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Poet
Norman Nicholson
B. 1914 D. 1987
Norman Nicholson (1914-1987) and his poetry are inextricably bound up with the former iron-mining town of Millom, on the edge of the Lake District in Cumbria. Apart from several years spent in a TB sanatorium as a teenager, Nicholson never…
Poet
Robin Robertson
B. 1955
Robin Robertson (b. 1955) is a poet of austere and meticulous diction, tempered by a sensuous music. He was born in Scone, Perthshire, and brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland but has spent much of his professional life…
Poet
Jan Kemp
B. 1949
Jan Kemp was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, in 1949. She was the sole woman anthologized in The Young New Zealand Poets (1973), and in 1979 co-starred with Alistair Campbell, Hone Tuwhare, and Sam Hunt on a national poetry-reading tour….
Poet
Annie Freud
B. 1948
Annie Freud was born in London in 1948. She is the daughter of painter Lucian Freud, maternal grand-daughter of sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, and the great grand daughter of Sigmund Freud. Her parents separated when she was four, and she…
Poet
Yusef Komunyakaa
B. 1947
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…
Poet
Robert Hass
B. 1941
Robert Hass (b. 1941) is a native of California, specifically San Francisco, and the twin influences of the city’s cultural life and the lush landscape around it are both evident in his work. It was Hass’s teenage experience of the…
Poet
Heather McHugh
B. 1948
Heather McHugh (b. 1948) was brought up in rural Virginia. She credits her early overwhelming shyness with inspiring, somewhat paradoxically, an intense pleasure in language: her reluctance to speak herself matched by her passionate attention to “every twist of tone…
Poet
Sylvia Plath
B. 1932 D. 1963
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is a poet whose troubled life and powerful work remains a source of controversy. Born in Boston in the USA she was precociously intelligent, publishing her first poem at the age of eight. The same year her…
Poet
Basil Bunting
B. 1900 D. 1985
Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is best known for his long poem ‘Briggflatts’ which has come to be recognised as one of the key texts of British modernism. ‘Briggflatts’ was the culmination of a lifelong dedication to poetry which began in Bunting’s…
Poet
Robert Minhinnick
B. 1952
Robert Minhinnick (b. 1952) is a writer and environmentalist; his book Watching the Fire Eater, which combined these interests, was named Welsh Book of the Year in 1993. He edits Poetry Wales, and founded both Friends of the Earth Cymru…
Poet
William Butler Yeats
B. 1865 D. 1939
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) stands at the turning point between the Victorian period and Modernism, the conflicting currents of which affected his poetry. Born in Dublin, Yeats’ family moved to London when he was two and he lived there until…
Poet
Mimi Khalvati
B. 1944
Mimi Khalvati (b. 1944, Tehran) spent much of her childhood at boarding school on the Isle of Wight, only returning to Iran at seventeen. She has been resident in the UK since the age of twenty-five, where she has published…
Poet
Kevin Crossley Holland
B. 1941
Kevin Crossley-Holland (b. 1941) grew up with a passion for history, encouraged by a father who recited folk tales to his son, accompanying himself on a Welsh harp. The young Kevin was so entranced by the medieval and ancient past…
Poet
Roy Fisher
B. 1930 D. 2017
Roy Fisher (b. 1930) grew up in Birmingham and was educated at the local grammar school and Birmingham University. He worked as a teacher of English in schools and colleges, including latterly the University of Keele, Staffordshire. From 1982 onwards…
Poet
Christopher Logue
B. 1926 D. 2011
Christopher Logue (1926 – 2011) spent over forty years working on his contemporary version of Homer’s Iliad. Begun in 1959 the project expanded into five full-length collections, known collectively as War Music. Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, Logue was part of…
Poet
Brendan Kennelly
B. 1936 D. 2021
Brendan Kennelly (b. 1936 – d.2021) was the prolific author of over twenty books of poetry as well as plays, novels and criticism. Born in Ballylongford in Co. Kerry, Kennelly was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin for…
Poet
Andrew Motion
B. 1952
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…
Poet
Les Murray
B. 1938 D. 2019
Les Murray (1938 – 2019) grew up the only son of poor farmers in a remote valley in New South Wales. It was a hard background but one that instilled in him a love of the landscape and people of…