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Robert Frost
(191 poem)
March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet who is widely considered one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century. He was born in San Francisco, California, but spent most of his childhood in New England, where he developed a love for the natural world that would later become a major theme in his poetry.
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Shel Silverstein
(223 poem)
September 25, 1930 – May 10, 1999
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was an American author, poet, cartoonist, and songwriter who is best known for his children's books, including The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and began drawing cartoons and writing poetry as a child.
After serving in the military during the Korean War, Silverstein began his career as a cartoonist, publishing his work in magazines like Playboy and Sports Illustrated.
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Pablo Neruda
(143 poem)
12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century. He was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, and began writing poetry as a teenager.
Neruda's early poetry was heavily influenced by modernist and surrealist movements, but he later developed his own unique style, characterized by his vivid imagery, political themes, and passion for life.
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Maya Angelou
(52 poem)
4 April 1928 - 28 May 2014
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri and spent much of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas. She experienced trauma early in life when she was raped at the age of 7 by her mother's boyfriend, who was subsequently killed by her uncles.
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William Shakespeare
(403 poem)
26 April 1564 - 23 April 1616
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor who is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and one of the most important figures in the history of Western literature. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and little is known about his early life.
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Langston Hughes
(100 poem)
1 February 1902 – 22 May 1967
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and social activist who is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance, a period of great cultural and artistic growth among African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Joplin, Missouri, and raised primarily by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas.
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Emily Dickinson
(1232 poem)
10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American poet who is widely considered one of the greatest poets in the English language. She was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, and spent most of her life in relative seclusion, rarely leaving her family's home.
Dickinson began writing poetry as a young girl, and by the time she was a young woman, she had already developed a unique voice and style.
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Rabindranath Tagore
(215 poem)
7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, philosopher, and polymath who is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in modern Indian literature. He was born in Calcutta, India, and grew up in a family of intellectuals and social reformers.
Tagore began writing poetry at a young age, and his first collection of poems was published when he was just 17 years old.
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Edgar Allan Poe
(69 poem)
19 January 1809 - 7 October 1849
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, and literary critic. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential figures in American literature.
Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. He had a difficult childhood, marked by poverty, illness, and the loss of his parents.
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William Wordsworth
(386 poem)
1770-1850
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English poet who is often considered one of the founders of the Romantic movement in English literature. He was born in Cockermouth, England, and grew up in the Lake District, a region that would become the inspiration for much of his poetry.
Wordsworth began writing poetry in his early teens, and he went on to attend Cambridge University, where he became friends with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
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Roald Dahl
(27 poem)
13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, and children's author. He was born in Wales and grew up in England, where he attended boarding school and later worked for the Shell oil company before enlisting in the Royal Air Force during World War II.
Dahl began his literary career as a writer of adult fiction, and his early work was known for its dark and macabre themes.
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Derek Walcott
(28 poem)
23 January 1930
Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was a Caribbean poet and playwright who was born on the island of Saint Lucia. He is widely regarded as one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century.
Walcott's work often explored themes of colonialism, race, and identity, and he drew heavily on the history and culture of the Caribbean in his writing.
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William Blake
(139 poem)
28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827
William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker who is widely considered one of the most important figures of the Romantic era. He was born in London, England, and spent most of his life there.
Blake began his career as an engraver and illustrator, and he quickly gained a reputation for his skill and innovation in the field.
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Benjamin Zephaniah
(20 poem)
15 April 1958
Benjamin Zephaniah is a British poet, writer, and musician. He was born on April 15, 1958, in Handsworth, Birmingham, England, to Jamaican parents.
Growing up in Birmingham, Zephaniah experienced racism and discrimination firsthand, which later became a major theme in his poetry. He left school at the age of 14 and became involved in the local music and arts scene, performing his poetry at events and festivals.
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Charles Bukowski
(151 poem)
16 August 1920 – 9 March 1994
Charles Bukowski was an American writer and poet, born on August 16, 1920, in Andernach, Germany. He is known for his gritty, uncompromising style and his portrayal of the harsh realities of life for working-class Americans.
Bukowski's family immigrated to the United States when he was a child, and he grew up in poverty in Los Angeles.
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Wilfred Owen
(82 poem)
1893-1918
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was an English poet and soldier who is widely regarded as one of the most important literary figures of World War I.
Owen was born in Oswestry, England, and he attended school at Shrewsbury Technical School before working as a lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden. He enlisted in the British Army in 1915 and was sent to the Western Front, where he saw active service in the trenches.
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Walt Whitman
(392 poem)
31 May 1819 - 26 March 1892
Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist, born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, New York. He is best known for his collection of poems entitled "Leaves of Grass," which is considered a groundbreaking work of American literature.
Whitman grew up in a family of modest means and received little formal education.
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Roger McGough
(17 poem)
November 9 - 1937
Roger McGough is an English poet, playwright, performer, and broadcaster. He was born on November 9, 1937, in Litherland, Liverpool, England. McGough grew up in Liverpool and attended the University of Hull, where he studied French and English. After graduation, he taught at a secondary school in Hoylake, but soon became involved in the Liverpool poetry scene, which was thriving in the 1960s.
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Jack Prelutsky
(16 poem)
8 September 1940
Jack Prelutsky is an American poet and children's author, born on September 8, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for his humorous and whimsical poetry for children, which has earned him numerous awards and accolades.
Prelutsky began writing poetry in his teens and went on to study philosophy at Hunter College in New York City.
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Phillis Wheatley
(41 poem)
1753 – 5 December 1784
Phillis Wheatley was the first published African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings helped create the genre of African American literature.
Life of Phillis Wheatley
Although the date and place of her birth are not documented, scholars believe that Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 likely in present-day Gambia. Read More
Edgar Albert Guest
(974 poem)
20 August 1881 - 5 August 1959
Edgar Albert Guest was a British-born American poet who became known as the People's Poet. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life. Guest was born in Birmingham, England in 1881. In 1891, his family moved from England to Detroit, Michigan, where Guest lived until he died.
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Kamala Das
(22 poem)
31 March 1934 – 31 May 2009
Kamala Surayya / Suraiyya formerly known as Kamala Das , (also known as Kamala Madhavikutty, pen name was Madhavikutty) was a major Indian English poet and littérateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the fiery poems and explicit autobiography.
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Simon Armitage
(11 poem)
26 May 1963
Simon Armitage is a British poet, playwright, novelist, and translator born on May 26, 1963, in West Yorkshire, England. He is known for his accessible and often humorous poetry, which often explores themes of nature, social issues, and personal experience.
Armitage studied at Portsmouth University and later at Manchester University, where he received a Master's degree in creative writing.
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Michael Rosen
(3 poem)
7 May 1946
Michael Rosen is a British author, poet, and broadcaster, known for his contributions to children's literature. He was born on May 7, 1946, in Harrow, London, England.
Rosen attended Oxford University, where he studied English literature. He began his career as a writer in the late 1970s, and his first book, "Mind Your Own Business," was published in 1974.
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Rudyard Kipling
(546 poem)
30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936
an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.
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Robert Burns
(512 poem)
1759-1796
Robert Burns, also known as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist born on January 25, 1759, in Alloway, Scotland. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated for his work in both the Scots and English languages.
Burns grew up on a farm and received a limited formal education.
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Gwendolyn Brooks
(39 poem)
7 June 1917 – 3 December 2000
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an African-American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.
Biography
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah Wims.
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Kahlil Gibran
(81 poem)
January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931
Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, artist, and philosopher born on January 6, 1883, in Bsharri, Lebanon. He is best known for his book "The Prophet," a collection of poetic essays that has become a classic of spiritual literature and has been translated into over 50 languages.
Gibran's family emigrated to the United States in 1895, and he settled in Boston, where he attended art school and began his career as an artist and writer.
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John Keats
(218 poem)
31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821
John Keats was born on October 31, 1795 in London, England. He died on February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal States [Italy]. John Keats was an English Romantic poet who devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal, and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend.
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Ogden Nash
(126 poem)
August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971
Ogden Nash was an American poet known for his witty and humorous verse. He was born on August 19, 1902, in Rye, New York, and grew up in a wealthy family. His father was a successful businessman, and his mother was a socialite and amateur poet.
Nash attended Harvard University but dropped out after a year and a half.
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Spike Milligan
(51 poem)
16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was a British-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, and actor, born on April 16, 1918, in Ahmednagar, India. He is best known for his work on the groundbreaking radio comedy series "The Goon Show," as well as his own anarchic brand of humor in a wide variety of media.
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Christina Georgina Rossetti
(320 poem)
5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember".
Christina Rossetti was born on 5 December 1830 in London. In the 1840s, Rossetti's family faced financial troubles due to a deterioration in her father's physical and mental health.
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Sarojini Naidu
(51 poem)
13 February 1879 - 2 March 1949
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet. She became an important figure in India and and in the entire world as a woman activist. Sarojini Naidu was born in Hyderabad State on 13 February 1879. In 1898, she married Govindaraju Naidu, a physician. They had five children.
In 1904, Naidu started to become famous, defending Indian independence and women’s rights.
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Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, [America's] best-selling poet".
Mary Oliver was born to Edward William and Helen M. V. Oliver on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio, a semi-rural suburb of Cleveland.
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Jessie Pope
(56 poem)
18 March 1868 - 14 December 1941
Jessie Pope was an English poet, writer and journalist, who remains best known for her patriotic motivational poems published during World War I. Wilfred OwenRead More
Sylvia Plath
(250 poem)
October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963
Born in 1932 to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath published her first poem at the age of eight. A sensitive person who tended to be a bit of a perfectionist she was what many would consider a model daughter and student - popular, a straight A student, always winning the best prizes.
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(529 poem)
27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882
Henry Wadsworth was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.
Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, then part of Massachusetts, and studied at Bowdoin College.
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Mary Elizabeth Frye
(1 poem)
13 November, 1905 - 15 September 2004
a Baltimore housewife and florist, best known as the author of the poem "Do not stand at my grave and weep," written in 1932.
She was born Mary Elizabeth Clark, and was orphaned at the age of three. In 1927 she married Claud Frye.
The identity of the author of the poem was unknown until the late 1990s, when Frye revealed that she had written it.
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Matsuo Basho
(114 poem)
1644 - 1694
Bashō was born Matsuo Kinsaku around 1644, somewhere near Ueno in Iga Province. His father may have been a low-ranking samurai, which would have promised Bashō a career in the military but not much chance of a notable life. It was traditionally claimed by biographers that he worked in the kitchens.
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Billy Collins
(52 poem)
22 March 1941 -
(born William James Collins) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.
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Robert Browning
(147 poem)
1812-1889
The son of Robert Browning, a Bank of England clerk, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann, of Scottish-German descent, Browning received little formal education. His learning was gleaned mainly from his Father's library at home in Camberwell, South London, where he learnt something, with his Father's help, of Latin and Greek and also read Shelly, Byron and Keats.
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Robert Louis Stevenson
(239 poem)
1850-1894
Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the only son of respectable middle-class parents. Throughout his childhood, he suffered chronic health problems that confined him to bed. The strongest influence during his childhood was that of his nurse, Allison Cunnigham, who often read aloud Pilgrim's Progress and The Old Testament, his most direct literary influences during this time.
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Margaret Atwood
(30 poem)
18 November 1939
a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice.
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Paul Laurence Dunbar
(424 poem)
1872-1906
Dunbar was born in Dayton, Ohio to parents who had escaped from slavery; his father was a veteran of the American Civil War, having served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment. His parents instilled in him a love of learning and history. He was a student at an all-white high school, Dayton Central High School, and he participated actively as a student.
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Dylan Thomas
(100 poem)
27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works.
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Nikki Giovanni
(43 poem)
June 7, 1943
an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Her primary focus is on the individual and the power one has to make a difference in oneself and in the lives of others. Giovanni’s poetry expresses strong racial pride, respect for family, and her own experiences as a daughter, a civil rights activist, and a mother.
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Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
(149 poem)
1207 - 1273
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Persian: جلالالدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (جلالالدین محمد رومی), and more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.
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Sayeed Abubakar
(297 poem)
21 September 1972
Sayeed Abubakar is a Bengali poet, essayist, translator and Professor, laureate of Rock Pebbles International Award 2017. Born on September 21,1972 in Jashore district of Bangladesh, he is famous for his two epic-poems namely 'Mujibnama' (2018) and 'Nabinama' (2021) . 'Pronoyer Prathom Pap' (1996) is his most famous poetry-collection which is regarded as a master-piece in Bengali language.
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Dorothea Mackellar
(12 poem)
1 July 1885 – 14 January 1968
Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar was an Australian poet and fiction writer.
Life and Works
The only daughter of noted physician and parliamentarian Sir Charles Mackellar, she was born in Sydney in 1885. Although raised in a professional urban family, Mackellar's poetry is usually regarded as quintessential bush poetry, inspired by her experience on her brothers' farms near Gunnedah, North-West New South Wales.
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William Butler Yeats
(399 poem)
13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years.
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Judith Wright
(32 poem)
1915 - 2000
Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 1915 – 25 June 2000) was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.
Judith Wright was born in Armidale, New South Wales. The eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife, Ethel, she spent most of her formative years in Brisbane and Sydney.
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Anne Sexton
(187 poem)
9 November 1928 – 4 October 1974
an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. Themes of her poetry include her suicidal tendencies, long battle against depression and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children.
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Carl Sandburg
(457 poem)
6 January 1878 – 22 July 1967
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat.
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Alice Walker
(27 poem)
9 February 1944 -
Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. Her father, who was, in her words, "wonderful at math but a terrible farmer," earned only $300 a year from sharecropping and dairy farming. Her mother supplemented the family income by working as a maid.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
(324 poem)
1792-1822
Shelley, born the heir to rich estates and the son of an Member of Parliament, went to University College, Oxford in 1810, but in March of the following year he and a friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, were both expelled for the suspected authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.
In 1811 he met and eloped to Edinburgh with Harriet Westbrook and, one year later, went with her and her older sister first to Dublin, then to Devon and North Wales, where they stayed for six months in.
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Jack Kerouac
(27 poem)
12 March 1922 - 21 October 1969
Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
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Lewis Carroll
(80 poem)
27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay
(169 poem)
22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.
Early Life
Millay was born in Rockland, Maine to Cora Lounella, a nurse, and Henry Tollman Millay, a schoolteacher who would later become superintendent of schools.
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Allama Muhammad Iqbal
(32 poem)
9 November 1877 - 21 April 1938
Sir Muhammad Iqbal, also known as Allama Iqbal, was a philosopher, poet and politician in British India who is widely regarded to have inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature, with literary work in both the Urdu and Persian languages.
Iqbal is admired as a prominent classical poet by Pakistani, Indian and other international scholars of literature.
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John Milton
(115 poem)
9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth (republic) of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.
Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day.
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Countee Cullen
(28 poem)
30 May 1903 – 9 January 1946
Countee Cullen was an American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Early life
Countee Cullen was possibly born on May 30, although due to conflicting accounts of his early life, a general application of the year of his birth as 1903 is reasonable. He was either born in New York, Baltimore, or Lexington, Kentucky, with his widow being convinced he was born in Lexington.
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Thomas Hardy
(326 poem)
2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928
Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper Bockhampton, located in Southwestern England. His father was a stone mason and a violinist. His mother enjoyed reading and relating all the folk songs and legends of the region. Between his parents, Hardy gained all the interests that would appear in his novels and his own life: his love for architecture and music, his interest in the lifestyles of the country folk, and his passion for all sorts of literature.
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Claude McKay
(80 poem)
15 September 1889 – 22 May 1948
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem (1928), a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo (1929), and Banana Bottom (1933). McKay also authored a collection of short stories, Gingertown (1932), and two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home (1937) and Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940).
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Ted Hughes
(29 poem)
1930 - 1998
Ted Hughes is consistently described as one of the twentieth century’s greatest English poets. Born August 17th, 1930 in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, his family moved to Mexborough when he was seven to run a newspaper and tobacco shop. He attended Mexborough grammar school, and wrote his first poems from the age of fifteen, some of which made their way into the school magazine.
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Siegfried Sassoon
(166 poem)
1886 - 1967
Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the war poets. John Hildebidle has called Sassoon the "accidental hero." Born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1886, Sassoon lived the pastoral life of a young squire: fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing and writing romantic verses.
Being an innocent, Sassoon's reaction to the realities of the war were all the more bitter and violent -- both his reaction through his poetry and his reaction on the battlefield (where, after the death of fell.
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Rainer Maria Rilke
(127 poem)
4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (German pronunciation: [ˈʁaɪnɐ maˈʁiːa ˈʁɪlkə]), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
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Brian Patten
(23 poem)
7 February 1946
Born near Liverpool's docks, he attended Sefton Park School in the Smithdown Road area of Liverpool, where he was noted for his essays and greatly encouraged in his work by Harry Sutcliffe his form teacher. He left school at fifteen and began work for The Bootle Times writing a column on popular music.
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Jacques Prevert
(29 poem)
4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.
Life and Education
Prévert was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine and grew up in Paris.
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Louise Gluck
(75 poem)
22 April 1943
Born in 1943, Louise Glück is an American poet. She was born in New York City and grew up in Long Island. Her father helped invent the X-Acto Knife. Glück graduated in 1961 from George W. Hewlett High School, in Hewlett, New York. She went on to attend Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.
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Robert William Service
(836 poem)
16 January 1874 - 11 September 1958
a poet and writer who has often been called "the Bard of the Yukon".
Service is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough (1907; also published as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses). "These humorous tales in verse were considered doggerel by the literary set, yet remain extremely popular to this day.
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Alfred Lord Tennyson
(193 poem)
6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language.
Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as "In the Valley of Cauteretz", "Break, Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing the Bar".
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Robert Gray
(16 poem)
23 February 1945 -
Robert William Geoffrey Gray is an Australian poet, freelance writer, and critic.
Gray grew up in Coffs Harbour and was educated in a country town on the north coast of New South Wales. He trained there as a journalist, and since then has worked in Sydney as an editor, advertising copywriter, reviewer and buyer for bookshops.
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A B Banjo Paterson
(284 poem)
17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941
Banjo Paterson was born at the property "Narrambla", near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, related to the future first Prime Minister of Australia Edmund Barton. Paterson's family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station in the Monaro until he was five when his father lost his wool clip in a flood and was forced to sell up.
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Henry Lawson
(501 poem)
17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer". He was the son of the poet, publisher and feminist Read More
Keki Daruwalla
(25 poem)
1937 -
Keki Nasserwanji Daruwalla was born in 1937 in Lahore in undivided India. In
1945 his father Prof. N.C. Daruwalla retired from Govt. College Lyallpur (now
Shah Faizlabad) and moved to Junagadh as Tutor and Guardian to the Prince.
His latest novel Ancestral Affairs (Harpercollins, 2015) dwells on Junagadh’s
disastrous accession to Pakistan in 1947.
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Jack Davis
(2 poem)
1917 - 17 March 2000
Jack Davis, was a notable Australian 20th Century playwright and poet, also an Indigenous rights campaigner. Born in Perth in 1917, Jack spent his childhood in Yarloop about 140 kilometres to the south. Jack always had a fascination with words and when he was 10 he preferred a dictionary to a story book.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(236 poem)
6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.
Early Life
Some of Barrett's family had lived in Jamaica for several centuries.
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Robert Graves
(141 poem)
1895 - 1985
Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, a suburb of London. Graves was known as a poet, lecturer and novelist. He was also known as a classicist and a mythographer. Perhaps his first known and revered poems were the poems Groves wrote behind the lines in World War One. He later became known as one of the most superb English language 'Love' poets.
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Les Murray
(59 poem)
17 October 1938
an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spans over forty years, and he has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry, as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings. His poetry has won many awards and he is regarded as "one of the leading poets of his generation." He has also been involved in several controversies over his career and has been rated by the National Trust of Australia as one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures.
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James Weldon Johnson
(63 poem)
1871-1938
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore.
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Kazi Nazrul Islam
(265 poem)
24 May 1899 - 29 August 1976
Kazi Nazrul Islam was a Bengali poet, musician and revolutionary who pioneered poetic works espousing intense spiritual rebellion against fascism and oppression. His poetry and nationalist activism earned him the popular title of Bidrohi Kobi (Rebel Poet). Accomplishing a large body of acclaimed works through his life, Nazrul is officially recognised as the national poet of Bangladesh and commemorated in India.
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Naomi Shihab Nye
(46 poem)
12 March 1952
a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home.
Career
Her first collection of poems, Different Ways to Pray, explored the theme of similarities and differences between cultures, which would become one of her lifelong areas of focus.
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John Clare
(175 poem)
13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864
John Clare was an English poet, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets.
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Mahmoud Darwish
(95 poem)
13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008
Mahmoud Darwish (Arabic: محمود درويش) (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile.
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Kabir
(75 poem)
1440 - 1518
Kabir (also Kabira) (Hindi: कबीर, Punjabi: ਕਬੀਰ, Urdu: کبير) was a mystic poet and saint of India, whose writings have greatly influenced the Bhakti movement. The name Kabir comes from Arabic al-Kabīr which means 'The Great' - the 37th name of God in Islam.
Apart from having an important influence on Sikhism, Kabir's legacy is today carried forward by the Kabir Panth ("Path of Kabir"), a religious community that recognizes him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects.
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John Donne
(190 poem)
24 January 1572 - 31 March 1631
John Donne was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and priest. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons.
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Thomas Chatterton
(47 poem)
1752 - 1770
Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on November 20, 1752 and is generally regarded as the first Romantic poet in English.
Throughout his early childhood Chatterton showed no signs of talent. He was regarded as little better than an idiot until he was about six and a half years old, because he would learn nothing, refused to play with other children, and spent most of his time brooding in silence.
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Gwen Harwood
(12 poem)
8 June 1920 – 4 December 1995
Gwen Harwood AO, née Gwendoline Nessie Foster, was an Australian poet and librettist. Gwen Harwood is regarded as one of Australia's finest poets, publishing over 420 works, including 386 poems and 13 librettos. She won numerous poetry awards and prizes. Her work is commonly studied in schools and university courses.
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Ezra Pound
(250 poem)
30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry. He became known for his role in developing Imagism, which, in reaction to the Victorian and Georgian poets, favored tight language, unadorned imagery, and a strong correspondence between the verbal and musical qualities of the verse and the mood it expressed.
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Kumar Vishwas
(7 poem)
10 February 1970-
Kumar Vishwas (डॉ. कुमार विश्वास ) (also spelt as Vishvas or Vishwas) is a renowned Hindi Poet and a professor of Hindi Literature from Pilkhuwa, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh.
Early Life and Education
Kumar Vishwas was born on 10 February 1970, in Pilkhuwa, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh in a Gaur Brahmin family.
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Mirabai
(59 poem)
1498 - 1546
Meerabai or Mirabai (alternate orthographies: Meera, Mira, Meera Bai) (Hindi:मीराबाई Bengali: মীরাবাঈ;) was an aristocratic Hindu mystical singer and devotee of Lord Krishna from Rajasthan and one of the most significant figures of the Sant tradition of the Vaishnava bhakti movement. Some 1,200–1,300 prayerful songs or bhajans attributed to her are popular throughout India and have been published in several translations worldwide.
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Li Po
(97 poem)
701-762
Li Bai's birthplace is Chu, Kazakhstan. Another candidate is Suiye in Central Asia (near modern-day Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan). However his family had originally dwelt in what is now southeastern Gansu , and later moved to Jiangyou, near modern Chengdu in Sichuan province, when he was five years old. At the age of ten, his formal education started.
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Anna Akhmatova
(83 poem)
23 June 1889 – 5 March 1966
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.
Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror.
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Kuvempu
(4 poem)
29 December 1894 - 11 November 1994
Kuppali Venkatappagowda Puttappa, widely known by the pen name Kuvempu or by the abbreviation K. V. Puttappa, was a Kannada writer and poet, widely regarded as the greatest poet of 20th century Kannada literature. He is the first among eight recipients of Jnanpith Award for Kannada. Puttappa wrote all his literary works using the pen name Kuvempu.
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Donald Bruce Dawe
(4 poem)
15 February 1930 -
Donald Bruce Dawe AO is an Australian poet, and is considered by many as one of the most influential Australian poets of all time.
Early Life
Bruce Dawe was born in Fitzroy, Melbourne in 1930. Bruce Dawe's mother and father were from farming backgrounds in Victoria and, like his own sisters and brother, never had the opportunity to complete primary school.
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Vikram Seth
(29 poem)
20 June 1952 -
Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.
Born and Early Life
Vikram Seth was born to Leila and Prem Seth in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His family lived in many cities including the Bata Shoe Company town of Batanagar, Danapur near Patna, and in London.
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Mirza Ghalib
(26 poem)
27 December 1797 – 15 February 1869
Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan (Urdu/Persian: مرزا اسد اللہ بیگ خان) was a classical Urdu and Persian poet from India during British colonial rule. His also known as 'Mirza Asadullah Khan Galib', 'Mirza Galib', 'Dabir-ul-Mulk' and 'Najm-ud-Daula'. His pen-names was Ghaliband Asad or Asad or Galib. During his lifetime the Mughals were eclipsed and displaced by the British and finally deposed following the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1857, events that he wrote of.
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Elizabeth Bishop
(72 poem)
8 February 1911 – 6 October 1979
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia dedicated to her memory.
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Nazim Hikmet
(38 poem)
1902-1963
Nâzım Hikmet Ran (15 January 1902 – 3 June 1963), commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet (Turkish pronunciation: [naːˈzɯm hicˈmet] ( listen)) was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements". Described as a "romantic communist"and "romantic revolutionary", he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile.
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Guy Wetmore Carryl (March 4, 1873 – April 1, 1904) was an American humorist and poet.
Carryl was born in New York City, the first-born of author Charles Edward Carryl and Mary R. Wetmore.
When he was only 20 years old he had his first article published in The New York Times. He graduated from Columbia University in 1895 when he was 22 years of age. During his college years he had written plays for amateur performances. One of his professors was Harry Thurston Peck, who was scandalized by Carryl’s famous quote “It takes two bodies to make one seduction,” which was a somewhat risqué statement for those times.
After graduation, in 1896 he became a staff writer for Munsey's Magazine under Frank Munsey and he was later promoted to managing editor of the magazine. Later he went to work for Harper's Magazine and was sent to Paris. While in Paris he wrote for Life, Outing, Munsey’s, and Collier’s, as well as his own independent writings.
Some of Carryl's better-known works were his humorous poems that were parodies of Aesop's Fables, such as “The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven” and of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, such as “The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet,” poems which are still popular today. He also wrote a number of humorous parodies of Grimm's Fairy Tales, such as “How Little Red Riding Hood Came To Be Eaten” and “How Fair Cinderella Disposed of Her Shoe.” His humorous poems usually ended with a pun on the words used in the moral of the story.
..
Carryl was born in New York City, the first-born of author Charles Edward Carryl and Mary R. Wetmore.
When he was only 20 years old he had his first article published in The New York Times. He graduated from Columbia University in 1895 when he was 22 years of age. During his college years he had written plays for amateur performances. One of his professors was Harry Thurston Peck, who was scandalized by Carryl’s famous quote “It takes two bodies to make one seduction,” which was a somewhat risqué statement for those times.
After graduation, in 1896 he became a staff writer for Munsey's Magazine under Frank Munsey and he was later promoted to managing editor of the magazine. Later he went to work for Harper's Magazine and was sent to Paris. While in Paris he wrote for Life, Outing, Munsey’s, and Collier’s, as well as his own independent writings.
Some of Carryl's better-known works were his humorous poems that were parodies of Aesop's Fables, such as “The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven” and of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, such as “The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet,” poems which are still popular today. He also wrote a number of humorous parodies of Grimm's Fairy Tales, such as “How Little Red Riding Hood Came To Be Eaten” and “How Fair Cinderella Disposed of Her Shoe.” His humorous poems usually ended with a pun on the words used in the moral of the story.
..
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