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Poet

Philip Larkin

B. 1922 D. 1985

3 poems available

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is a poet whose very name conjures up a specific persona: the gloomy, death-obsessed and darkly humorous observer of human foibles and failings. The truth, both about the man and his work, is more complex, but the…

Poem
Mr Bleaney - Philip Larkin

  ‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed The whole time he was at the Bodies, till They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed, Fall to within five inches of the sill, Whose window shows a strip of building…

Poem
The Trees - Philip Larkin

  The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too,…

Poem
The Whitsun Weddings - Philip Larkin

  That Whitsun, I was late getting away: Not till about One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out, All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense Of being in a hurry gone. We ran Behind the…

Keystone

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 View as TimelineTake a guided tour with Simon Armitage The BBC has long been a champion of poetry, and over the last 100 years has had a major influence in…

Poet

Anthony Thwaite

B. 1930 D. 2021

4 poems available

Anthony Thwaite (b. 1930 – d. 2021) was deeply involved in English literary life; in addition to 15 volumes of his own poetry, he was a a publisher and literary editor of magazines such as The Listener and the New…

Poet

3 poems available

Alan Jenkins was born in Surrey in 1955 and has lived for most of his life in London.  He studied at the University of Sussex and has worked for the Times Literary Supplement since 1981, first as poetry and fiction…

Poet

4 poems available

Carol Rumens, nee Lumley, was born in Forest Hill, South London. She won a scholarship to grammar school, and later studied Philosophy at London University, but left before completing her degree. She later gained a Postgraduate Diploma in Writing for…

Poet

3 poems available

Hannah Sullivan is an accomplished poet and academic. She was born in London and studied Classics at Cambridge; she has a PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard and is currently an Associate Professor at New College, Oxford, where she has taught since 2012, having previously taught at Stanford.

Poet

Clive James

B. 1939 D. 2019

4 poems available

Clive James (b. 1939, Sydney) is well known to UK audiences for work throughout the cultural sphere. His career as a poet continued alongside work that is, perhaps, more high-profile – he was the author of more than thirty books,…

Poet

Gavin Ewart

B. 1916 D. 1995

8 poems available

Gavin Ewart was born in London in 1916, of Scottish descent. He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, and Christ’s College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, Ewart was literary editor of Granta. In 1933, at the age of seventeen, Ewart’s first…

Poet

Michael Hamburger

B. 1924 D. 2007

3 poems available

Michael Hamburger (1924 – 2007) was born into a German family of Jewish descent in Berlin, emigrating with them to England in 1933. He attended Westminster School and read Modern Languages at Christ Church, Oxford where his contemporaries included Philip…

Guided Tour

“My short tour of the Poetry Archive is designed to show its range, as well as the strength-in-depth of its holdings. And also to demonstrate how the pleasures and meanings of poetry depend as much on sound-sense as they do…

Poet

7 poems available

Knowing, precise and often cheerfully acerbic, Connie Bensley’s poems revel in poking gentle fun at the self-deceptions and delusions of middle-class suburban life. Whether she brings her lapidary and resolutely unadorned words to bear on our misplaced hopes and fears,…

Poet

6 poems available

Colette Bryce was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, and lived in London for many years before moving to Scotland in 2002, where she held a fellowship in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee. From 2005-2007 she was North East…

Poet

10 poems available

Andrew Motion read English at Oxford University where he won the Newdigate Prize and studied the work of Edward Thomas, an abiding influence. At Hull University he taught English and worked alongside Philip Larkin, another acknowledged mentor, whose official biographer…

Poet

Todd Swift

B. 1966

5 poems available

Todd Swift was born in Montreal in 1966 and grew up by the St Lawrence Seaway, a landscape that shaped the development of his imagination. He studied Creative Writing at Concordia University, tutored by Gary Geddes and Robert Allen. After…

Poet

Elizabeth Jennings

B. 1926 D. 2001

2 poems available

Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) was born in Boston, Lincolnshire but moved to Oxford at the age of six where she lived for the rest of her life. She studied at St. Anne’s College, Oxford and worked in advertising, at the City…

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