Category Great Poets

Who was Rudyard Kipling?

Rudyard Kipling was part of every child’s growing up years in India. His mastery over storytelling and crafting poetry was such that he became a hit with both children and adults. Read up on the author whose birth anniversary was recently celebrated.

Remember the legend of Mowgli? The long-haired orphan boy raised in the wild by the animals? As Mowgli adventured in the woods and learned the ways of the wild, a part of us was also travelling with him, joining in his escapades. That was the magic wielded by Rudyard Kipling which made him one of the most loved children’s writers. Needless to say, “The Jungle Book” (1894) was synonymous with one’s childhood.

Kipling was part of every child’s growing up years India. His mastery over in storytelling and crafting poetry was such that he became a hit with both children and adults. Children grew up listening to stories he wrote, whilst adults knew his poems by heart.

Early years                          

Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling was an artist. His mother was Alice Macdonald. His parents belonged to Anglo-Indian society. Kipling was relocated to England when he was small, a journey that made his childhood traumatic. He was sent to a foster home in England. He even wrote about this traumatic period in the semi-autobiographical short story titled “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (1888).

Kipling was educated in England at the United Services College, a boarding school in Westward Ho, North Devon, England. He then returned to India when he was 17 to pursue a career in journalism which he started off as the assistant editor of the Civil and Military Gazette at Lahore. Meanwhile, “Departmental Ditties” (1886), a verse collection, marked the start of his literary career. He also published stories based on British lives in India. Thus was born “Plain Tales from the Hills” (1888). It was the first collection of short stories by Kipling. In 1888, he joined another publication Allahabad Pioneer.

His body of work spanned different genres, and styles, be it poetry, short-story or novel. His early volumes of short stories were set in India. He appealed to the masses and was a celebrated writer during his time. One of his poems that is often revered by both adults and children is “If” which is considered a classic. The poem is believed to have been inspired by Leander Starr Jameson, a British colonial politician. Kipling is also noted for his stories and poems about British soldiers in India.

Although Kipling published several short-story collections and poetry collections, his most famous novels were published in the 1890s and later. In 1892, Kipling married Caroline Balestier after which he moved to Vermont. It was while in America that he published the much-acclaimed “The Jungle Book” (1894). His novel “Kim” (1901) which is themed around an Irish orphan in India, is one of his most famous works. The sequel to ‘The Jungle Book”, “Second Jungle Book” (1895) is another celebrated work of his. Other noted works include “Captain Courageous” and “The Light that Failed”.

Some of his famous poems are “The Ballad of East and West,” “Danny Deever,””Tommy,” and “The Road to Mandalay”. “Just So Stories” is yet another well-loved series by Kipling. These stories were in fact written for his own children. The stories are meant to be read out aloud and were noted for their intriguing, playful language that would appeal to the children. His last work for children was “Puck of Pook’s Hill” and its sequel, “Rewards and Fairies”.

Did you know that Kipling also got a Nobel prize in literature in 1907? He was the first Englishman to receive it! In 1902, Kipling moved to Sussex and lived there until his death.He passed away in 1936 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Who was the J.R.R. Tolkien?

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, WWI veteran (a First Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, British Army), philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the high fantasy classic works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings .

Early career

The English writer, artist, poet, and academic was born in 1892 in South Africa. His family moved to England later. Tolkien taught English language and literature during most of his adult life. He was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford. For some time, he was also a staff of The Oxford English Dictionary, which was then called The New English Dictionary. Even as he pursued a highly academic career, in his private life, Tolkien would immerse himself in myths and legends, weaving many tales of fantasy.

Tolkien’s fantasy world

Tolkien weaved many fantastical worlds, often also creating his own language for these worlds. The posthumously published “The Silmarillion Tales” is one of his earlier works. It is said that Tolkien wrote also to entertain his children. One such writing later became “The Hobbit”. When “The Hobbit” was published in 1837 with illustrations by the author, it became a huge success. It was celebrated so widely that the publisher asked for its sequel. And there came Tolkien’s masterpiece- “The Lord of the Rings”.

The Lord of the Rings

The epic fantasy was published in three parts viz. “The Fellowship of the Ring”, “The Two Towers”, and “The Return of the King”. With wizards, elves, dark lords, trolls, dwarves, orcs, and so on. Tolkien created a magical world in “The Lord of the Rings”. The book was celebrated and achieved cult status. By the turn of the 21st Century, the book sold more than 50 million copies in over 30 languages.

To date, its influences can be felt in the fantasy fiction that succeeded “The Lord of the Rings”, like an aftertaste that lingers on. It can even be seen in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Tolkien also published many shorter works, and a few of his books were also published posthumously.

Tolkien the artist

Tolkien’s prose and craft have captivated generations of children. But equally compelling was his visual art. He created a range of artworks. He not only came up with art for his book covers, but also brought life to the mythical world he created through his art. So we get to see how Middle Earth and its inhabitants looked through his eyes.

Did you know?

Remember Luthien Tinuviel of “The Lord of the Rings”? It was Tolkien’s wife Edith Bratt who was the muse for this character. At a young age, Tolkien fell in love with Edith, who was an orphan. When he turned 21, Tolkien asked Edith to marry him.

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WHAT IS FOUND POETRY?

Found poems are simply the literary equivalent of a collage. Created by assembling borrowed text from published newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, letters, speeches, poems, and sometimes even documents like tax forms or medical reports, this poetry recycles words by giving them a new meaning and context.

This mode of writing not only makes poetry accessible but also gives a fresh insight into evocative writing.

The origin story

According to the former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, the cento (Latin for patchwork) which belongs to the third Century, may have been the original found poem.

A cento-poet often refashioned lines from the works of various revered writers like Homer and Virgil to create a unique verse. The Greeks and Roman assembled centos to pay homage to the literary idols of the past.

Types of Found Poetry

Found poetry can be further classified into blackout poetry, erasure poetry, and cut-up poetry.

Blackout poetry is created by blacking out or blotting certain lines and phrases of an existing article, short story or poem using a pen or a black marker to reinterpret the original work. Contrary to this, erasure poems are created by erasing, clipping out. or obscuring certain lines or words of a printed text using a light coat of white paint.

Cut-up or Remix poetry is curated by literally cutting out words from source materials and rearranging them to create a unique meaning.

A strong proponent of the cut-up approach, American writer William S. Burroughs once said “All writing is in fact, cut-ups. A collage of words read, heard and overheard. What else?”

Found poetry rose to prominence in the 20th century due to its shared similarities with the pop art of artists like Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. It combined literature and visual art to represent the plurality of language.

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WHO WAS THE FIRST KNOWN POET IN THE WORLD?

Enheduanna, a princess and priestess, who lived in the 23rd Century BC, is considered to be the world’s first known author. She lived 1,700 hundred years before Sappho, and 1,500 years before Homer. She was born in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of the first cities and cultures. Her father King Sargon the Great, was history’s first empire builder who conquered the separate independent city-states of Mesopotamia under a unified banner.

Royal Duties

Sargon was viewed as a foreign invader by the people of the older Sumerian cities of the south because he spoke Akkadian and belonged to the north. To bridge the gap between the two cultures, the king appointed his only daughter, Enheduanna, as the high priestess.

The women of the royal family were well educated and traditionally served religious roles in the kingdom. They were taught to read and write in both Sumerian and Akkadian and trained to perform mathematical calculations.

Until Enheduanna, writing was only used in record-keeping rather than composing original literary works that could be attributed to an author. Her duties entailed managing the city’s grain storage facilities, overseeing hundreds of temple workers and presiding over monthly sacred rituals.

Her written works aimed at bringing together the older Sumerian cultures and the newer Akkadian civilisation. She accomplished this by composing 42 religious hymns that combined mythologies from both traditions.

Enheduanna’s poetry for Goddess Inanna (goddess of desire and war), is considered to be her most valuable contribution to the literary tradition of the time. Her odes to the deity mark the first time an author used the personal pronoun T. After her demise, she was honoured as a minor deity. Her poetry was widely circulated, studied and performed throughout the empire for over 500 years. Her works went on to inspire and influence the Hebrew Old Testament, the epics of Homer and many Christian hymns. Today, her legacy is preserved in excavated clay tables from that period.

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