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Poet
Richard Harrison
B. 1957
Canadian poet Richard Harrison is a shrewd writer who is as much concerned with the question of poetry and its composition as he is personal histories; his poems are discursive and self-referential, yet never subordinated to the cerebral in a…
Poem
The Bachelor Stripped Bare by his Brides, Even - David Kinloch
If I place my eye to the peep- hole in this rock, I can just make out his head staring back at me from the borders of the morning. Light suspends it, blinds me as I again unpack the shadows….
Poem
A boy dashes across the road from darkness into streetlights, flit of limbs through lanes, his bar-code body lit for these few seconds. Then he’s gone, deletes himself with one last stride into the darkness on …
Poem
The Prison Librarian - Ross Sutherland
The prison sits unmistakably on the horizon. Regardless of poetry it remains a definitive interpretation of a prison. Watertight. A thing you can hold in your hand and believe in. A doorknob. A cork. Sorry not like a cork. That…
Poem
In our search for wider representation to become a truly diverse and contemporary global poetry community, we are now focusing on our latest initiative, the Poetry of India Collection. Our ‘Poetry of India’ project will bring together a carefully curated…
The Classics
The Nightingale
Read by Kit Wright
The Nightingale - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Read by Kit Wright
No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge! You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, But…
Poem
The Pursuit of Happiness - Sheenagh Pugh
‘ . . . certain unalienable rights . . . among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ – Thomas Jefferson, The American Declaration of Independence, 1776 But he only said you had a right to chase…
Poet
Alan Jenkins
B. 1955
Alan Jenkins was born in Surrey in 1955 and has lived for most of his life in London. He studied at the University of Sussex and has worked for the Times Literary Supplement since 1981, first as poetry and fiction…
Poet
Jon Stallworthy
B. 1935 D. 2014
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…
Poet
Edward Baugh
B. 1936 D. 2023
Edward Baugh is probably best known as a literary critic whose distinguished academic career has been devoted to West Indian literature, especially the study of Anglophone Caribbean poetry, and in particular the work of the towering Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott,…
Poet
Isobel Dixon
B. 1969
Isobel Dixon was born in Mthatha, South Africa. She studied English at Stellenbosch University, before pursuing postgraduate study at Edinburgh University. She now lives in Cambridge and works as a literary agent in London, returning frequently to Cape Town and…
Keystone
Keystone
Poet
Gloria Rawlinson
B. 1918 D. 1995
Born in Tonga close to the end of the First World War, Gloria Rawlinson was a major New Zealand poet, biographer and editor. After her parents’ divorce, she moved to New Zealand with her mother, and was soon writing poems…
Poet
WS Merwin
B. 1927 D. 2019
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…
Poet
Mervyn Morris
B. 1937
Mervyn Morris (b, 1937) remains one of the most resourceful and technically brilliant of Caribbean poets. After studying at the University College of the West Indies, and winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, he embarked on an academic career which…
Poet
Choman Hardi is the seventh and youngest child of Kurdish poet Ahmed Hardi. After several stages of forced displacement, she was granted refugee status in England in 1993. She studied at Oxford, London, and Kent universities and her post-doctoral research…
Poet
Dan Burt
B. 1942
Dan Burt’s poems offer the reader a dual perspective on American culture, drawing on the poet’s personal experience of being both an insider and an outsider. The son of Jewish immigrants, Burt grew up in the tough environs of South…