10 Most Amazing And Inspiring Refugees In History

Joseph Brodsky was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991 and was lauded the world over for the power of his verse. He had a Nobel Prize to his name and he counted among his admirers and supporters among the greatest poets in recent centuries including W.H. Auden and Derek Walcott.

 But Brodsky's journey to poetic maestro had been a long and fraught one and his recurring theme of the poet's interaction with wider society and the ability for art to change society for the better had been heavily influenced by his own negative experiences with societal repression. Brodsky had been born in the Soviet Union in 1940 and throughout his career as a young poet he had experienced tension with the oppressive Soviet authorities. 

The authorities denounced his lively poetry as “pornographic and anti-Soviet” and soon Brodsky was put on trial for his inflammatory work. Brodsky's work would send him on an inevitably grisly collision course with Soviet authorities and he was eventually exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972 with a Soviet mental health “expert” claiming he was a schizophrenic parasite on society. Following his exile Brodksy went on to meteoric success in America.