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…
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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…
My least favourite subject at school was maths. In a way I was lucky; I never had to ask, ‘what is the point of this? Why do I have to…
What is the point of poetry? Why is it so hard to understand? Why do we have to study it? Can it be made any easier? If you – or…
Did you have to read aloud in English class? I did. One day when I was 11 and attending a convent in England, we had to take turns standing at…
Just over a week ago, I visited Newnham College, Cambridge, where I studied as an undergraduate. I was attending a celebration of the life of Valerie Eliot, widow of the…