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Each poet we record has their own full page in the Archive. Here we can tell you about their writing life, biographies, histories, awards and more...
42 poets
Poet
Amarjit Chandan is a celebrated poet, essayist, and editor, known for his distinctive voice in contemporary Punjabi literature. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1946, Chandan’s upbringing was marked by both the richness of his Sikh heritage and the complexities of…
Poet
Sampurna Chattarji
B. 1970
Sampurna Chattarji is a poet, writer, editor, translator, and teacher whose work propels through the boundaries of language and identity. With over 20 published works to her name, Chattarji has emerged as a prominent voice in contemporary Indian literature. Through…
Poet
Bob Cobbing
B. 1920 D. 2002
Poet and publisher Bob Cobbing was born in Enfield, England. He became known internationally for pioneering visual, concrete, and sound poetry and for his dynamic and often startling poetry performances; he was known too for his role as publisher, under…
Poet
Anne Carson
B. 1950
Ann Carson was born in Canada and studied at the University of Toronto. An academic and scholar, she has taught at several institutions, including McGill and the University of Michigan. She is an expert in ancient Greece, classical and Hellenic…
Poet
Kayo Chingonyi
B. 1987
Kayo Chingonyi was born in Zambia and moved to the UK at the age of six. A poet, producer, DJ, and critic, his talent was nurtured on The Complete Works mentoring scheme initiated by Bernardine Evaristo to foster equality and…
Poet
Frances Cornford
B. 1886 D. 1960
Born Frances Crofts Darwin, Cornford grew up in Cambridge and was a granddaughter of Charles Darwin. Her early verse was widely popular attracting positive reviews, but attention waned thereafter. She was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry (1959). She published…
Poet
John Cooper Clarke
B. 1949
Born in Salford, Lancashire, John Cooper Clarke is a multi-faceted writer, musician, artist, and performer. a well-known and much-loved voice on stage, television, radio and at Festivals. He has toured the UK and internationally. Described as a ‘people’s poet, his…
Poet
Robert Creeley
B. 1926 D. 2005
Born in Arlington, Massachusetts in 1926, Creely was educated at Holderness School, Plymouth and Harvard University. Creeley’s father died in 1930 and he was raised by his mother and sister. He was left blind in one eye following a…
Poet
Jade Cuttle graduated from Cambridge University with First-Class Honours in Modern and Medieval Languages and Literature, and undertook an MA in Poetry at the University of East Anglia. A poet and plant-whisperer, Jade has been commissioned to write for BBC…
Poet
Jim Carruth
B. 1963
Jim Carruth was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, in 1963. He grew up on his family’s far near Kilbarchan, and studied for a degree in Geology at Glasgow University. After spending time in Turkey, he returned to Scotland, where he now…
Poet
Anna Crowe
B. 1945
Anna Crowe is a poet and translator based in St Andrews, Fife. Born in Plymouth, which in interview she says is “as far from Scotland as one can get in the UK,” Crowe moved to St Andrews to study and…
Poet
George Elliott Clarke
B. 1960
George Elliott Clarke is a skillful, candid writer whose output incorporates poetry, screenplays, opera libretti and verse drama. His poems are highly politically engaged, addressing issues, including those pertaining to race and identity, in ways that are both collective and…
Poet
Lewis Carroll
B. 1832 D. 1898
Lewis Carroll was the literary pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born in 1832, the third in a family of eleven children; he had seven younger sisters. In childhood, he produced magazines for his sisters which display his love of parody,…
Poet
Stewart Conn
B. 1936
Stewart Conn is one of Scotland’s more softly spoken bards, but his particular Celtic muse is no less intense for all his quieter rhetorical flourishes and domestic asides. Indeed, his poetry has an affecting immediacy which comes from its easy…
Poet
David Constantine
B. 1944
“Poetry now, every bit as much as in the Romantic age, is a utopian demonstration, by aesthetic means, of what true freedom would be like. It engages us to imagine something better than what at present we are afflicted with;…
Poet
C. P. Cavafy
B. 1863 D. 1933
Cavafy is widely considered to be one of the greatest Greek poets of the twentieth century. A perfectionist as regards his work, which he constantly revised, he published only 154 poems in his lifetime. From his birth in 1863 to…
Poet
G. K. Chesterton
B. 1874 D. 1936
Chesterton is probably best known for his popular priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared in over fifty short stories. However, he was also a poet, biographer, essayist, dramatist, critic, journalist, advocate of a political movement called ‘Distributism’ and, after his conversion…
Poet
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
B. 1861 D. 1907
Intellectually gifted Mary Coleridge was the great-grand-niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Her parents were impressively well connected to writers and musicians in the London of the last half of the nineteenth century. Mary met weekly with friends in the late…