Festus Claudius McKay (1889-1948), better known as Claude McKay, was a Jamaican-American writer and an important poet in the Harlem Renaissance which also included Langston Hughes. McKay was an atheist (‘a pagan’, as he himself puts it), but one who could enjoy the scent of the Easter lily though he […]
Tag: Poems
The Worst Poem Ever Published: Theo Marzials’ ‘A Tragedy’
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle pays tribute to a truly remarkable bad Victorian poet William McGonagall. Julia A. Moore. Alfred Austin. Bad poetry has its own canon, a sort of dark reflection or negative of the other, more salubrious canon comprising Shakespeare, T. S. […]
The Poems that the Great and Good Turn to
In this special guest post, Auriol Bishop explores the role of poetry in times of turbulence and trouble What is it about poetry when it feels as though the world is falling apart? Pithy, expressive, capturing in a soundbite all you want to say and mean; and in far better […]
Four Short Poems by Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell (1879-1944) was an Irish poet who wrote in both English and Gaelic (publishing his latter work under the name Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil or Seosamh MacCathmhaoil). Like pioneering modernist poet T. E. Hulme, who was four years younger than him, Campbell wrote a small number of short poems in free verse and utilising […]
The Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Who is being described? Born in the 1840s, he died young, and his poetry was only published after his death. When it appeared – in the early twentieth century – it was thanks to Robert Bridges, who became UK Poet Laureate in 1913. This […]