Rodney Jones, born half way through the twentieth century, grew up in rural Alabama in a world little changed from that of a hundred years before. It was a world he describes as “essentially feudal, agrarian, unelectrified” where “horses passed…

Dannie Abse (1923-2014) was a poet, playwright and novelist whose literary career spanned half a century, the first of his fourteen collections of poetry, After Every Green Thing, being published in 1948, his latest collected appearing in 2003. In between Abse…

Jack Underwood is an active presence across the British poetry landscape: as one of the first four poets as part of the Faber New Poets pamphlets scheme in 2009, as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, tutor…

As a precocious adolescent with a penchant for raw confessionalism, Clare Pollard (b.1978) appeared on the poetry scene in the late nineties with her energetic, expressive and markedly contemporary work. She was chosen as one of Poetry Review’s New Poets…

M. R. Peacocke grew up in South Devon in a musical family. She read English at Oxford, but spent more time on a capella singing and playing the oboe than on literary studies. After years of teaching, travel, marriage, bringing…

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was born in St, Louis, Missouri. She grew up in her maternal grandfather’s house, where her mother acted as a housekeeper. Moore’s father, an inventor, was committed to an asylum. On his death, Moore moved with her…

Born in Suffolk, Rachael Boast studied English and Philosophy at Wolverhampton University, after which she relocated to Bristol. In 2005 she moved to St Andrews to begin an MLit in Creative Writing. Her PhD was an examination of poetic technique…

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…

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was born into a wealthy Anglo-Jewish family and his early life was comfortable and leisured, dominated by sports and country pursuits. However, his poetic leanings were present even during this carefree period: the young Siegfried loved books…

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit in 1950, her mother was a Czech-American journalist, her father a tool and die maker. Forché calls herself a ‘junk-heap Catholic’ – she is perpetually drawn to issues of social justice, and describes her…

Robert Lee Frost, named after the Confederate general, was born in 1874 in California, nine years after the end of the Civil War. His father was an unsuccessful politician and a severe and humourless man; he suffered bouts of depression…

Exposing overlooked corners of Mumbai and New York; highlighting perspectives from around the world; uncovering racial, political and religious truths, these are just a few of the main themes Jeet Thayil explores across his novels and poetry, connecting his readers…

Anne Stevenson, inaugural winner of the Northern Rock Writers Award in 2002, was born in England of American parents in 1933 and educated in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father was professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan. After…

J.O Morgan lives on a small farm in the Scottish Borders. He is the author of six collections of poetry, each a single book-length poem. His first, Natural Mechanical (CB Editions, 2009), won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was…