The Burning is here.

Caroline Bird (born 1986)

Born in Leeds, Caroline has published six collections of poetry and had several of her plays performed at venues including the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and the Southbank Centre. She has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Award, the Ted Hughes Award and twice for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She has won an Eric Gregory Award (2002) and the Foyle Young Poet of the Year award two years running (1999, 2000). Caroline’s poems have been widely published and broadcast, and she was one of five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. She performs at festivals, leads school workshops and regularly teaches at the Arvon Foundation, as well as being a writer-in-residence for the charity First Story.

Megan Married Herself is here.

Eavan Boland (1944–2020)

Eavan published her first poetry while studying at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently published many collections of poetry and essays, edited several anthologies and won numerous awards and plaudits. Her work has been quoted on notable occasions by former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Barack Obama. Eavan was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016, and in 2018 she was elected to the Royal Irish Academy.

The Pomegranate is here.

Anna Hempstead Branch (1875–1937)

Anna was christened ‘the Browning of American poetry’ by journalist William Thomas Stead and enjoyed great success during her lifetime. She was born in Connecticut into a distinguished family – her father was a lawyer and her mother a children’s author and poet. Her work was strongly influenced by the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite writers, particularly Christina Rossetti. Anna worked with the Christodora House in New York, which supported poverty-stricken and migrant residents. She founded the Poets’ Guild whose members – Sara Teasdale and Robert Frost among them – taught residents. Anna was the Vice President of the National League for Women’s Service during the First World War. Sonnet XXV from Sonnets from a Lock Box is here.

Anne Brontë (1820–1849)

Anne’s novel Agnes Grey was inspired by her time as a governess. Its heroine was a petted and patronized youngest sibling who grew up among rugged hills – so we can draw our own conclusions about Brontë family dynamics from that! She had to leave her post after persuading her employers to hire her feckless brother Branwell, who embarked on an affair with the lady of the house. She and her elder sisters Charlotte and Emily published their poetry under male pseudonyms as Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell. Disappointed by pitiful sales of two copies in a year, they worked intensively on their novels instead, pacing the dining room and critiquing each other’s work. Anne’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – in which a woman flees her cruel, alcoholic husband – was considered shocking but was a huge hit. Anne died from tuberculosis aged only twenty-nine.

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day is here.

Emily Brontë (1818–1848)

Many of Emily’s poems originated in her gothic-flavoured writings about Gondal, an imaginary island realm created with her sister, Anne. Emily’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights was, like much of her poetry, inspired by the wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors where the sisters lived with their father and brother. She died from tuberculosis aged only thirty.