Poetry, stories and strange odds and ends from the desk of a writer
Plath was a poet, short-story writer, and novelist. Best-known for advancing the genre of confessional poetry through her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Plath married the poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived firstly in America then moved to England. The couple had two children before separating in 1962...
William Butler Yeats was a poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A stoic pillar of the Irish literary establishment he helped found the Abbey Theatre and served as a Senator of the Irish Free State...
Poe was a writer, editor, and critic, best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre through poetry and short stories. He was a central figure of Romanticism in the USA and one of the earliest practitioners of the short story. He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living from writing alone, leading to a financially difficult life and career....
Kipling was a journalist, poet, short-story writer, and novelist. Kipling ws born in India which inspired much of his work, including The Jungle Book and Kim...
Tagore was a polymath, poet, musician, and artist. He is credited with reshaping Bengali literature and Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1913 he was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature...
Born and raised in the Handsworth district of Birmingham, UK, Zephaniah is a writer, dub poet and Rastafarian. He is dyslexic and attended an approved school but left at 13 years old unable to read or write. He was included in The Times list of Britain’s Top 50 post-war writers in 2008...
Dahl was a novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, poet, and wartime fighter pilot. He was born in wales to Norwegian parents and served in the Royal Airforce during WW2 as a fighter pilot and intelligence officer. He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s...
Robert Burns, better known as Rabbie Burns, is was a poet and lyricist. Regarded as the national poet of Scotland, he is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language. A pioneer of the Romantic Movement Burns was a source of inspiration to the founders of both socialism and liberalism...
Shakespeare was a poet, playwright, and actor. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Referred to as ‘the Bard’ his works include 39 plays, 154 sonnets, narrative poems, and other verses. His plays have been translated into all major languages...
Guest was a popular poet of the early 20th century and became known as the People’s Poet. His poetry is well-known for its optimistically inspirational view on everyday life...
Nash was a poet known for his light verse. With his unconventional rhyme schemes, he is regarded as America’s best writer of humorous poetry...
William Wordsworth was a poet and along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge launched the Romantic Age of English literature. His magnum opus is The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early life and published by his wife after the poet’s death from pleurisy. Wordsworth is buried at St Oswald’s Church, Grasmere, England...
Dickinson was a prolific poet but fewer than a dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime. The published poems were significantly edited to fit poetic convention and rules. Many of her poems deal with the themes of death and immortality. It was not until after her death her cache of poetry was discovered by her sister and her work became public. The first collection of Dickinson’s work was published in 1890...
Angelou is perhaps best known for her series of seven autobiographies that focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings...
Robert Burns, better known as Rabbie Burns, is was a poet and lyricist. Regarded as the national poet of Scotland, he is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language. A pioneer of the Romantic Movement Burns was a source of inspiration to the founders of both socialism and liberalism...
Gibran was a writer, poet and visual artist and is also considered a philosopher. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, first published in 1923 and is one of the best-selling books of all time. Born in Lebanon to a Maronite family, Gibran emigrated to the USA with his mother and siblings in 1895...
Wheatley was the first African-American author of a book of a poetry. She was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to America. Purchased by the Wheatley family from Boston, she was taught to read and write and they encouraged her talent for poetry. In 1773, the Wheatley family released her from slavery...
John Keats was an English Romantic poet and one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantics alongside Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. By the end of the 19th century he was one of the most beloved of the English poets and a significant influence on a vast and diverse range of poets and writers...
McGough is a poet, performance poet, children’s author, playwright, and broadcaster. He presents BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, as well as performing his own poetry...
Angelou is perhaps best known for her series of seven autobiographies that focus on her childhood and early adult experiences...
Baudelaire was a poet, essayist, art critic and a pioneer in the translation of Edgar Allan Poe. His most notable work, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), a book of lyric poetry in which the author expresses the changing nature of beauty in the mid -19th century Paris during a period of rapid industrialization...
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, better known as Lord Byron was a poet, peer and politician who became a revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence...
Whitman was a poet essayist, and journalist. As humanist he was part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism and incorporated both ideologies in his work. Among the most influential of American poets he is referred to as the father of free verse....
Poe was a writer, editor, and critic, best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre through poetry and short stories. He was a central figure of Romanticism in the USA ...
Shakespeare was a poet, playwright, and actor. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Referred to as ‘the Bard’ his works include 39 plays, 154 sonnets, narrative poems, and other verses. His plays have been translated into all major languages...
Octavio Paz was a poet and diplomat. He was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize for his work and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature...
Guest was a popular poet of the early 20th century and became known as the People’s Poet. His poetry is well-known for its optimistically inspirational view on everyday life...
Neruda was a poet-diplomat and politician who became known as a poet at aged 13. He wrote in various styles including surrealist, and historical political...
Bridges was Britain’s poet laureate from 1913 to 1930. Trained as a doctor...
Blunden was a poet, author, and critic. He wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose...
Kipling was a journalist, poet, short-story writer, and novelist. Kipling was born in India which inspired much of his work, including The Jungle Book and Kim...
William Butler Yeats was a poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A stoic pillar of the Irish literary establishment he helped found the Abbey Theatre and served as a Senator of the Irish Free State...
Dickinson was a prolific poet but fewer than a dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime. The published poems were significantly edited to fit poetic convention and rules...
Shakespeare was a poet, playwright, and actor. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Referred to as ‘the Bard’ his works include 39 plays, 154 sonnets, narrative poems, and other verses. His plays have been translated into all major languages...
William Blake was a poet, painter, and print-maker. He was unrecognised during his lifetime but is now considered a seminal figure of the poetic and visual art of the Romantic Era...
Gibran was a writer, poet and visual artist and is also considered a philosopher...
Shakespeare was a poet, playwright, and actor. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language...
Dickinson was a prolific poet but fewer than a dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime...
Octavio Paz was a poet and diplomat. He was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize for his work and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature...
Poe was a writer, editor, and critic, best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre through poetry and short stories. He was a central figure of Romanticism in the USA and one of the earliest practitioners of the short story. He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living from writing alone, leading to a financially difficult life and career....
Robert Lee Frost was a poet. Initially published in England, his work was soon published and renowned internationally...
Matthew Arnold was a poet and cultural critic who also worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Rugby School’s famed headmaster, Thomas Arnold he has been characterized as sage writer who chastises and instructs the reader on social issues of the day....
William Blake was a poet, painter, and print-maker...
Poet: Charles Bukowski Born: 16 August 1920, Andernach, Germany German-American Died: 9 March 1994, California, USA
Poet: Pablo Neruda Born: 12 July 1904, Parral, Chile Chilean Died: 23 September 1973, Santiago, Chile
Poet: Maya Angelou Born: 4 April 1928, Missouri, USA American Died: 28 May 2014, North Carolina, USA
Poet: Percy Bysshe Shelley Date of Birth: 4 August 1792, Horsham, UK English Date of Death: 8 July 1822, Lerici, Italy
Poet: Irwin Allen Ginsberg Date of Birth: 3 June 1926, New Jersey, USA American Date of Death: 5 April 1997, New York, USA Buried: Gomel Chesed Cemetery, Newark, New Jersey, USA
Poet: Emily Dickinson Born: 10 December 1830, Massachusetts, USA American Died: 15 May 1886, Massachusetts, USA Buried: West Cemetery, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Poet: Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall Date of Birth: 14 September1883, London, UK Canadian Date of Death: 22 April 1922, Vancouver, Canada
