Modern

John Betjeman, son of Ernest Edward Betjemann (a furniture manufacturer) and Mabel Bessie Dawson, was born at Parliament Hill Mansions, north London. John adopted his style of spelling the family name around the age of twenty-one (the name can be traced back to Dutch or German origin). After attending Byron House Montessori School, where he was briefly taught by T. S.

Mina Gertrude Lowy was born on 27 December 1882 in Hampstead, London to Sigmund Felix Lowy, a tailor, and Julia Bryan. Loy was educated at home before attending a progressive school in London.

Florence Margaret (Stevie) Smith was born on 20 September 1902 at 34 Delapole Avenue, Hull, Yorkshire. She was the daughter of Ethel Rahel and Charles Ward Smith. Her father left home for the merchant navy when his shipping business collapsed in 1906, leaving young Smith, her elder sister and mother to live off the inheritance provided by her maternal grandfather.

• David, and Other Poems. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1942. Governor General's Award.
• Now is Time. Toronto: Ryerson, 1945. Governor General's Award
• The Strait of Anian: Selected Poems. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1948.
• Trial of a city and other verse. Toronto: Ryerson, 1952.

Rosemarie Rowley was born in Dublin in 1942. After a spell working in the Agricultural Institute in Dublin, which she left for ecological reasons, she went to England to work for the BBC and as a schoolteacher in Birmingham. She attended Trinity College, Dublin, for her first degree in English, Irish, and Philosophy, graduating with a Distinction in English in the late 'sixties.

Derek Walcott's works are in copyright. Permission to reproduce them must be obtained from his publishers.

For a brief biography of the poet, see the Nobel Foundation Web site.

The works of Dylan Thomas are in copyright and may only be published with permission of his publisher.

For a biography, see the Dylan Thomas Home Page, owned by the City and County of Swansea and managed by the Dylan Thomas Centre; and

All works by W. B. Yeats, although briefly out of copyright in the 1990s, re-entered copyright since then and can only be published by permission of the publishers or the poet's estate.

For a brief biography of the poet, see the Nobel Foundation Web site and

Born and educated in Toronto, Raymond Souster is that city's most loved poet and servant to poetry. He worked at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce from 1939 to his retirement in 1985, a career interrupted only from 1941 to 1945, when he served as ground crew in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets