Filter results

128 results

Sort by:

Poet

6 poems available

Often associated with the short-lived Martian school of the 1980s, Christopher Reid’s poetry has come a long way since the extra-terrestrial metaphors and puzzling imagery that were the hallmark of his early writing. His gift for unusual, typically comic description…

Poet

Thomas Gray

B. 1716 D. 1771

1 poem available

Written over several years in the 1740s, Gray’s elegy was eventually published in 1751 and enjoyed phenomenal popularity for the next two hundred years. Gray was a versatile poet. He wrote elegant lyric and dramatic poems, Latin translations, odes and…

Poet

Robert Burns

B. 1759 D. 1796

3 poems available

Burns started life as a ploughman in Scotland but is now one of the world’s most celebrated poets. Every January, his life is remembered with whisky, haggis, singing and dancing on Burns Night. Perhaps as a distraction from the hard…

Poet

Philip Sidney

B. 1554 D. 1586

1 poem available

A poet, soldier and courtier, Philip Sidney was one of the most celebrated figures of the Elizabethan age. He was a member of a distinguished and talented family; his sister, Mary, the Countess of Pembroke, was a patron of writers…

Poet

Ben Jonson

B. 1572 D. 1637

1 poem available

Jonson was a skilful satirist of contemporary society, producing Volpone for the stage in 1606 and The Alchemist in 1610. It is highly likely that Shakespeare would have appeared in a production of another of Jonson’s plays, Every Man in…

Poet

7 poems available

Nigel McLoughlin was born in Enniskillen in 1968. In 2005 he moved to take up post at the University of Gloucestershire where he is now Professor of Creativity & Poetics. He has published five poetry collections and written many contributions…

Poet

Helen Mort

B. 1985

5 poems available

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield, grew in Derbyshire, and studied Social and Political Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge. She has published two pamphlets with tall-lighthouse press, the shape of every box and a pint for the ghost (a Poetry…

Poet

2 poems available

Bernardine Evaristo was born in Woolwich, south east London, the fourth of eight children, to an English mother, a schoolteacher, and Nigerian father, a welder and local Labour councillor. She was educated at Eltham Hill Girls Grammar School, the Rose…

Poet

3 poems available

Charles Boyle was born in Leeds, and worked in for a long time in publishing, including fourteen years at Faber and Faber. He is the author of six collections of poetry: Affinities (1977), House of Cards (1983), Sleeping Rough (1987),…

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

2 poems available

John Wilmot was born in 1647, the son of Henry Wilmot, a celebrated Royalist who had led the cavalry at the Battle of Edgehill. Henry helped the young Prince Charles escape to France after the disastrous Royalist defeat at the…

Poet

Christopher Marlowe

B. 1564 D. 1593

3 poems available

Marlowe is believed to have written all his poems and translations as a young man studying at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was born in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare, and was the son of a shoemaker. Ovid’s elegies…

Poet

Andrew Marvell

B. 1621 D. 1678

4 poems available

Andrew Marvell was born near Kingston Upon Hull in 1621, the son of a priest. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but left his studies early when his father was drowned in a boating accident on the Humber. He travelled abroad for…

Poet

4 poems available

Alison Brackenbury was born in 1953 in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. She read English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and has worked as a librarian in a technical college (1976-83), then as a part-time accounts and clerical assistant (1985-1989). From 1990 until…

Poet

Percy Bysshe Shelley

B. 1792 D. 1822

4 poems available

Shelley was born at Field Place, near Horsham, the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, MP for the Duke of Norfolk’s pocket borough of Shoreham-by-sea. Shelley was educated at Eton, where he was known as ‘Mad Shelley’, and University College…

Poet

Denis Glover

B. 1912 D. 1980

7 poems available

Denis Glover emerged as a poet in New Zealand in the 1930s, one of the new artistic generation of modernists and nationalists. A product of two of New Zealand’s elite secondary schools — Auckland Grammar School and Christ’s College —…

Poet

Jon Stallworthy

B. 1935 D. 2014

3 poems available

Jon Stallworthy was educated at Dragon School, Rugby School, and Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Poetry Prize while playing rugby for the University, and held a post as Emeritus Professor of English. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, the…

Poet

Christina Rossetti

B. 1830 D. 1894

9 poems available

Many readers first come across Christina Rossetti as the writer of the words of the carol ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, or the deceptively simple, but actually strange and powerful, fairy tale in verse, Goblin Market. But her work ranges widely,…

Close