Poet | featured news

The Irish Labour party's Michael D Higgins has been confirmed as the ninth president of the republic after winning a landslide victory in the most fractious campaign in the country's history. The poet and campaigner gained a 56.8% share of the vote, putting him comfortably ahead of his rivals – Dragons' Den star Seán Gallagher, who came second, and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who ended in third place.

Poet, writer, civil rights activist, professor, filmmaker, dramatist, singer, Grammy Award winner: Maya Angelou, 83, has also been called the nation’s premier memoirist. She was in Washington last week speaking about her long, rich life.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II.

Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine, known for his detailed and personal verse about the working class, has been appointed the country's new poet laureate.

Gil Scott-Heron, a poet and musician best known for the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," died Friday, his publicist at XL Recordings said.

Mr. Price, the novelist, poet and memoirist, found all the material he needed in the North Carolina he knew so well.

Ms. Digges was a renowned poet and memoirist whose work often sprang from private adversity.