Previously, I selected some of my favourite poems about classical mythology. But I also believe that, as a researcher and teacher of English literature, I should try my hand at writing about it, too, if only so I might better understand what goes into the creative process. The following poem, […]
It’s a common trope that poets often die young, although for every poet who didn’t live to see their thirtieth year, we could name many more who lived to a ripe old age: William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Frost. Nevertheless, the idea of the poet is frequently bound up in […]
The best epitaphs of famous writers Writers love to have the final word, and many great poets have composed their final lines, the lines that will crown their lifetime’s achievement and adorn the stones marking their final resting place. Some of the most memorable literary epitaphs are also the briefest, […]
Facts about the life of Elizabethan poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney 1. Philip Sidney invented the name Pamela. Sidney (1554-1586) was a true ‘Renaissance man’: soldier, statesman, poet, diplomat, and – it would appear – coiner of popular girls’ names. Or at least this one name. Pamela appears in Sidney’s […]
Fun facts about the poet John Donne and his colourful life 1. John Donne coined several well-known phrases. Both ‘no man is an island’ and ‘for whom the bell tolls’ (the latter of which Ernest Hemingway used as the title for one of his novels) originate in one of John […]