By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Ode to My Socks’ is a 1956 poem by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-73). Neruda, who was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalà Reyes Basoalto (Pablo Neruda was his pen name, though he later changed it officially), won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and is widely regarded as one of the major poets of South America, and, in some circles, as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, with his love poems receiving much admiration.