Poet Rebus and Match Three Trivia Quiz

Answer: Philip

Lark + Kin


Philip Arthur Larkin was born in Warwickshire, England in 1922 and was both a poet and novelist. He was tutored at home until he was eight and then attended public school in Coventry. He began university at Oxford in 1940 and due to poor eyesight which kept him out of the war he was able to complete his education with a first class honours degree in English language and literature.

He spent the next 30 years as a librarian at the University of Hull. He published his first book of poetry "The North Ship" in 1945 but it was his second collection "The Less Deceived" ten years later that meet with critical acclaim.

His accolades included the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, he was named Britain's greatest post war poet by "The Times" in 2008 and was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984.

He died in December 1985 at age 63 from oesophageal cancer.

Answer: Banjo

Pat + Err + Son


Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson was born in New South Wales, Australia in February 1864. Its remoteness meant he was educated by a governess until he was ten and then sent to Sydney Grammar School. He performed well but failed to get a scholarship to university so after leaving school at 16 he became a law clerk and then a solicitor six years later.

It was at this time that he started submitting poetry to "The Bulletin", a national literary journal under the name of his famous horse 'The Banjo'. These poems were published in a book of Australian verse in 1895 and it sold 5000 copies in the first four months.

Banjo is known as a 'bush poet' with long tales of the iconic bushman and the land he lived in seen through a very romantic lens. He portrays these men as heroic underdogs who are tough and independent but succeed in the harsh Australian land. His most famous poems include "The Man from Snowy River", "Clancy of the Overflow" and "Waltzing Matilda".

Apart from his prolific amount of poetry, he also wrote two novels, many short stories and wrote a book based on his time as a war correspondent in the second Boer War. In 2013 'The Australian' published 'The Greatest of All - Our 50 Top Australians' and Banjo was in first place.

He died at age 76 from a heart attack in 1941.

Answer: Abraham

Cow + Lea


Abraham Cowley was born in 1618 in London, England into a wealthy background. His father died when he was five and he began reading at that time. He wrote his first poem, "The Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe", when he was only ten. He was attending school in Westminster by this time and wrote another two epic poems and gained fame by the time he was 15.

He was accepted into Cambridge in 1637 but was unable to finish due to the Civil War - he was a devout Royalist and moved to France with the Queen. He spent 12 years in exile and developed a secret code for the King and Queen so they could secretly communicate through him.

He also continued to write poetry so that when he finally returned to England after the Restoration he had a large number of collections to publish. His poem "The Mistress" was one of the most highly acclaimed at this time.

A year after his return he retired to the country where he lived in solitude. He continued to write poetry until his premature death in 1667 at age 49 following a cold. He is buried in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Answer: Wilfred

Owe + When


Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in Shropshire, England in 1893. He dates his earliest poem to age ten while on holiday in Cheshire. After an uneventful childhood he passed the entrance exams to London University but did not secure a scholarship so was unable to attend. He then worked as an assistant to the Vicar of Reading while attending classes at the local university.

In 1912 he began teaching English and French at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, France. He remained in France until the outbreak of war when he returned to England. He enlisted in October of 1915 and in June of the following year was sent to the trenches in France. In January 1917 he was diagnosed with shellshock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh.

It was here he wrote the majority of his famous poems which led to him being regarded as a leading War Poet. Most of the poems of this era were patriotic works describing the glory of dying for one's country while Owen's describe the horrors of the trenches, the sheer terror of how they lived and the reality of their brutal deaths. Two of his most famous poems are "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth".

Although he could have remained on home duties after this time he returned to active service in July 1918. He was killed in action on the 4th of November 1918 - exactly one week before Armistice Day - and received a posthumous Military Cross.

Five of his minor poems were published in a newspaper during his lifetime but the main volume of his work was published after his death - the first collection in 1920. Owen is one of the 16 Great War Poets commemorated on a stone slate in Westminster Abbey, the inscription being from one of his works: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

Answer: Henry

New + Bolt


Sir Henry John Newbolt was born in Staffordshire, England in 1862. The son of a local vicar he had an uneventful childhood attending the local grammar school and then Oxford where he studied law and then practised until 1899. During his life he was a poet, novelist, historian and government advisor.

His first literary publication was a novel in 1892, followed by a play three years later. His first poetry collection, "Admirals All", was published in 1897 and was received with great critical acclaim. The most famous of these was "Vitaï Lampada" a poem which contrasts the playing of an English gentleman's cricket game with fighting on the battlefield.

During WWI he worked for the War Propaganda Bureau to keep public opinion in favour of the war and to counteract the effects of people such as Owens - he was knighted in 1915 for these services.

While seen by many as the typical Victorian gentleman who stood for traditional values both at home and abroad his personal life was in complete contradiction to this prim exterior. Newbolt was married but his wife was having a lesbian affair with her cousin who then moved into their home where they all lived within a 'ménage à trois'.

Sir Henry died in 1983 at the age of 75.

Answer: Robert

Low + Well


Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was born in 1917 in Massachusetts, USA to a wealthy and influential Boston family. He was educated at expensive prep schools and started his university degree at Harvard but was generally unhappy in his time there so after two years he took some time off from studying. When he returned he moved to Kenyon College in Ohio where he obtained a degree in Classics which he then followed up with a Master's degree in English Literature.

WWII followed soon after and Lowell served time in prison for being a conscientious objector. Post the war he spent years teaching English at various universities and concentrating on his many poems and plays.

He began writing while at Kenyon but his first volume "Land of Unlikeness" wasn't published until 1944. It was his second collection "Lord Weary's Castle" two years later that catapulted him to fame and won him the Pulitzer Prize (he won another in 1974 for "The Dolphin"). He continued to write throughout his life, publishing a volume the year he died.

Lowell was hospitalised many times throughout his life for manic depression and his struggles were often portrayed throughout his works.

In 1947 he became the sixth Poet Laureate and won the 'National Institute of Arts and Letters Award'. He also won the 'National Book Critics Circle Award' in 1977 and served as 'Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets' from 1962 until his death from a heart attack in 1977 at the age of 60.

Answer: Richard

Love + Lace


Richard Lovelace was born in England in 1617, presumably in Kent as the family owned a lot of property in the area. He was privately educated and at age 14 was sworn in as a 'Gentleman Wayter Extraordinary to King Charles I'. This began his life as a staunch supporter of the King and he is known as a Cavalier Poet.

He was educated at Oxford and received his Master of Arts degree when he was only 18. A year later he went up to Cambridge where he met Lord Goring, a well-established Royalist soldier. Two years later he joined Goring's regiment and served as an Ensign then Captain in the two Bishop's Wars. This experience led to the publication of "Sonnet to Goring" in 1939 and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres" the year after.

In 1640 he inherited his father's lands and returned to Kent to live the life of a country gentleman. Although no longer physically fighting he continued to fight the Royalist course through his writings and political activism.

He was imprisoned for these actions in 1641 and it was from this time his most famous poem "To Althea, from Prison" was penned. He served a second sentence in 1648 and by the time he was released a year later the king had been executed and the war was over.

On return home he sold his property and nothing is known of his actions for the following seven years except that he continued to write. After beginning his writing while in Oxford he wrote over 200 poems. He died in London in 1657 at age 39.

Answer: Thomas

Chat + Er + Tonne


Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol in 1752 into a poor household - his father died a few months before his birth and his mother took in sewing and opened a girl's school to earn the family money. As such Chatterton attended a charity school whose only interest was to teach the pupils to read, write and do basic arithmetic.

At age eight Chatterton would read all day and night and started writing articles for a local journal when he was only 11. When he had trouble getting published elsewhere because of his age he created an imaginary 15th century monk 'Thomas Rowley' and convinced historians of his existence. Under this pseudonym he wrote political letters, satires, operas and lyrics in both poetry and prose.

Unable to find a sponsor and receiving only minimal payment for his work he took arsenic and committed suicide in 1770 when he was only 17.

His fame came after his death when his Thomas Rowley pseudonym was discovered and he became a heroic tragic figure. Some of the huge names of the Romantic Era used Chatterton as a muse:-

"Resolution and Independence" - William Wordsworth
"Adonais" - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Monody on the Death of Chatterton" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"To Chatterton" - John Keats
Two plays by Alfred de Vigny "Stello" and "Chatterton"
Henry Wallis oil painting "The Death of Chatterton".

Answer: John

Wheel + Right


John Brooks Wheelwright was born in 1897 in Massachusetts, USA into a prominent and wealthy Puritan Boston family. After his father committed suicide while he was still in prep school he had a religious conversion and became an Anglican.

He attended Harvard and became part of the poetic avant garde movement of the time but was eventually expelled for his truancy. He completed his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became an architect.

Wheelwright became very politically active throughout the 1930s - he joined the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, the Rebel Arts Society and was a founding member of the US Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.

His three poetry collections that were published in his lifetime - "Rock and Shell", 1933, "Mirrors of Venus: A Novel in Sonnets", 1938, and "Political Self-Portrait", 1939 - were written during this period and are renowned for his obvious struggle between his strong political convictions and his early religious beliefs. A posthumous collection in 1972 led to a more widespread appreciation for his work.

Wheelwright was hit and killed by a drunken driver at 43, in 1940.

Answer: Percy

Shell + Lea


Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792 in West Sussex, England into wealthy landed gentry. He was privately tutored in his early years and had a happy childhood until he was 12 when he went to Eton College and was bullied for the next six years. He then attended Oxford but was expelled a year later after writing a pamphlet entitled "The Necessity of Atheism". His first published work, "Zastrozzi", was a Gothic Novel also about atheism.

This would become a recurring theme in his works along with his strong views on politics, rebellion and revolution. Although he wrote a large volume of work, both in poetry and prose, he was rarely published during his lifetime because of these controversial themes. He later gained great acclaim among the Victorian and Pre-Raphaelites poets and is recognised today as a major Romantic poet. His most famous works included "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "When Soft Voices Die", and "The Masque of Anarchy".

While his work did not bring him fame his unconventional personal life certainly did. At 19 he eloped with 16 year old Harriet Wetsbrook, a girl of no social standing, and was disowned by his family. He then became a protégé of William Godwin, an author who shared his worldview, but fell out of his favour when he left his pregnant wife and ran to the Continent with Godwin's 16 year old daughter, Mary.

On return a year later Mary was pregnant and they set up home together in Surrey but the baby was premature and died early - the first of three children who died in infancy. In 1816 his wife committed suicide and Shelley and Mary married three weeks later. They later had one child, Percy Florence Shelley, who survived them both.

Shelley drowned while sailing in Italy in 1822 just before his thirtieth birthday.