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9 July 2009
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Listen to Poets
Achebe   Achebe, Chinua: b1930
Chinua Achebe is probably black Africa's most widely read novelist. His first work, Things Fall Apart, has been translated into 40 languages and is...
 
Angelou   Angelou, Maya: b1928
"I love to write because...it offers me the enigma of my life." Maya Angelou's prose depicts her personal history, her pride as a black woman and...
 
Auden   Auden, W(ystan) H(ugh): 1907 - 1973
One of the most influential poets of the 20th century, Auden's life and work reflect a progression, from the politically committed poems of his...
 
Betjeman   Betjeman, John: 1906 - 1984
Poet Laureate in 1972 John Betjeman's popular verse celebrated architecture, but concentrated mainly on middle-class social life in the metropolitan...
 
Cummings   Cummings, E(dward) E(stlin): 1894 - 1962
A widely popular poet, Cummings used eccentric typography and phrasing in his work "to develop new means of ...
 
Day-Lewis   Day-Lewis, Cecil: 1904 - 1972
Leading poet and crime writer of the 30s and 40s, Cecil Day-Lewis's work includes The Magnetic Mountain, An Overture to Death and Collected ...
 
Heaney   Heaney, Seamus: b1939
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, Seamus Heaney has been described as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats". He is probably...
 
Lee   Lee, Laurie: 1914 - 1997
Best known for the first volume of his memoir of a Cotswold country, Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee also wrote poetry...
 
Motion   Motion, Andrew: b1952
Poet Laureate since 1999, Andrew Motion has also written biographies of Phillip Larkin, Keats and the Lamberts which earned him the Somerset Maugham...
 
Murray   Murray, Les: b1938
Les Murray ususally writes his poems from the perspective of white, rural, workingclass Australians. He is noted for capturing the psychic and rural...
 
Nash   Nash, Ogden: 1902 - 1971
A master of light verse, the impact of Nash's poems lies in the rhymes, bizarrely tangential or disconcertingly exact, they are always satisfyingly...
 
Ondaatje   Ondaatje, Michael: b1943
Known for his skill in combining the real and the imaginary, the surreal and the factual, Michael Ondaatje co-won the Booker Prize for The English...
 
Pound   Pound, Ezra: 1885 - 1972
A crucially important figure in the development of 20th-century poetry and criticism, Ezra Pound is also famous for his fascist inclinations leading...
 
Sassoon   Sassoon, Siegfried: 1886 - 1967
Nicknamed "Mad Jack" for his reckless courage during World War I, Siegfried Sassoon became opposed to the war and started writing antiwar poetry in...
 
Seth   Seth, Vikram: b1952
Author of the epic best-selling novel of postcolonial India, A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth was also acclaimed for the virtuoso novel in verse, The...
 
Smith   Smith, Stevie: 1902 - 1971
Described as one of the most original poetic voices to emerge from the thirties, Stevie Smith's eccentric, mischievous, often disturbing poems...
 
Thomas   Thomas, Dylan: 1914 - 1953
A poet of mesmerising power and author of the radio play, Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas is known as much for his self-destructive lifestyle as for...
 
Walcott   Walcott, Derek: b1930
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, Derek Walcott applies an inventive use of language in his plays and poems about the West Indian...
 
Yeats   Yeats, William Butler: 1865 - 1939
One of the greatest poets of the 20th century, Yeats turned to pagan Ireland for his inspiration. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for...
 
de la Mare   de la Mare, Walter: 1873 - 1956
A poetic master of the macabre, Walter de la Mare published his first collection of poems in 1902 under a ...
 
 

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