Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi, born on 1 December 1875 and died on 29 July 1945, occupies a foundational place in isiXhosa literature and in the intellectual history of South Africa. Poet, novelist, journalist, teacher, editor, translator, cultural historian, and public orator, he was much more than a writer in the narrow modern sense. He belonged to the lineage of the imbongi, the Xhosa praise poet whose task was to re…
“In those six years I learned much respecting Xhosa life, including the refinements of Xhosa language. If I had not been at Kentani for those six years, it seems to me as if I would not have been any help to my nation.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
In the golden age of American newspaper poetry, when verses appeared on editorial pages alongside the day's news and readers clipped favorite stanzas to paste in scrapbooks, few voices resonated more warmly with the reading public than that of Nixon Waterman. Born on November 12, 1859, in the small prairie town of Newark, Illinois, Waterman would rise from humble agricultural beginnings to become one of the most wide…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair