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Each poet we record has their own full page in the Archive. Here we can tell you about their writing life, biographies, histories, awards and more...
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563 poets
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Joanna Baillie
B. 1762 D. 1851
Go to thy little senseless play; thou dost not heed my lay. - Joanna Baillie 'A Mother To Her Waking Infant'
Poet
Robert Burns
B. 1759 D. 1796
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. - Robert Burns 'Song: ae fond kiss and then we sever'
Poet
Eavan Boland
B. 1944 D. 2020
Eavan Boland was one of the foremost female Irish writers. Being a female poet in Ireland presented many challenges for Boland. In her collection of essays, ‘Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time’ she…
Poet
Diana Bridge
B. 1942
All this was water / in the beginning. Between / us are our legends - 'Chrysanthemum', Diana Bridge
Poet
William Blake
B. 1757 D. 1827
The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself. William Blake
Poet
William Barnes
B. 1801 D. 1866
I be free to goo abrode, or teake agean my hwomeward road to where, vor me, the apple tree do lean down low in Linden Lea. - William Barnes 'My orcha'd in Linden Lea'
Poet
Elizabeth Bartlett
B. 1924 D. 2008
Hers is a daybook of a night-nurse of the soul - John Mole, 'Encounter'
Poet
Alan Brownjohn
B. 1931
I've always been concerned to get into [my poetry] the details of daily living which portray - or betray - human strengths and weaknesses and oddities. - Alan Brownjohn
Poet
James Berry
B. 1924 D. 2017
Poems come from your more secret mind. A poem will want to ask deeper questions, higher questions, more puzzling questions, and often too, more satisfying questions than the everyday obvious questions... - James Berry
Poet
Jay Bernard
B. 1988
"One of our most promising young talents, Jay Bernard writes powerful and sensuous scenes from the metropolis: a teenager flies like a moth, a woman with scissors sings bees. Disturbing, joyous and always surprising.” – Pascale Petit.
Poet
Poet
Robert Bridges
B. 1844 D. 1930
When men were all asleep the snow came flying, in large white flakes falling on the city brown. - Robert Bridges 'London Snow'