Fay Zwicky was born in Melbourne in 1933. Her father was a doctor, her mother a musician. From early in life she trained as a pianist, performing with her violinist and cellist sisters while still at school. She began publishing…

Susan Hampton (b. 1949) was born in Inverell, New South Wales. She taught literature and journalism and has been writer-in-residence at several Australian universities. Since 1992, she has lived in Canberra, where she works as a freelance editor. Hampton has…

Yvor Winters (b. 1900) was notorious in his lifetime for his recalcitrant literary criticism which rejected modernism in favour of reason in poetry. His own poetry, after a youthful dalliance with imagism, similarly stands outside the mainstream of poetic developments…

Youngest of three sons, Allen Tate was born in Kentucky in 1899. His father was a businessman whose interests forced the family to move home up to three times a year, prompting Tate to later write: “we might as well…

Yusef Komunyakaa was born in 1947 in the quiet mill town of Bogalusa, Louisiana. Son of a carpenter he was raised in a house of few books at the beginning of the civil rights movement. His grandparents were church people…

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the third surviving son of a rector whose violent alcoholism blighted the family home. Tennyson went to Cambridge where he met Arthur Henry Hallam whose early death was to prompt Tennyson to…

Fred D’Aguiar (b. 1960) draws on his dual Guyanese/British heritage throughout his writing which incorporates poetry, novels and plays. Although born in London, he lived in Guyana until he was twelve before returning to England where the highly politicised atmosphere…

Alan Brownjohn (b. 1931) grew up in London and was educated at Merton College, Oxford. He worked first as a schoolteacher and then a lecturer before becoming a full-time freelance writer in 1979. His writing life since then has demonstrated…