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American poet Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. At a young age tragedy struck, her father died and her mother was committed to a mental asylum after suffering a severe nervous breakdown. Elizabeth went to live with her grandparents on her mothers side in Nova Scotia, Canada. Later she stayed with her fathers parents back in Boston.

In 1934 She earned a bachelors degree at Vassar College and having money she travelled across Europe, and then finally settled in Key West Florida. Her travels influenced much of her poetry. She was a consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950. She then moved to Brazil where she published her first book of poems North and South which won the Pultzer Prize when it was republished in 1955.

She was greatfully influenced by the poet Marianne Moore who became her close friend and encouraged her with her work. Questions of Travel and Geography 111 contained some of most well known poems and among them "In the Waiting Room" and "One Art". By 1969 she taught writing at Harvard University and also later was elected to the American Academy of Arts and letters she also worked translating An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry. Her personal life was tinged with trouble, she suffered from asthma, depression and alcoholism, but despite this she is now recognized as a great poet of the 20th century.