Portal:Poetry/Did you know archive/Week 27 2006

• ... that English novelist Thomas Hardy, after the overwhelmingly negative reaction to his novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, published his first collection of poetry at the age of 58 and devoted the remaining 30 years of his life solely to poetry?

• ... that Russian lyrical poet Alexander Blok, a key figure in the Russian Symbolist movement, was married to the daughter of chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, primary creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements?

• ... that one unintended side-effect of the British Army presence in Egypt in World War II was the creation of the loose groups known as the Cairo poets, which included such figures as Lawrence Durrell and Keith Douglas?