Nick Makoha is the author of ‘The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man’ (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2005), ‘The Second Republic’ (Slapering Hol Press, 2014), ‘The Kingdom of Gravity’ (Peepal Tree Press, 2017) and ‘Resurrection Man’ (Jai-Alai Books, 2018) 

Andrew McMillan’s debut collection physical was the only collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. It also won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award (2016), an Eric Gregory Award (2016) and a Northern Writers’ award (2014)…

Olive Senior is a singularly original writer with a genius for re-inhabiting and recreating the wonder and cruel theatre of childhood, while also exploring adult pretensions and realities in relation to history, locality and the multifarious and revelatory world of…

John Whitworth (1945-2019) was an English poet who was born in India.  He began writing as an undergraduate at Oxford, and published nine collections, from Unhistorical Fragments (Secker & Warburg, 1980) to Girlie Gangs (Enitharmon, 2011). Whitworth’s poems have appeared…

David Wagoner is widely regarded as the leading poet of the Pacific Northwest. He was born in Ohio and grew up in Indiana, where his mother, a trained opera singer, sang German lieder around the house. He has spoken in…

Michael Laskey (b. 1944) is a poet, editor and a tireless champion of contemporary poetry, particularly through the international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival which he co-founded in 1989 and which continues to be an important showcase for poets from around the…

Charles Tomlinson, since his first publication in 1951, built a career that saw more notice in the international scene than in his native England; this may explain, and be explained by, his international vision of poetry. The influence of American…

Richard Wilbur (1921 – 2017) is perhaps best known as the second person to hold the position of US Poet Laureate (1987-88), and was also the recipient of laurels including the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the Bollingen Prize, the National Book…

In May 2019, Simon Armitage (b. 1963) was named as the UK’s Poet Laureate, an appointment greeted with delight by many in the poetry world and beyond. Armitage burst onto the poetry scene with Zoom! in 1989 and quickly established himself as the…

Penelope Shuttle (b. 1947) has made her home in Cornwall since 1970 and the county’s mercurial weather and rich history are continuing sources of inspiration. So too is the personal and artistic union Shuttle shared with her husband, the poet…

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was the first black writer in America to earn his living from writing. Born in Joplin, Missouri, he had a migratory childhood following his parents’ separation, spending time in the American Mid-West and Mexico. He attended Columbia…

Edwin Morgan (1920 – 2010) was born and educated in Glasgow, where he returned to lecture in English Literature at Glasgow University after a period in the army. He was the author of many books, including poetry, criticism, essays, translations,…

Rudyard Kipling (b. 1865- d. 1936) was born in Bombay (present day Mumbai). His father was a teacher in a local school of art. At the age of six he was sent to England to be educated and spent a…