Poets

Writers known for poetry.

People in Poets

59 profiles

Writer

Maya Angelou

Writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Poet

Rabindranath Tagore

Writing Gitanjali and songs that became two national anthems.

Writer

A. A. Milne

Creating Winnie-the-Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood.

Poet

Lord Byron

Writing Don Juan and embodying the rebellious Romantic poet.

Writer

Alice Walker

Writing The Color Purple.

Playwright

Bertolt Brecht

Writing Mother Courage and developing epic theatre.

Writer

Victor Hugo

Writing Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Writer

Dr. Seuss

Creating The Cat in the Hat, the Grinch and Green Eggs and Ham.

Writer

Jack Kerouac

Writing On the Road and becoming a central Beat writer.

Poet

Seamus Heaney

Writing poetry rooted in Irish rural life, history and moral conflict.

Poet

Walt Whitman

Writing Leaves of Grass and expanding American free verse.

Writer

Thomas Hardy

Writing Tess of the d’Urbervilles and novels set in a changing rural Wessex.

Poet

Alexander Pushkin

Writing Eugene Onegin and helping shape modern Russian literature.

Poet

W. B. Yeats

Writing major Irish poetry and helping establish the Abbey Theatre.

Writer

Wole Soyinka

Writing Death and the King’s Horseman and winning Africa’s first literature Nobel.

Writer

Herman Melville

Writing Moby-Dick and its obsessive hunt for a white whale.

Writer

Jorge Luis Borges

Creating labyrinths, imaginary books and philosophical short stories.

Writer

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Writing Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Writer

D. H. Lawrence

Writing Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Playwright

Oscar Wilde

Writing The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, with wit that exposes social hypocrisy.

Writer

Margaret Atwood

Writing The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopia about women living under a religious dictatorship.

Poet

William Blake

Creating visionary poems and images, including The Tyger and Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Writer

Rudyard Kipling

Writing The Jungle Book, Kim and the Just So Stories.

Poet

Rumi

Writing the Masnavi and devotional poetry associated with Sufi thought.

Poet

Mahmoud Darwish

Giving poetic voice to Palestinian displacement, memory and belonging.

Poet

Judith Wright

Writing about Australian landscapes while confronting dispossession and environmental loss.

Poet

Nizar Qabbani

Writing widely loved Arabic poetry about love, freedom and political failure.

Poet

Forough Farrokhzad

Giving modern Persian poetry an intimate, independent female voice.

Poet

Pablo Neruda

Writing Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and the epic Canto General.

Poet

Gabriela Mistral

Becoming the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Poet

Octavio Paz

Writing The Labyrinth of Solitude and the long poem Sunstone.

Poet

Wisława Szymborska

Writing precise, ironic poems that find large questions in ordinary situations.

Poet

Czesław Miłosz

Writing The Captive Mind and poetry shaped by war, exile and moral reflection.

Poet

Louise Glück

Writing The Wild Iris and intimate poetry shaped by myth, family and loss.

Poet

Lalleshwari

Composing the Kashmiri mystical verses known as vakhs.

Poet

Tukaram

Composing Marathi devotional abhangas that challenge pride and social hierarchy.

Poet

Kabir

Creating devotional poetry that challenges religious division and empty ritual.

Poet

Bishnu Dey

Helping shape modern Bengali poetry.

Poet

Breyten Breytenbach

Writing dissident Afrikaans poetry and opposing apartheid.

Poet

Subhash Mukhopadhyay

Bringing a direct political voice to modern Bengali poetry.

Poet

Bharathidasan

Using Tamil poetry to argue for social equality and rationalism.

Writer

A. Srinivasa Raghavan

Writing the Tamil poetry collection Vellai Paravai.

Poet

Shakti Chattopadhyay

Writing modern Bengali poetry including Jete Pari Kintu Keno Jabo.

Poet

Dom Moraes

Winning the Hawthornden Prize for A Beginning.

Poet

Binoy Majumdar

Writing Phire Esho, Chaka and poetry shaped by scientific imagery.

Poet

Kahlil Gibran

Writing The Prophet.

Writer

Nabaneeta Dev Sen

Writing Bengali poetry, fiction, travelogues and essays.

Poet

Jayanta Mahapatra

Writing Relationship and A Rain of Rites.

Poet

A. K. Ramanujan

Writing poetry and translating classical Tamil and Kannada literature.

Poet

Mu. Metha

Modern Tamil poetry and film lyrics

Poet

Keki N. Daruwalla

Indian English poetry including The Keeper of the Dead

Writer

Annada Shankar Ray

Bengali poetry, essays and the travel diary Pathe Prabase.

Poet

Shankha Ghosh

Bengali poetry, literary criticism and scholarship on Tagore.

Poet

Nirendranath Chakravarty

Bengali poetry including Ulanga Raja and literary work for younger readers.

Poet

Puviarasu

Tamil poetry and translations of world literature.

Writer

Tony Mochama

Kenyan poetry, journalism and young-adult fiction.

Poet

Dale Wimbrow

Writing “The Man in the Glass”, originally titled “The Guy in the Glass”.

Poet

Tamilanban

Writing the Sahitya Akademi-winning Vanakkam Valluva.

Poet

S. Abdul Rahman

Tamil poetry including the Sahitya Akademi-winning Aalapanai.