This magnificent volume, first published in 1994 as the Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English, features over 1,700 biographical entries on poets writing in English from 1910 to the present day, spanning the whole of the English-speaking world, from the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland to New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Trinidad and Zimbabwe. Authoritative and accessible, this companion illuminates the influences, inspirations, and movements that have shaped the lives and works of our best- loved poets.

Here are in-depth discussions of Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and Joyce alongside provocative assessments of W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore. John Ashbery, Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou, and Mary Oliver are accounted for, as well as Carolyn Forché, David Bottoms, Jorie Graham, and many others. Compiled by a team of 230 experts, including many famous poets, it features many fascinating pairings, including Seamus Heaney writing on Robert Lowell, Anne Stevenson on Sylvia Plath, and Jon Stallworthy on Rupert Brooke.

This second edition offers new biographical entries on more contemporary poets such as the Scottish poet Don Paterson, Canadian Anne Carson, Australian John Kinsella, and American Leslie Marmon Silko. As in the previous edition, the biographies are complemented by new appendices including a list of poetry events and movements and a section on important poetry prizes and prize-winners. In addition, many entries include details of in-depth supplementary material available online on the dedicated companion website.