I often speak to parents* who are concerned that their children don’t read, or don’t read enough. They ask me, ‘Can you persuade him/her to read?’ I do try to…
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Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a politician, satirist and poet who was friends with John Milton. He is described as a metaphysical poet. This is a term given to a number…
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is now one of America’s most read poets, but during her lifetime she was largely unknown and only a handful of her poems were published in newspapers….
William Carlos Williams ( 1883-1963) was an American poet who was also a medical doctor and novelist, playwright and essayist. He was a key figure in Imagism and some of…
Benjamin Zephaniah is a contemporary British writer and dub poet and one of my favourites. He was born and brought up in Birmingham and started creating poems as a child….
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, short story writer and novelist who lived from 1932 to 1963. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and then Newnham College, Cambridge. The…
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St Louis, Missouri. She is described sometimes as a poet, sometimes as a memoirist, but, in fact, her 50+ year career…
John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, writer and civil servant whose epic poem, Paradise Lost, can be counted among the greatest poems in the English language. Milton was a…
If you know any part of one poem in English, it’s quite likely that you know, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud…’ which is the beginning of William Wordsworth‘s…
I didn’t study Simon Armitage at school or university and there’s a really good reason for that. He was born in 1963 and is about eight months younger than I…
Did you know that today, 1st September, is World Letter Writing Day? When was the last time you wrote a letter? I know, I can’t remember, either! The last time…
Are you revising Macbeth for exams? Or would you just like to get to know the play better? One of my favourite suggestions is to listen to (and watch, if…