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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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
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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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William Carlos Williams
(133 poem)
17 September 1883 – 4 March 1963
an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician"; but during his lifetime, Williams excelled at both.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Subramanya Bharathi
(12 poem)
11 December 1882 - 11 September 1921
Chinnaswami Subramanya Bharathi (Tamil: சின்னசுவாமி சுப்பிரமணிய பாரதி) was a Tamil writer, poet, journalist, Indian independence activist and social reformer from Tamil Nadu, India. Popularly known as Mahakavi Bharathiyar (Tamil: மகாகவி பாரதியார்), he is a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry.
Born in Ettayapuram in 1882, Subramanya Bharathi studied in Tinnevely and worked as a journalist with many newspapers, notable among them being the Swadesamitran and India.
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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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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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Anne Bradstreet
(62 poem)
1612 – 16 September 1672
Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in Northampton, England, 1612. She was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, a steward of the Earl of Lincoln, and Dorothy Yorke. Due to her family's position she grew up in cultured circumstances and was a well-educated woman for her time, being tutored in history, several languages and literature.
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Sara Teasdale
(316 poem)
August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933
Sara Trevor Teasdale was born on August 8, 1884 in St. Louis Missouri. She was the youngest child of Mary Elizabeth Willard and John Warren Teasdale. At the time of Sara's birth, Mary was 40, and John was 45. Teasdale had three other siblings. She had two brothers; George, who was the oldest child at 20, and John Warren Jr.
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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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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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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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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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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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Geoffrey Chaucer
(74 poem)
c. 1343 – 25 October 1400
Geoffrey Chaucer known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat.
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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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Du Fu
(54 poem)
712 - 770
Du Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. Along with Li Bai (Li Bo), he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like the whole country, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.
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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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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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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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Oscar Wilde
(110 poem)
1854-1900
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, the son of an eye-surgeon and a literary hostess and writer (known under the pseudonym "Speranza"). After studying at Trinity College, Dublin, Wilde went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he achieved a double first and won the Newdigate prize for a poem Ravenna.
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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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Allen Ginsberg
(48 poem)
3 June 1926 – 5 April 1997
Irwin Allen Ginsber was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem "Howl", in which he celebrated his fellow "angel-headed hipsters" and harshly denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.
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Dorothy Parker
(193 poem)
22 August 1893 - 7 June 1967
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles.
From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table.
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Charles Dickens
(10 poem)
7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and characters.
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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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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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Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born March 24, 1919) is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over one million copies.
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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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Sayeed Abubakar
(284 poem)
21 September 1972
Born on September 21,1972 in Jashore, Bangladesh, Sayeed Abubakar is a major Bengali poet, essayist and translator. He is famous for his two epics '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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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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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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Mark Twain
(9 poem)
November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
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Rupert Brooke
(118 poem)
1887-1915
A man of great physical beauty by reputation, Rupert Brooke was born in Rugby, Warwickshire where he attended the local school. He then gained entry into King's College, Cambridge (1905-11) where he became a Fellow in 1912. He travelled extensively and wrote many travel letters for the 'Westminster Gazette', London (1912-13).
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Jayanta Mahapatra
(39 poem)
22 October 1928 -
Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the best known Indian English poets. Perhaps any discussion on Indian English Poetry is incomplete without reference to his poetical works. Physicist, bilingual poet and essayist, Jayanta Mahapatra holds the distinction of being the first Indian English poet to have received the Sahitya Akademi Award (1981) for Relationship.
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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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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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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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John Masefield
(45 poem)
1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967. He is remembered as the author of the classic children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and poems, including "The Everlasting Mercy" and "Sea-Fever".
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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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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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Kalidasa
(21 poem)
4th Century - 5th Century
Kalidasa (Devanāgarī: कालिदास "servant of Kali") was a renowned Classical Sanskrit writer, widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. His floruit cannot be dated with precision, but most likely falls within 4th Century AD.
His plays and poetry are primarily based on Hindu Puranas and philosophy.
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Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(564 poem)
5 November 1850 - 30 October 1919
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion. Her most enduring work was " Solitude", which contains the lines: "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone". Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.
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Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske, was a United States writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor (1881). Her novel Ramona dramatized the federal government's mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California and attracted considerable attention to her cause,although its popularity was based on its romantic and picturesque qualities rather than its political content. It was estimated to have been reprinted 300 times, and contributed to the growth of tourism in Southern California.
The novel was adapted repeatedly for movies: in 1910 it was produced as a silent film Ramona, directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Mary Pickford. Other versions were made in 1928 and 1936.
Early Years
She was born Helen Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske and Deborah Waterman Vinal. She had two brothers, both of whom died after birth, and a sister Anne. Her father was a minister, author, and professor of Latin, Greek, and philosophy at Amherst College.
Her mother died in 1844 when Helen was fourteen, and her father three years later. Her father provided for her education and arranged for an aunt to care for her. Fiske attended Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school run by Reverend J.S.C. Abbott in New York City. She was a classmate of the poet
The novel was adapted repeatedly for movies: in 1910 it was produced as a silent film Ramona, directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Mary Pickford. Other versions were made in 1928 and 1936.
Early Years
She was born Helen Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske and Deborah Waterman Vinal. She had two brothers, both of whom died after birth, and a sister Anne. Her father was a minister, author, and professor of Latin, Greek, and philosophy at Amherst College.
Her mother died in 1844 when Helen was fourteen, and her father three years later. Her father provided for her education and arranged for an aunt to care for her. Fiske attended Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school run by Reverend J.S.C. Abbott in New York City. She was a classmate of the poet
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12/13/2023 1:46:29 AM # 1.0.0.1119
