School in Jerusalem. During World War Two Amichai fought with ...
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940 and later settled in the United States where he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1991. His early childhood was marked by poverty and the Siege of Leningrad where his family suffered severe starvation and nearly died. Born into a Jewish family, Brodsky suffered the antisemitism of his ...
