God Save the Queen

England's poetic history is pretty familiar to me, as I'm sure it is to most others, so I'll be brief here. We have Beowulf, of course, estimated as being written between 600 and 1000 AD, before anyone could have dreamed of CGI or Angelina Jolie. Then some scatteredness through the early Middle Ages, followed by Chaucer. The Renaissance made way for Courtley and Elizabethan poetry and poets, such Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh, and Shakespeare, who brought verse to the theatre as well. We get the John's Donne and Milton in the 17th century (and in the Writing Center), then satirist poets, namely Jonathan Swift, in the 18th century. Women poets, such as Margaret Cavendish, also gained notability in the 1700s. The Romantics followed (Wordsworth, Coleridge and company), then Victorians (Lord Tennyson and the Brownings); and in the 20th century, poetry in England followed Modernist trends and was influenced by the first and second World Wars.

This appears to be England's poetry.com. It's called the Poetry Society, and has some interesting links. I liked the article in the Guardian about why Britain needs a black poet laureate (found on the right sidebar).