Jackie Kay: poetry, identity and the Scottish Makar
The poet and novelist draws on adoption, race and belonging across a body of work that includes The Adoption Papers, Trumpet and Red Dust Road.
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2,879 entries
Craig Raine: seeing the familiar from a distance
The English poet helped pioneer Martian poetry, making everyday objects strange in verse while building a career as a poet, critic, editor and Oxford fellow.
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Andrew Motion: Poetry beyond the laureateship
The poet’s decade as Poet Laureate brought commissions on public life; his work as a biographer, teacher and founder of the Poetry Archive extended his reach.
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Tony Harrison: poetry, class and the force of the spoken word
From Beeston and Leeds to the National Theatre, Harrison brought working-class voices into contact with classical verse and public debate.
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Kathleen Raine: poet, scholar and founder of Temenos
From a Northumberland childhood to influential studies of Blake, Raine brought poetry, nature and spiritual thought into sustained conversation.
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Alice Oswald: Poetry shaped by rivers, gardens and myth
From Dart to Memorial, the poet brings close attention to place and individual lives into dialogue with literary tradition.
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Douglas Dunn: Poetry, place and the work of elegy
The Scottish poet’s writing moves from working-class life in Hull to the intimate grief of Elegies, alongside a long career in literary and academic life.
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Wendy Cope: wit, form and the poetry of everyday life
From a debut collection that made comic verse her calling card to a major archive at the British Library, Cope has joined lightness of touch to serious literary craft.
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Carol Ann Duffy: poetry for public life
From dramatic monologues to a decade as Poet Laureate, Duffy brought poetry into conversation with everyday experience and national occasions.
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Simon Armitage: poetry rooted in Yorkshire and open to the world
From Marsden and the Pennine Way to the Poet Laureate’s library tours, Simon Armitage has taken poetry into public places and everyday life.
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Michael Longley: poetry, place and the work of peace
The Belfast poet drew on classical literature, Northern Ireland and the natural world, creating work recognised with major literary awards and honours.
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Thomas Chatterton: the poet who invented Thomas Rowley
A Bristol boy’s medieval literary inventions and political writing outlasted a life cut short at seventeen.
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John Dryden: the poet who defined Restoration England
Poet, playwright, critic and translator, Dryden shaped English verse and the literary life of the Restoration.
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William Cowper: poet of the English countryside and the inner life
From The Task and the Olney Hymns to anti-slavery verse, Cowper made ordinary scenes and private struggle part of a lasting English poetic tradition.
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Robert Herrick: the poet of passing time and English country life
From “Gather ye rosebuds” to the village seasons of Hesperides, Herrick made the fleeting pleasures of life the subject of enduring lyric poetry.
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John Betjeman: poet, broadcaster and defender of old buildings
From comic verse and television journeys through England to campaigns for threatened churches and railway stations, Betjeman made poetry and architectural conservation part of public life.
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R. S. Thomas: the poet of a searching Welsh faith
The Welsh poet and priest brought the hardships of rural life, the pressures on Welsh identity and the uncertainties of belief into a distinctive body of work.
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A. E. Housman: poet and classical scholar
From the enduring poems of A Shropshire Lad to exacting editions of Latin texts, Housman built a double legacy in literature and scholarship.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Victorian poet who joined intimate verse to arguments about labour, slavery and women’s lives
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Wilfred Owen: the poet who gave war its human cost
From Shropshire and the Western Front to poems published after his death, Owen made the suffering of soldiers impossible to overlook.
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Walter de la Mare: poems of mystery, childhood and imagination
The English poet behind “The Listeners” and “Silver” also wrote children’s books, novels and unsettling supernatural fiction.
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Wilfred Owen: the poet who gave war its pity
From Shropshire and the classrooms of Reading to the Western Front, Wilfred Owen shaped a lasting poetic witness to the suffering of the First World War.
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John Clare
Romantic poet known for his depictions of rural life and nature, including "The Shepherd's Calendar."
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Edmund Spenser: poetry, power and The Faerie Queene
The Elizabethan poet’s epic celebrated the Tudor monarchy while exploring virtue, politics and the ambitions of English rule in Ireland.
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Sir Philip Sidney: poet, courtier and soldier
Sidney’s sonnets, pastoral romance and defence of poetry helped shape English writing in the Elizabethan age.
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Ben Jonson: the dramatist who made satire his craft
From London comedies and court masques to enduring lyrics, Jonson shaped the language and practice of English Renaissance literature.
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Sir Walter Raleigh: poet, courtier and explorer
Raleigh’s poetry, service at Elizabeth I’s court and ventures in the Americas made him a notable figure of the English Renaissance.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins: the poet who remade English rhythm
Jesuit priest and poet, Hopkins forged a restless new verse from the sounds of speech, close attention to nature and an intense religious imagination.
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Walter Scott: the novelist who made history feel alive
From Border ballads to the Waverley novels, Sir Walter Scott brought Scotland’s past to readers across Britain and Europe.
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Victorian Poet Laureate made private grief, public events and enduring questions of faith and change part of English poetry.
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Robert Burns: the poet who gave Scotland a lasting songbook
From the Kilmarnock volume to the songs still heard at Hogmanay, Burns made Scots language and Scottish music part of a literary legacy recognised far beyond his homeland.
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William Blake: poet, printmaker and visionary artist
From illuminated books made by hand to the lasting force of his poetry, Blake joined words and images in a singular body of work shaped by London and the Romantic age.
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George Herbert: the poet who made form serve faith
From Cambridge orator to parish priest, George Herbert shaped English devotional poetry through intimate argument, inventive forms and a lasting musical afterlife.
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Andrew Marvell: poet, satirist and parliamentarian
From the carpe diem wit of “To His Coy Mistress” to political satire, Marvell joined intricate poetry to the arguments and upheavals of seventeenth-century England.
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John Donne: wit, faith and the metaphysical poem
John Donne brought argument, striking imagery and intellectual play to poems about love, mortality and religion. His career moved from courtier and Member of Parliament to priest and preacher.
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Christina Rossetti: a poet of faith, desire and independence
From “Goblin Market” to two much-loved carols, Christina Rossetti made Victorian poetry a place for spiritual questioning and complex accounts of women’s experience.
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Thomas Hardy: Wessex, rural life and the force of fate
Novelist, poet and architect, Hardy transformed the landscapes and social pressures of south-west England into fiction and verse that continue to shape English literature.
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Rupert Brooke: the poet behind “The Soldier”
Rupert Brooke’s idealistic First World War sonnets became symbols of early wartime patriotism. His brief life also encompassed Cambridge literary circles, service with the Royal Naval Division and a lasting commemorative presence.
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Philip Larkin: the poet and librarian who made the everyday endure
From Coventry to Hull, Larkin built a poetry of exact observation, formal control and unease about time, while his work and reputation continue to provoke debate.
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Ted Hughes: poet of the wild and the mythic
From the Calder Valley to the laureateship, Hughes forged a poetry of animals, landscape and myth, while also writing for children and bringing international poetry into English.
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