Louis MacNeice was born on 12 September 1907 in Belfast, the youngest child of John Frederick MacNeice and Elizabeth Margaret Clesham. His father was a Church of Ireland clergyman who would later become a bishop, and the family moved shortly after Louis's birth to Carrickfergus, on the northern shore of Belfast Lough, where the boy grew up in the rectory beneath the squat Norman keep of the castle. It was an apparent…
“This book is a plea for impure poetry, that is, for poetry conditioned by the poet's life and the world around him.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Irish Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Longing, Despair
On May 30, 1903, a child was born who would become one of the most celebrated voices of the Harlem Renaissance, yet whose origins remain shrouded in the kind of mystery that seems almost poetic in retrospect. Countee Cullen's exact birthplace has been disputed—some records suggest New York City, others Louisville, Kentucky, and still others Baltimore, Maryland. This uncertainty about his origins would prove oddly fit…
“Negro poetry, it seems to me, in the sense that we speak of Russian, French, or Chinese poetry, must emanate from some country other than this in some language other than our own.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
