Rodney Jones, born half way through the twentieth century, grew up in rural Alabama in a world little changed from that of a hundred years before. It was a world he describes as “essentially feudal, agrarian, unelectrified” where “horses passed…

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit in 1950, her mother was a Czech-American journalist, her father a tool and die maker. Forché calls herself a ‘junk-heap Catholic’ – she is perpetually drawn to issues of social justice, and describes her…

Andrew Motion read English at Oxford University where he won the Newdigate Prize and studied the work of Edward Thomas, an abiding influence. At Hull University he taught English and worked alongside Philip Larkin, another acknowledged mentor, whose official biographer…

George Szirtes (b. 1948) came to England in 1956 as a refugee from Hungary. He was brought up in London, going on to study fine art in London and Leeds. He wrote poetry alongside his art and his first collection,…

Hugo Williams (b. 1942) is the son of the actor Hugh Williams and the model and actress Margaret Vyner-Williams. His glamorous yet financially precarious family life provides much of the inspiration for his poetry. Williams’ first book of poems, Symptoms…

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…

Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) was the author of twelve books of poetry, four of autobiography, and much scholarly work, particularly on Blake and Yeats, which prove her transcendent understanding of the art of poetry, and the art of living. The latter…