Alfred Edward Housman, the eldest son of a Bromsgrove solicitor, was born in 1859. He attended Bromsgrove School as a dayboy, but soon after he started there his mother fell ill and his father sank into helpless despondency; as the…

Edward Thomas wrote all his poetry in less than three years, between 1914, when he wrote his first, and 1917, when he was killed in the Battle of Arras. Most of his poems were published posthumously; they show sensitive observation…

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…

Frederick William Harvey is remembered today as a poet and central figure in a circle, including Ivor Gurney and Herbert Howells, which emerged in Gloucester before the First World War. In the inter-war years, working as a solicitor, Harvey became…

Combining edgy vernacular and blunt reportage with a delicate lyricism, Nick Laird’s poems delight, surprise and unnerve. Often concerned with the lingering sectarian violence of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, his writing complicates the personal and political, exposing the fault lines in…

The poems that made Wilfred Owen famous were mostly published after his death in action a week before the end of the First World War. Powerfully influenced by Keats and Shelley, he experimented with verse from childhood, but found his…

Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, Cumbria, in 1770, the son of an attorney. Both parents were dead by the time he was thirteen, a loss recorded in the early part of ‘The Prelude’ where he describes with vivid intensity his…

Contemporary Maori poetry in English has found its poetically most versatile spokesman in Robert Sullivan whose poems manifest their close affinity to patterns of an oral tradition. Listening to his enunciation, we come across a speaker whose own individuality is…

Born in The Netherlands, Riemke Ensing moved to New Zealand in 1951. A distinguished poet, Ensing’s life has also been spent as a tutor at The University of Auckland (NZ), where until recently she was an honorary research fellow, as…

In the 1950s and 60s Ruth Gilbert received more than her fair share of male condescension and negativity. Reviewing The Luthier (which won the Jessie Mackay Memorial Award for Verse along with James K. Baxter’s Pig Island Letters) Louis Johnson…

George Byron was born in 1788 with a deformed foot: he limped all his life. His father was ‘Mad Jack’ Byron, an infamous adventurer who abandoned his wife and family in 1790 and died in 1791. At the age of…

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, the son of a stonemason. He trained and practised as an architect, but, as soon as he could, earned his living by writing the novels which made him famous. Then, after Jude the Obscure…

Geoff Page is a poet, reviewer and advocate for Australian poetry. Born in Grafton on the north coast of New South Wales, into a conservative and politically active family of graziers on the Clarence River, he was educated at the…

M. K. (Michael Kennedy) Joseph was among the foremost New Zealand writers of his generation, both as poet and novelist. Born in Chingford, Essex to Catholic parents, who, after some years in post-war Belgium and France, immigrated to New Zealand…

In 2009, WS Merwin won the Pulizer Prize for poetry for the second time, with The Shadow of Sirius. In an interview soon afterward, Merwin recalls his earliest observations about poetry: “The idea of writing to me was from the…

John Fairfax (1930 – 2009) was a remarkable poet whose reputation has largely been overshadowed by his achievement as co-founder of the celebrated Arvon Foundation. Yet his poetry deserves better, not least for its range, integrity and at times dazzling…

Billy Childish (b. Steven John Hamper, 1959, Chatham, England) is a prolific poet, author, musician, and painter. A cult figure in Europe, America, and Japan, he has published over 40 collections of poetry, recorded over 100 full-length independent LP’s, and…

Peter Scupham (b. 1933) is a poet of formal distinction with a particular fascination for history and its bearing on his native country. This attention to the English experience puts him in company with other poets of the same generation…