Charles Simic (b. 1938 – d. 2023) grew up in Belgrade in former Yugoslavia, a childhood in which “Hitler and Stalin taught us the basics”. A new life began in 1954 when he and his mother were allowed to join…

Adrienne Rich (1929 – 2012) was one of the USA’s foremost poets, and her poetry’s intelligent and outspoken political commitment makes her one of the most provocative. She was awarded, among others, the Bollingen Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry…

Tony Harrison was Britain’s principal film and theatre poet and  famously said “Poetry is all I write, whether for books, or readings, or for the National Theatre, or for the opera house and concert hall, or even for TV.” He…

Ken Smith (1938-2003) was born in Rudston, Yorkshire, the son of a farm labourer whose work meant Ken had an itinerant childhood. He attended Leeds University at a key time when Geoffrey Hill was teaching in the English Department and…

Jade Cuttle graduated from Cambridge University with First-Class Honours in Modern and Medieval Languages and Literature, and undertook an MA in Poetry at the University of East Anglia. A poet and plant-whisperer, Jade has been commissioned to write for BBC…

Shash Trevett is a poet and a translator of Tamil poetry into English. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies (including POETRY, Poetry London, Modern Poetry in Translation, Ambit  and The North), she has read widely across the U.K and internationally and is a…

Deborah Alma is a UK poet, editor and teacher. She has worked using poetry with people with dementia, in hospice care, with women’s groups and with children in schools and lectured at both Worcester and Keele universities. From 2012 she…

Jane Yeh is an American poet who has lived in England for over a decade. Born in New Jersey, she was educated at Harvard University, the University of Iowa—where she took an MFA at the prestigious writers’ program—and at Manchester…

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…

Rishi Dastidar, a London-based poet of second-generation heritage, is a prolific reviewer, editor and arts activist, currently working for the Guardian, and acting as the chair of Wasafiri. Completing his Bachelors in Mansfield College, Oxford University, followed by a Masters…

Born in south-east London where he still lives, Kae Tempest made his live debut as a spoken-word artist at sixteen. Having initially conceived of himself as a rapper, Tempest found his work was also extremely popular at poetry slams; he…

Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco in 1942. She studied at Stanford University and received her PhD from Columbia University, where she wrote a thesis on Ralph Waldo Emerson. She has published twelve books of poems, including Satan Says (1980), The Father (1992), Stag’s Leap (2012), Odes (2016)…

Nissim Ezekiel, recognised as the father of Indian English poetry, was a foundational figure in introducing Modernism to the post-independence Indian literary scene. He captured the essence of everyday life through idiosyncratic descriptions of ordinary men and women. Through his…

Born in Lahore in 1947, Mehrotra is the author of seven volumes of poetry – including Nine Enclosures (1976), Distance in Statute Miles (1982), Middle Earth (1984) and The Transfiguring Places (1998), as well as three of translations, the most recent one being Songs of Kabir (2011). In his…

Robert Pinsky (b. 1940) is a pre-eminent poet and critic, a dual role that has led to comparisons with figures from the past such as Matthew Arnold and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His beginnings were modest – he was born in…

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) at the time of her death was respected as a “writer’s writer” on account of her technical mastery and exemplary patience and dedication to her craft. Since then her reputation has risen steadily until she has become…

Julia Copus was born in London in 1969 and grew up in a house with three brothers who were learning to play musical instruments. Two of them later went on to be professional musicians, and Copus has said in interview…