…race and identity, in ways that are both collective and subjective, both widely-applicable and firmly contextualised. Having coined the term ‘Africadian’ (a portmanteau of African and Canadian) to describe his…

…account of the loss of his wife, the actor Lucinda Gane, to long-term illness. ‘It is undeniably tender’, the poet and publisher Craig Raine has noted, ‘an important and touching…

…deaf and agoraphobic while her father entered into a long-term relationship with a neighbour, which led the Neideckers to occupy separate houses. She was an only child and her parents’…

…but without a hint of the cosiness this term might imply: in ‘Home Movies’ what starts as comedy ends in “that slither of negatives” as the poet watches the film…

…Whitechapel, East London. A long-term collaborator of Byron’s is the artist and calligrapher Denis Brown; and with the painter and printmaker Eileen Coxon she made ‘Renderers’, a multimedia poem commissioned…

…own term) success of I, Claudius, to the poems inspired by his quasi-mystical devotion to the ‘White Goddess’. Born in Wimbledon, it was Graves’ Celtic inheritance via his Irish poet…

…and translator, his 1995 version of Dante’s Inferno remains the benchmark by which subsequent translations are judged. In 1997 he began an unprecedented 3-year term as US Poet Laureate. He…

…professional pressure for Lota and the relationship came under increasing strain. Bishop accepted a term of teaching at Washington University, where she began an affair, and this was followed by…

…what you were supposed to do was be plenty morbid and predict the end of civilization many times but civilization has ended so many times during my brief term on…

Ogden Nash ( 1902-1971) was a master, perhaps the 20th Century master, of light verse whose continuing popularity shows that the term ‘light’ is not incompatible with long-lasting. He was…

…term “hospitable” to “accessible” for his poetry and the experience of reading his work is indeed akin to being invited into the home of a cordial and considerate host. Collins…

…wife Lady Antonia Fraser, which proudly imagines a long-term love presided over by the ghost of the first breath they shared. Michael Billington said that Pinter can take ordinary speech…