A Muslim protester shouts at security personnel on the streets of Shaheen Bagh, a neighborhood in Delhi, in 2020.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images
Thanks to a strong oral Urdu literary tradition in South Asia, poems from the past linger in the popular imagination.
Byron and one of his moving letters to Edleston.
Letter courtesy of Newstead Abbey. Image made with Canva.
Letters from Byron to his best friend Elizabeth reveal the intense emotions of one of his first queer relationships.
Ellis Humphrey Evans, known by his bardic name Hedd Wyn, was killed on the first day of the battle of Passchendaele.
Chronicle/Alamy
Bard Hedd Wyn was killed in action in France in 1917.
Louise Glück was photographed outside her home in Cambridge, Mass., after being named the 2020 Nobel laureate in literature.
Daniel Ebersole/Nobel Prize Outreach
A celebrated poet and Nobel laureate, Louise Glück wrote about mortality, broken families and human frailty with devastating wryness and quiet beauty.
Sarah Jane Rees was also known as Cranogwen.
National Library of Wales
Cranogwen was a trailblazer who challenged expectations of women during the Victorian era.
Research has shown that the UK read more during the pandemic.
Ajdin Kamber/Shutterstock
Many established poets published lockdown poems offering their perspective on the power of poetry to make sense of the pandemic.
Sylvia Plath photographed a month before her death.
Penrodas Collection / Alamy Stock Photo
Sylvia Plath left behind a complicated legacy. Contemporary writers influenced by her work must juggle inspiration with some problematic imagery – as a poetry expert explains.
Could the pugnacious writer ever have imagined that he would one day become a cult hero?
Nick Lehr/The Conversation via DALL-E 2
Is the writer’s appeal less about the power and complexity of his prose, and more about the view of him as a perennial underdog?
Ada Limón is the 24th U.S. poet laureate.
Shawn Miller/Library of Congress
Ada Limón is the first woman of Mexican ancestry to be named U.S. poet laureate. Through her understanding of social media and the power of connection, she strives to make poetry accessible to everyone.
Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame Said, known as Hadraawi, in 2013.
Screengrab/YouTube
Poet, soldier and critic of postcolonial elites, Hadraawi was the greatest poet of his generation.