Poets - 10 Different Ones - The Second Quiz

Answer: Warning

Jenny Joseph, who was born in 1932, is one of the most popular living poets in the UK. She has written several collections of poetry including: 'Rose in the Afternoon' from which the poem 'Warning' comes, 'Extreme of Things' and 'Ghosts and Other Company'

Answer: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953) was one of the greatest Welsh poets and deserves to be ranked among the best poets of all time. Apart from several collections of wonderful poetry including '18 Poems' (1934), 'The Map of Love' (1939) and 'In Country Sleep' (1952), he also wrote an excellent 'play for voices', 'Under Milkwood'.

Answer: Cities

Hilda Doolittle (HD) was an American poet born in Pennsylvania in 1886. She moved to London in 1911 where she worked as an editor on 'The Egoist'. She had shown some of her poetry to Ezra Pound to whom she had been engaged; he admired it as did DH Lawrence.

She had her first collection of poetry, 'The Sea Garder', published in 1916. Other collections include 'Red Roses for Bronze' (1932) and 'The Walls Do not Fall' (1944). She died following a stroke in 1961.

Answer: Charles Augustus Fortescue

He was born in France in 1870 but moved to England in 1872 and became a British citizen in 1902. Apart from a brief time as Liberal M.P. for Salford (1906-1910) and editing 'Land and Water', a journal of the First World War (1914-1920), he lived on his income from writing, often short of money.

He is considered one of the 'Big Four' of Edwardian writing - the other three being G.B. Shaw, G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells. Belloc formed a literary association with with Chesterton. Belloc was first published in 1896, when 'Verses and Sonnets' appeared, shortly after he had graduated from Balliol College, Oxford in history. Among his most acclaimed works are 'The Bad Child's Book of Beasts'(1896), 'Cautionary Tales for Children'(1907), British Battles (six books published 1911 to 1913) and 'The Servile State' (1912). Hillaire died in 1953.

Answer: Comment

Dorothy Parker (1893 to 1967) was born Dorothy Rothschild in New Jersey but grew up in New York. In 1913 she got her first job - playing piano at a dancing school. She sold her first poem to 'Vanity Fair' in 1914 and shortly afterwards became an editor's assistant at its sister publication 'Vogue'.

After two years at 'Vogue' she moved to 'Vanity Fair' as a staff writer; shortly afterwards she met and married Edwin Parker II. She remained married to him until 1928 when they divorced. She first married Alan Campbell, a marriage which lasted from 1934 to 1947, then remarried him in 1950; this one lasted until his suicide in 1963. Perhaps her most famous and productive years were as a 'member' of the Algonquin Round Table lasting from approximately 1919 to 1929. During this period Harold Ross founded 'The New Yorker'(1925), she published her first volume of poetry 'Enough Rope'(1926) and was awarded the O.

Henry prize for her short story 'Big Blonde' in 1929. She was nominated for an Academy Award in 1937 (along with her husband Alan Campbell and Robert Carson) for a 'Star is Born'(1937); she received another nomination in 1947 for 'Smash-Up : The Story of a Woman'(1947). Among the best books about her are: 'The Portable Dorothy Parker' by Brendan Gill (several editions) and 'You Might As Well Live' by John Keats (several editions); there are also numerous collections of her poetry and her stories, most recently 'Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker' (1995).

In her will she left her estate to the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Foundation; this was later passed on to the N.A.A.C.P. which led them to design a memorial garden dedicated to her outside their headquarters in Baltimore.

Answer: Myfanwy

John Betjeman (1906 - 1984) was British Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death, and is considered one of England's greatest poets. He was born into a long line of cabinet makers. His childhood was spent, unhappily, in boarding schools, his only comfort his teddy bear Archibald - a story told in 'Archie and the Strict Baptists' (1977).

He attended Magdalen College, Oxford in 1925 but failed to get a degree. He initially became a teacher at Thorpe House School in Gerrard's Cross, but after a short while left to become a private secretary, briefly returning to teaching before becoming assistant editor of 'The Architectural Review' in 1930.

His first poetry collection, 'Mount Zion', was published in 1931. He also published prose, children's stories, guides, etc. beginning in 1934 with 'Ghastly Good Taste', a commentary on architecture.

His poetry collections include 'Continual Dew' (1937), 'New Bats in Old Belfries' (1945), 'A Few Late Chrysanthemums' (1954), 'Summoned by Bells' (1960), 'High and Low' (1966) and 'A Nip in the Air' (1974). Perhaps JB's most famous poem is 'Slough', written in 1937, although he later regretted writing the poem which begins "Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough, It is not fit for humans now".

The poem was written as a protest against the large number of factories being built in and around Slough at the time. On the centenary of his birth in 2006 his daughter Candida Lycett-Green presented the mayor of Slough David MacIssac with a book of her father's poetry in which was written We Love Slough.

Answer: The Swineherd

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin an award-winning Irish poet born in Cork in 1942. Her first collection, 'Acts and Monuments' (1972), has been followed by 'The Rose Geranium' (1981), 'The Girl Who Married the Reindeer' (2001), and, most recently, 'The Sun Fish' (2009).

Answer: Common Cold

Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971) was an American poet, lyricist and editor who started his working life as an advertising copywriter. His many collections of poetry include 'I'm a Stranger Here Myself'(1938), 'You Can't Get There From Here' (1952) and 'The Old Dog Barks Backward'(1972).

The first two collections were the first collections by an American poet that I bought myself (in a secondhand bookshop in 1974 when I was 12).

Answer: Strugnell's Haiku

Wendy Cope was born in 1945, and writes humorous poetry that compares favourably with the best works of Betjeman, Larkin and Nash (that well-known firm of solicitors). Her first collection, 'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis' (1986), was followed by collections like 'Twiddling My Thumbs' (1988) and 'If I Don't Know' (2001).

She has remained in fine form with her most recent collection, 'Family Values' (2011).

Answer: Violette Szabo GC

Violette Szabo (1921 - 1945) was a member of the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.). She was captured on her second mission, after putting up a resistance to allow others to escape, tortured by the Gestapo and eventually murdered by the Germans at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Odette Sansom Hallowes (1912 - 1995) was also a member of the S.O.E. and the first member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (F.A.N.Y.) to be awarded the George Cross (the others during World War 2 were Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan). Noor Inayat Khan (1914 - 1944) was a composer and writer before she joined the S.O.E.

She was a brave and successful wireless operator in France until betrayed by a French agent, captured, tortured and murdered by the Germans in Dachau Concentration Camp. Nancy Wake (1912 - 2011) was also a member of the S.O.E. who had been a courier and member of the French resistance before joining the S.O.E. By 1943 she was the Gestapo's most wanted person, with a 5 million franc reward on her head.

She was known as The White Mouse, which she used as the title of her autobiography. Leo Marks (1920 - 2001) was a cryptographer, screenwriter and playwright who also worked for the S.O.E. as a planner and cryptographer, and is credited with the invention of the one-time pad. He wrote plays such as 'Cloudburst' and films such as 'Twisted Nerve (1968)', but was only moderately successful. He wrote his autobiography 'Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's Story 1941 - 1945', which was published in 1998.