List of English language poets
Encyclopedia
This is a list of English language poets, who wrote or write much of their poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

A

  • Harold Acton
    Harold Acton
    Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE was a British writer, scholar and dilettante perhaps most famous for being wrongly believed to have inspired the character of "Anthony Blanche" in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited...

     (1904–1994)
  • Gilbert Adair
    Gilbert Adair
    Gilbert Adair is a Scottish author, film critic and journalist. He won the Author's Club First Novel Award in 1988 for his novel The Holy Innocents. In 1995 he won the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for his book A Void, which is a translation of the French book La Disparition by Georges Perec...

     (born 1944)
  • Helen Adam
    Helen Adam
    Helen Adam was a Scottish poet, collagist and photographer who was an active participant in The San Francisco Renaissance, a literary movement contemporaneous to the Beat Generation that occurred in San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s...

     (1909–1993)
  • Arthur Henry Adams
    Arthur Henry Adams
    Arthur Henry Adams was a journalist and author. He started his career in New Zealand, though he spent most of it in Australia, and for a short time resided in China and London.-Biography:...

     (1872–1936)
  • Robert Adamson (1852–1902)
  • Fleur Adcock
    Fleur Adcock
    Kareen Fleur Adcock , CNZM, OBE is a poet and an editor of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England.-Life and career:...

     (born 1934)
  • Joseph Addison
    Joseph Addison
    Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...

     (1672–1719)
  • Mark Akenside
    Mark Akenside
    Mark Akenside was an English poet and physician.Akenside was born at Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the son of a butcher. He was slightly lame all his life from a wound he received as a child from his father's cleaver...

     (1721–1770)
  • Sidney A. Alexander
    Sidney A. Alexander
    Sidney Arthur Alexander was an English poet, author, and clergyman. The son of a bank clerk, Alexander was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Oxford, where he received his B.A. in 1889 with a number of distinctions and prizes. While at St...

     (1866–1948)
  • James Alexander Allan
    James Alexander Allan
    James Alexander Allan was an Australian poet and local historian.Allan was born in Melbourne. He was educated at Alfred Crescent State School, North Fitzroy and the Model School, and was a Commonwealth public servant from 1942 to 1950, as well as in the early years of the century...

     (1889–1956)
  • Leslie Holdsworthy Allen (1879–1964)
  • William Allingham
    William Allingham
    William Allingham was an Irish man of letters and a poet.-Biography:He was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland and was the son of the manager of a local bank who was of English descent...

     (1824/28-1889)
  • Kingsley Amis
    Kingsley Amis
    Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

     (1922–1995)
  • Ethel Anderson
    Ethel Anderson
    Ethel Anderson was an early twentieth century Australian poetess, essayist, novelist and painter. She considered herself to be mainly a poet, but is now best appreciated for her witty and ironic stories...

     (1883–1958)
  • Bruce Andrews
    Bruce Andrews
    Bruce Andrews is a U.S. poet who is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets .-Life and work:...

     (born 1948)
  • Maya Angelou
    Maya Angelou
    Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...

     (born 1928)
  • Rae Armantrout
    Rae Armantrout
    Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language Poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies...

     (born 1947)
  • Simon Armitage
    Simon Armitage
    Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...

     (born 1963)
  • Matthew Arnold
    Matthew Arnold
    Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...

     (1822–1888)
  • John Ashbery
    John Ashbery
    John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

     (born 1927)
  • Thomas Ashe
    Thomas Ashe (poet)
    Thomas Ashe was an English poet.He was born in Stockport, Cheshire in 1836. His father, John Ashe , originally a Manchester manufacturer and an amateur artist, resolved late in life to take holy orders, was prepared for ordination by his own son, and became vicar of St. Paul's at Crewe in 1869....

     (1836–1889)
  • Thea Astley
    Thea Astley
    Thea Astley was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more Miles Franklin Awards, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer...

     (1925–2004)
  • Edwin Atherstone
    Edwin Atherstone
    Edwin Atherstone was a poet and novelist. His works, which were planned on an imposing scale, attracted some temporary attention and applause, but are now forgotten. His chief poem, The Fall of Nineveh, consisting of thirty books, appeared at intervals from 1828 to 1868...

     (1788–1872)
  • Margaret Atwood
    Margaret Atwood
    Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

     (born 1939)
  • Dorothy Auchterlonie
    Dorothy Auchterlonie
    Dorothy Auchterlonie AO was an English-born Australian academic, literary critic and poet.-Life:Auchterlonie was born in Sunderland, County Durham in England...

     (1915–1991)
  • W. H. Auden
    W. H. Auden
    Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

     (1907–1973)
  • Pam Ayres
    Pam Ayres
    Pam Ayres MBE is an English poet, songwriter and presenter of radio and television programmes. Her 1975 appearance on the television talent show Opportunity Knocks led to a variety of appearances on TV and radio shows, a one woman touring stage show and performing before the Queen.-Early life:Pam...

     (born 1947)
  • Sir Robert Ayton
    Robert Ayton
    Sir Robert Aytoun was a Scottish poet.Ayton was the son of Ayton of Kinaldie House in Fife.He and his elder brother entered St Leonard's College in St Andrews in 1584. After graduating MA from St...

     (1570–1638)
  • William Edmonstone Aytoun (1813–1865)
  • Allan Ahlberg (1938–present)

Ba

  • Joanna Baillie
    Joanna Baillie
    Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and dramatist. Baillie was very well known during her lifetime and, though a woman, intended her plays not for the closet but for the stage. Admired both for her literary powers and her sweetness of disposition, she hosted a brilliant literary society in her...

     (1762–1851)
  • Kevin Bailey
    Kevin Bailey (poet)
    Kevin Bailey is a British poet and founder of 'HQ Poetry Magazine'. He has had three books published and co-edited an anthology of poetry for the Acorn Book Company in 2000. He was born and grew up at Wallingford, in the County of Berkshire , England, where he attended the local grammar school...

     (born 1953)
  • Jesse Ball
    Jesse Ball
    Jesse Ball is an American poet and novelist. He has published novels, volumes of poetry, short prose, and drawings.-Education and Early Interests:...

     (born 1978)
  • John Banim
    John Banim
    John Banim , was an Irish novelist, short story writer, dramatist, poet and essayist, sometimes called the "Scott of Ireland." He also studied art, working as a painter of minatures and portraits, and as a drawing teacher, before dedicating himself to literature.-Early life:John Banim was born in...

     (1798–1842)
  • Lex Banning
    Lex Banning
    Arthur Alexander Banning was an Australian lyric poet.Disabled from birth by cerebral palsy, he was unable to speak clearly or to write with a pen. "Yet he overcame his handicap to produce poems which were often hauntingly beautiful and frequently ironic, and gave to other, younger poets a strong...

     (born 1921)
  • Amiri Baraka
    Amiri Baraka
    Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

     (born 1934)
  • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
    Anna Laetitia Barbauld
    Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and children's author.A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare...

     (1743–1825)
  • John Barbour (died 1395)
  • Joel Barlow
    Joel Barlow
    Joel Barlow was an American poet, diplomat and politician. In his own time, Barlow was well-known for the epic Vision of Columbus. Modern readers may be more familiar with "The Hasty Pudding"...

     (1754–1812)
  • Mary Barnard
    Mary Barnard
    Mary Ethel Barnard was an American poet, biographer and Greek-to-English translator. She is known for her clear interpretation of the works of Sappho, a translation which has never gone out of print....

     (1909–2002)
  • Syd Barret
  • Les Barker
    Les Barker
    Les Barker is an English poet. He is best known for his comedic poetry and parodies of popular songs, however he has also produced some very serious thought-provoking written work....

     (born 1947)
  • Richard Barnefield (1574–1627)
  • Djuna Barnes
    Djuna Barnes
    Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...

     (1892–1982)
  • William Barnes
    William Barnes
    William Barnes was an English writer, poet, minister, and philologist. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect and much other work including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages.-Life:He was born at Rushay in the parish of Bagber, Dorset, the son of...

     (1801–1886)
  • Bernard Barton
    Bernard Barton
    -External links:* at Find-A-Grave...

     (1784–1849)
  • Todd Bash
    Todd Bash
    Todd Bash is an avant-garde playwright from Los Angeles, California.He has written more than twenty works for the theatre, many performed and published, as well as prose, poetry and film projects...

      (born 1965)
  • David Bates
    David Bates (poet)
    David Bates was an American poet.He was born in Indian Hill, Ohio and educated in Buffalo before working in first Indianapolis then Philadelphia. In 1849, he published a volume of poetry, Eolian....

     (1809–1870)
  • H.E. Bates (1905–1974)
  • James K. Baxter
    James K. Baxter
    James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.-Biography:Baxter was born in Dunedin to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party. His father had been a conscientious...

     (1926–1972)
  • Arthur Bayldon
    Arthur Bayldon
    Arthur Bayldon was born in 1865, at Leeds, England. He emigrated to Australia in 1889. He was a professional athlete as well as a poet. He died in 1958.-Bibliography:*Poems *The Eagles *Collected Poems...

     (1865–1958)
  • William Baylebridge
    William Baylebridge
    William Baylebridge was the pseudonym of Charles William Blocksidge , an Australian poet and short-story writer.Blocksidge was born in Brisbane, Queensland, the son of George Henry Blocksidge, an auctioneer and estate agent...

     (1883–1942)

Be-Bo

  • Francis Beaumont
    Francis Beaumont
    Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher....

     (1586–1616)
  • Bruce Beaver
    Bruce Beaver
    Bruce Victor Beaver was an Australian poet and novelist.-Biography:Beaver was born in Manly, New South Wales. He was educated at the Manly Public School and at the Sydney Boys' High School...

     (1928–2004)
  • Aphra Behn
    Aphra Behn
    Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...

     (1640–1689)
  • Gwendolyn B. Bennett
    Gwendolyn B. Bennett
    Gwendolyn B. Bennett was an African American writer who contributed to Opportunity, which chronicled cultural advancements in Harlem. Though often overlooked, she herself made considerable accomplishments in poetry and prose...

     (1902–1981)
  • Jim Bennett
    Jim Bennett (poet)
    Jim Bennett is a poet. He performed alongside Roger McGough and Adrian Henri in the late 1960s.- Early life:He was adopted into the Bennett family at 2 years of age. He began writing poetry and short stories in the 1960s and was performing his poetry in O'Connor's Tavern in Liverpool long before...

    , (born 1951)
  • Bill Berkson
    Bill Berkson
    Bill Berkson is an American poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties.-Life:Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattan’s Upper...

      (born 1939)
  • Charles Bernstein
    Charles Bernstein
    Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...

     (born 1950)
  • Anselm Berrigan
    Anselm Berrigan
    Anselm Berrigan is a poet and teacher. He grew up in New York City, where he currently resides with his wife, poet Karen Weiser. From 2003 to 2007, he served as artistic director at the St. Mark's Poetry Project...

      (born 1972)
  • Ted Berrigan
    Ted Berrigan
    -Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...

      (1934–1983)
  • Wendell Berry
    Wendell Berry
    Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

     (born 1934)
  • John Berryman
    John Berryman
    John Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...

     (1914–1972)
  • John Betjeman
    John Betjeman
    Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

     (1906–1984)
  • Elizabeth Bishop
    Elizabeth Bishop
    Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...

     (1911–1979)
  • Samuel Bishop
    Samuel Bishop
    Samuel Bishop was a poet born in London, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Oxford University. He then took orders and served as Headmaster of Merchant Taylor's School . His poems on miscellaneous subjects fill two quarto volumes and the best of them are those to his wife and daughter....

     (1731–1795)
  • Sophie Cabot Black
    Sophie Cabot Black
    Sophie Cabot Black is an American prize-winning poet who has taught creative writing at Columbia University and elsewhere.-Early life:...

     (born 1958)
  • Thomas Blacklock
    Thomas Blacklock
    Thomas Blacklock was a Scottish poet.He was born near Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, of humble parentage, and lost his sight as a result of smallpox when six months old. He began to write poetry at the age of 12, and studied for the Church...

     (1721–1791)
  • Peter Bladen
    Peter Bladen
    Peter Bladen, was an Australian poet born at Perth. He was later educated at the University of Western Australia, and the University of Melbourne. He travelled extensively through Australia, working in the 1960s as a journalist and writer, including writing for The Mavis Bramston Show...

     (1922–2001)
  • William Blake
    William Blake
    William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

     (1757–1827)
  • Susanna Blamire
    Susanna Blamire
    Susanna Blamire , poet, was of good Cumberland family, and received the sobriquet of The Muse of Cumberland. Her poems, which were not collected until 1842, depict Cumbrian life and manners with truth and vivacity...

     (1747–1794)
  • John Blight
    John Blight
    John Blight was an Australian poet. The name Blight is of Cornish origin.-Biography:Born in Unley, South Australia on 30 July 1913, Blight was educated at Brisbane State High School. During the Great Depression in Australia he tramped the Queensland coast looking for work...

     (1913–1995)
  • Mathilde Blind
    Mathilde Blind
    Mathilde Blind , was a German-born British poet.She was born at Mannheim, Germany, but settled in London about 1849, adopting the surname of her stepfather, Karl Blind...

     (1841–1896)
  • Edmund Blunden
    Edmund Blunden
    Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...

     (1896–1974)
  • Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
    Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
    Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was an English poet and writer. He was born at Petworth House in Sussex, and served in the Diplomatic Service from 1858 to 1869. His mother was a Catholic convert and he was educated at Twyford School, Stonyhurst and at St Mary's College, Oscott...

     (1840–1922)
  • Barcroft Boake
    Barcroft Boake
    Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake was an Australian poet.Born in Sydney, Boake worked as a surveyor and a boundary rider, but is best remembered for his poetry, a volume of which was published five years after his death....

     (1866–1892)
  • George Henry Boker
    George Henry Boker
    George Henry Boker was an American poet, playwright, and diplomat.-Youth:Boker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was Charles S...

     (1823–1890)
  • Eavan Boland
    Eavan Boland
    -Biography:Boland's father, Frederick Boland, was a career diplomat and her mother, Frances Kelly, was a noted post-expressionist painter. She was born in Dublin in 1944. At the age of six, Boland's father was appointed Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom; the family followed him to London,...

     (born 1944)
  • Ken Bolton
    Ken Bolton
    Ken Bolton is an Australian poet and art critic.Bolton was born in Sydney and studied fine arts at the University of Sydney, where he also tutored. In the late 70s he edited the poetry magazine Magic Sam and began the small press Sea Cruise Books with Anna Couani. His first book of poems, Four...

     (born 1949)
  • Horatius Bonar
    Horatius Bonar
    Horatius Bonar was a Scottish churchman and poet.-Life:The son of James Bonar, Solicitor of Excise for Scotland, he was born and educated in Edinburgh. He comes from a long line of ministers who have served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland...

     (1808–1889)
  • Sean Bonney
    Sean Bonney
    Sean Bonney is a contemporary English poet. Bonney was born in Brighton and brought up in the north of England. He now lives in London.His publications include Notes on Heresy , Poisons, their antidotes , Blade Pitch Control Unit , Document: hexprogress , Baudelaire in English ,...

  • Arna Wendell Bontemps  (1902–1973)
  • Keith Bosley
    Keith Bosley
    Keith Bosley is a British poet and language expert.Bosley was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire...

     (born 1937)
  • John Philip Bourke
    John Philip Bourke
    John Philip Bourke was an Australian poet.Bourke was born in Nundle, New South Wales, on the Peel River diggings, New South Wales, the son of William David Bourke, butcher, and his wife Jane, née Shepherd. After a primary education, he became a prospector with his father. At 17 years of age, he...

     (1860–1914)
  • Mark Alexander Boyd
    Mark Alexander Boyd
    Mark Alexander Boyd was a Scottish poet and soldier of fortune. He was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. His father was from Pinkell, Carrick in Ayrshire. Boyd left Scotland for France as a young man. There he studied civil law...

     (1563–1601)

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  • Thomas Bracken
    Thomas Bracken
    Thomas Bracken was a noted late 19th century poet. He wrote "God Defend New Zealand", one of the two National anthems of New Zealand and was the first person to publish the phrase "God's Own Country" as applied to New Zealand.-Background and early years:Bracken was born at Clones, County...

     (1843–1898)
  • Anne Bradstreet
    Anne Bradstreet
    Anne Dudley Bradstreet was New England's first published poet. Her work met with a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World.-Biography:...

     (c. 1612–1672)
  • E. J. Brady
    E. J. Brady
    E. J. Brady was an Australian poet.He was born at Carcoar, New South Wales, and was educated both in the United States and Sydney...

     (1869–1952)
  • Richard Brautigan
    Richard Brautigan
    Richard Gary Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. He is best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America.- Early life :...

     (1935–1984)
  • Christopher Brennan
    Christopher Brennan
    Christopher John Brennan was an Australian poet and scholar.-Biography:Brennan was born in Sydney, to Christopher Brennan , a brewer, and his wife Mary Ann , née Carroll, both Irish immigrants....

     (1870–1932)
  • John Le Gay Brereton
    John Le Gay Brereton
    John Le Gay Brereton was an Australian poet, critic and Professor of English at the University of Sydney. He was the first president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers when it was formed in Sydney in 1928.-Early life:...

     (1871–1933)
  • Nicholas Breton
    Nicholas Breton
    Nicholas Breton , English poet and novelist, belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex.-Life:...

     (1542–1626)
  • Ken Brewer
    Ken Brewer
    Kenneth Wayne Brewer was an American poet and longtime scholar who resided in Utah, where he served as Poet Laureate. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, he attended Butler University and Western New Mexico University in the 1960s, then earned a master's degree in English literature from New Mexico...

     (1941–2006)
  • Martha Wadsworth Brewster
    Martha Wadsworth Brewster
    Martha Wadsworth Brewster was an 18th-century American poet and writer. She is one of only four colonial women who published volumes of their verse before the American Revolution and was the first American-born woman to publish under her own name.-Early life:She was born on April 1, 1710 in...

     (1710 - c.1757)
  • Robert Bridges
    Robert Bridges
    Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...

     (1844–1930)
  • James Brock
    James Brock
    James Brock is an American poet, born in Boise, Idaho. He is best known for his eclectic poetry, ranging from New York School inspired experiments to formal verse and narrative poems. He received his M.F.A. and Ph. D. from Indiana University, and he currently is a full Professor of English at...

     (born 1958)
  • Emily Brontë
    Emily Brontë
    Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...

     (1818–1848)
  • Rupert Brooke
    Rupert Brooke
    Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...

     (1887–1915)
  • Gwendolyn Brooks
    Gwendolyn Brooks
    Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...

     (1917–2000)
  • Sterling A. Brown  (1901–1989)
  • Dr. Stewart Brown
  • Thomas Edward Brown
    Thomas Edward Brown
    Thomas Edward Brown , commonly referred to as T.E. Brown was a Manx poet, scholar and theologian.Brown was born at Douglas, Isle of Man. His father, the Rev. Robert Brown, shared with the parish schoolmaster in tutoring the clever boy until, at the age of fifteen, he was entered at King William's...

     (1830–1897)
  • Isaac Hawkins Browne
    Isaac Hawkins Browne (poet)
    Isaac Hawkins Browne is remembered as the author of some clever imitations of contemporary poets on the theme of A Pipe of Tobacco, somewhat analogous to the Rejected Addresses of a later day...

     (1705–1760)
  • William Browne (1588–1643)
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

     (1806–1861)
  • Robert Browning
    Robert Browning
    Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

     (1812–1889)
  • William Cullen Bryant
    William Cullen Bryant
    William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...

     (1794–1878)
  • Vincent Buckley
    Vincent Buckley
    Vincent Thomas Buckley was an Australian poet, teacher, editor, essayist and critic.-Life:He was born in 1925 in Romsey, Victoria and was educated at both the University of Melbourne and the :University of Cambridge, and died in Melbourne in 1988..Buckley edited the magazine, Prospect, from 1958...

     (1925–1988)
  • Charles Bukowski
    Charles Bukowski
    Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...

     (1920–1994)
  • Basil Bunting
    Basil Bunting
    Basil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...

     (1900–1985)
  • Anthony Burgess
    Anthony Burgess
    John Burgess Wilson  – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...

     (1917–1993)

  • Richard Burns
    Richard Burns (poet)
    -Life and work:Richard Burns was born in London into a family of musicians. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge and University College London. He has lived in Greece, Italy, the UK, the US and former Yugoslavia...

     (born 1943)
  • Robert Burns
    Robert Burns
    Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...

     (1759–1796)
  • George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
    George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
    George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...

     (1788–1824)

Ca-Ci

  • Richard Caddel
    Richard Caddel
    Richard Caddel was a poet, publisher and editor who was a key figure in the British Poetry Revival.-Biography:Caddel was born in Bedford and grew up in Gillingham, Kent. He studied music at the University of Newcastle, but changed to English after meeting poets Basil Bunting and Tom Pickard...

  • Alex Caldiero
    Alex Caldiero
    Alex Caldiero is a poet, polyartist, sonosopher, and scholar of humanities and intermedia.-Life:Born in the ancient town of Licodia Eubea, near Catania, Sicily, in 1949, Alex immigrated to the United States at age nine and was raised in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York...

  • Charles Stuart Calverley
    Charles Stuart Calverley
    Charles Stuart Calverley was an English poet and wit. He was the literary father of what has been called "the university school of humour".-Early life:...

     (1831–1884)
  • Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)
  • Thomas Campion
    Thomas Campion
    Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.-Life:...

     (1567–1620)
  • Mary Wedderburn Cannan (1893–1973)
  • Thomas Carew
    Thomas Carew
    Thomas Carew was an English poet, among the 'Cavalier' group of Caroline poets.-Biography:He was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife, Alice daughter of Sir John Rivers, Lord Mayor of the City of London and widow of Ingpen...

     (1595–1639)
  • Henry Carey
    Henry Carey (writer)
    Henry Carey was an English poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death...

     (1693–1743)
  • Lewis Carroll
    Lewis Carroll
    Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

     (1832–1898)
  • William Cartwright (1611–1643)
  • Raymond Carver
    Raymond Carver
    Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

     (1938–1988)
  • Alice Cary
    Alice Cary
    Alice Cary was an American poet, and the sister of fellow poet Phoebe Cary .-Biography:Alice Cary was born on April 26, 1820, in Mount Healthy, Ohio near Cincinnati. Her parents lived on a farm bought by Robert Cary in 1813 in what is now North College Hill, Ohio. He called the Clovernook Farm...

  • Phoebe Cary
    Phoebe Cary
    Phoebe Cary was an American poet, and the younger sister of poet Alice Cary . The sisters co-published poems in 1849, and then each went on to publish volumes of her own...

  • Charles Causley
    Charles Causley
    Charles Stanley Causley, CBE, FRSL was a Cornish poet, schoolmaster and writer. His work is noted for its simplicity and directness and for its associations with folklore, especially when linked to his native Cornwall....

     (1917–2003)
  • Constantine Cavafy
  • Joseph Ceravolo
    Joseph Ceravolo
    Joseph Ceravolo was an American poet associated with the second generation of the New York School. Most of Ceravolo’s work is out of print and his popularity is limited to the community of writers...

  • John Chalkhill
    John Chalkhill
    John Chalkhill was an English poet.Two songs by him are included in Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler, and in 1683 appeared Thealma and Clearchus. A Pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse...

  • William Ellery Channing
    William Ellery Channing (1818–1901)
    William Ellery Channing was a Transcendentalist poet, nephew of the Unitarian preacher Dr. William Ellery Channing. The younger Ellery Channing was thought brilliant but undisciplined by many of his contemporaries...

     (1818–1901)
  • George Chapman
    George Chapman
    George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...

     (1560–1634)
  • Geoffrey Chaucer
    Geoffrey Chaucer
    Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

     (c. 1343–1400)
  • Maxine Chernoff
    Maxine Chernoff
    Maxine Chernoff is an American novelist, writer, poet, academic and literary magazine editor. She was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and attended the University of Illinois at Chicago....

     (born 1952)
  • James Wm. Chichetto
    James Wm. Chichetto
    James Wm. Chichetto is a poet, artist, critic, and a Catholic priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, an international religious community that founded and sponsors the University of Notre Dame, Stonehill College, the University of Portland, and King's College, among others.-Bio:He was born 1941...

  • Billy Childish
    Billy Childish
    Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

     (born 1959)
  • Hubert Newman Wigmore Church
    Hubert Newman Wigmore Church
    Hubert Newman Wigmore Church was an Australian poet.Church was born in Hobart, Tasmania, the son of Hubert Day Church and his wife Mary Ann. His father, a barrister, came from Somerset and was a descendant of the family of John Hampden. Hubert Church was taken to England when eight years old, and...

     (1857–1932)
  • Colley Cibber
    Colley Cibber
    Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...

     (1671–1757)
  • Sandra Cisneros
    Sandra Cisneros
    Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories...

     (born 1954)
  • Carson Cistulli
    Carson Cistulli
    Carson Cistulli is an American poet, essayist and English professor. His works of poetry include Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, Assorted Fictions, and A Century of Enthusiasm.- Early Years :...

     (born 1979)

Cl

  • John Clare
    John Clare
    John Clare was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among...

     (1793–1864)
  • Thomas A. Clark
  • Tom Clark
    Tom Clark (poet)
    Tom Clark is an American poet, editor and biographer. Clark was born on the Near West Side of Chicago and educated at the University of Michigan where he received a Hopwood Award for poetry. On March 22, 1968, he married Angelica Heinegg, at St. Mark’s Church, New York City...

  • Amy Key Clarke (born 1892)
  • Austin Clarke
    Austin Clarke (poet)
    thumb|300px|Austin Clarke Bridge in [[Templeogue]]Austin Clarke was one of the leading Irish poets of the generation after W. B. Yeats. He also wrote plays, novels and memoirs...

     (1886–1974)
  • Jack Clarke
    John Clarke (poet)
    John "Jack" Clarke was an American poet.A noted poet, jazz musician and scholar of William Blake and Charles Olson, John "Jack" Clarke was the author of several books of poetry, essays and lectures, among them "From Feathers To Iron" and "In The Analogy," published posthumously in 1997...

  • Brendan Cleary
    Brendan Cleary
    Brendan Cleary is a poet who was born in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland but lives in England.-Early years:Cleary attended Carrickfergus Grammar School in Northern Ireland. He moved from Northern Ireland in 1977 to Middlesbrough, a large town in northeast England, in order to attend Teesside...

  • John Cleveland
    John Cleveland
    John Cleveland was an English poet.The son of an usher in a charity school, Cleveland was born in Loughborough, and educated at Hinckley Grammar School. Admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge, he graduated BA in 1632 and became a fellow of St John's College in 1634...

     (1613–1658)
  • Michelle Cliff
    Michelle Cliff
    Michelle Cliff is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism...

  • Lucille Clifton
    Lucille Clifton
    Lucille Clifton was an American writer and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979–1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland...

  • Arthur Hugh Clough
    Arthur Hugh Clough
    Arthur Hugh Clough was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale...

     (1819–1861)

Co-Cu

  • Florence Earle Coates
    Florence Earle Coates
    -Biography:She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Granddaughter of noted abolitionist and philanthropist Thomas Earle, and eldest daughter of Philadelphia lawyer George H. Earle, Sr. and Mrs. Frances Van Leer Earle, Mrs...

     (1850–1927)
  • Bob Cobbing
    Bob Cobbing
    Bob Cobbing was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival.-Early life:...

  • Brian Coffey
    Brian Coffey
    Brian Coffey was an Irish poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic...

     (1905–1995)
  • Leonard Cohen
    Leonard Cohen
    Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...

     (born 1934)
  • Norma Cole
    Norma Cole
    Norma Cole is a contemporary American poet, visual artist, and frequent translator from the French. A member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan in the '80s, and a fellow traveler of San Francisco's language poets, Cole is also allied with contemporary French poets.-Life and work:A...

  • Hartley Coleridge
    Hartley Coleridge
    David Hartley Coleridge was an English poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher. He was the eldest son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His sister Sara Coleridge was a poet and translator, and his brother Derwent Coleridge was a distinguished scholar and author...

     (1796–1849)
  • Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
    Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
    Mary Elizabeth Coleridge was a British novelist and poet, who also wrote essays and reviews. She taught at the London Working Women's College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907...

     (1861–1907)
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

     (1772–1834)
  • Billy Collins
    Billy Collins
    Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...

     (born 1941)
  • William Collins
    William Collins (poet)
    William Collins was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century...

     (1721–1759)
  • William Congreve (1670–1729)
  • Paul Conneally
    Paul Conneally
    Paul Terence Conneally is a poet, artist and musician based in Loughborough, UK.-Poetry and art:In the field of poetry Conneally is best known for his haiku and haiku-related forms including haibun and renga/renku. His definition of haibun is quoted among others on the Contemporary Haibun Online...

     (born 1959)
  • Henry Constable
    Henry Constable
    Henry Constable was an English poet, son of Sir Robert Constable. He went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1580. Becoming a Roman Catholic, he went to Paris, and acted as anagent for the Catholic powers. He died at Liège...

     (1562–1613)
  • Eliza Cook
    Eliza Cook
    Eliza Cook was an English author, Chartist poet and writer born in London Road, Southwark.- Background :...

     (1818–1889)
  • Clark Coolidge
    Clark Coolidge
    Clark Coolidge is an American poet born in Providence, Rhode Island.Often associated with the Language School, his experience as a Jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects--- including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac, and movies--- often finds...

    *Clark Coolidge
    Clark Coolidge
    Clark Coolidge is an American poet born in Providence, Rhode Island.Often associated with the Language School, his experience as a Jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects--- including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac, and movies--- often finds...

  • Thomas Cooper (poet)
    Thomas Cooper (poet)
    Thomas Cooper was a poet and one of the leading Chartists. He wrote poetry, notably the 944 stanzas of his prison-rhyme the Purgatory of Suicides , novels and, in later life, religious texts...

     (1805–1892)
  • Wendy Cope
    Wendy Cope
    Wendy Cope, OBE is an award-winning contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Ely with the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.-Biography:...

     (born 1945)
  • Richard Corbet
    Richard Corbet
    Richard Corbet was an English bishop in the Church of England. He was also a poet of the metaphysical school who, although highly praised in his own lifetime, is relatively obscure today.-Life:...

     (1582–1635)
  • Cid Corman
    Cid Corman
    Cid Corman was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of Origin, who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century.-Early life and writing:...

  • Jayne Cortez
    Jayne Cortez
    Jayne Cortez is an American poet, and performance artist.-Biography:She grew up in California. She is the author of ten books of poems and performer of her poetry with music on nine recordings. Her voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic, dynamic innovations in lyricism, and visceral...

  • William Johnson Cory
    William Johnson Cory
    William Johnson Cory , born William Johnson, was an educator and poet, born at Torrington, and educated at Eton, where he was afterwards a renowned master, nicknamed Tute by his pupils...

     (1823–1892)
  • Louisa Stuart Costello
    Louisa Stuart Costello
    Louisa Stuart Costello was a writer on travel and French history.Costello was born in Ireland or Sussex.She resided in Paris, France, near the Seine River ....

     (1799–1877)
  • Anne Ross Cousin
    Anne Ross Cousin
    Anne Ross Cousin was a Scottish poet, musician and songwriter. She was a student of John Muir Wood and later became a popular writer of hymns, most especially "The Sands Of Time Are Sinking", while travelling with her minister husband from 1854 to 1878...

     (1824–1906)
  • Abraham Cowley
    Abraham Cowley
    Abraham Cowley was an English poet born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his Works published between 1668 and 1721.-Early life and career:...

     (1618–1667)
  • William Cowper
    William Cowper
    William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

     (1731–1800)
  • George Crabbe
    George Crabbe
    George Crabbe was an English poet and naturalist.-Biography:He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1768, he was apprenticed to a local doctor, who taught him little, and in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge...

     (1754–1832)
  • Richard Crashaw
    Richard Crashaw
    Richard Crashaw , English poet, styled "the divine," was part of the Seventeenth-century Metaphysical School of poets.-Life:...

     (1613–1649)
  • E.E. Cummings (1894–1962)

Da-Do

  • Samuel Daniel
    Samuel Daniel
    Samuel Daniel was an English poet and historian.-Early life:Daniel was born near Taunton in Somerset, the son of a music-master. He was the brother of lutenist and composer John Danyel. Their sister Rosa was Edmund Spenser's model for Rosalind in his The Shepherd's Calendar; she eventually married...

     (1562–1619)
  • George Darley
    George Darley
    George Darley was an Irish poet, novelist, and critic.He was born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College. Having decided to follow a literary career, in 1820 he went to London, where he published his first poem, Errors of Ecstasie . He also wrote for the London Magazine, under the pseudonym of...

     (1795–1846)
  • Tina Darragh
    Tina Darragh
    Tina Darragh is an American poet who was one of the original members of the Language group of poets.Darragh was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in the south suburb of McDonald, Pennsylvania. She began writing in 1968 and studied poetry in Washington, DC at Trinity University from 1970 to 1972...

  • Robert von Dassanowsky
    Robert von Dassanowsky
    Robert von Dassanowsky FRHistS, FRSA is an Austrian-American academic, writer, film and cultural historian, and producer...

     (aka Robert Dassanowsky)
  • William Davenant
    William Davenant
    Sir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil...

     (1606–1668)
  • John Davidson
    John Davidson (poet)
    John Davidson was a Scottish poet, playwright and novelist, best known for his ballads. He also did translations from French and German...

     (1837–1909)
  • Michael Davidson
    Michael Davidson (poet)
    Michael Davidson is an American poet.-Overview:Davidson has written eight books of poetry as well as numerous historical, cultural and critical works...

     (born 1944)
  • Alan Davies
    Alan Davies (poet)
    Alan Davies , is a contemporary American poet, critic, and editor who has been writing and publishing since the 1970s. Today, he is most often associated with the Language poets.-Life and work:...

  • John Davies
    John Davies (poet)
    Sir John Davies was an English poet and lawyer, who became attorney general in Ireland and formulated many of the legal principles that underpinned the British Empire.-Early life:...

     (1569–1626)
  • Thomas Osborne Davis
    Thomas Osborne Davis (Irish politician)
    Thomas Osborne Davis was a revolutionary Irish writer who was the chief organizer and poet of the Young Ireland movement.-Early life:...

     (1814–1845)
  • Thomas Dekker (1575–1641)
  • John Denham
    John Denham (poet)
    Sir John Denham was an English poet and courtier. He served as Surveyor of the King's Works and is buried in Westminster Abbey....

     (1615–1669)
  • Thomas Dermody
    Thomas Dermody
    Thomas Dermody , poet, born in Ennis, showed great capacity for learning, but fell into idle and dissipated habits, and threw away his opportunities. He published two books of poems, which after his death were collected as The Harp of Erin...

     (1775–1802)
  • Heather Derr-Smith
    Heather Derr-Smith
    Heather Derr-Smith is an American poet. She was born in Dallas, Texas in 1971 and spent her early childhood in Los Angeles, California. [1] Her family then moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia where she spent her middle and high school years. She studied at the University of Virginia, earning a B.A....

     (born 1971)
  • Denis Devlin
    Denis Devlin
    Denis Devlin was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career diplomat.-Early life and studies:...

     (1908–1959)
  • Imtiaz Dharker
    Imtiaz Dharker
    Imtiaz Dharker is a Scottish Muslim, poet, artist and documentary film-maker.- Family and background:She was born in Lahore to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she was less than a year old...

     (born 1954)
  • James Dickey
    James Dickey
    James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1966.-Early years:...

      (1923–1997)
  • Emily Dickinson
    Emily Dickinson
    Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

     (1830–1886)
  • Peter Didsbury
    Peter didsbury
    Peter Didsbury is an English poet who was born in Fleetwood, Lancashire but lived most of his life in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire...

     (born 1946)
  • Ray DiPalma
    Ray DiPalma
    Ray DiPalma , is an American poet and visual artist who has published more than 40 collections of poetry, graphic work, and translations with various presses in the US and Europe...

  • Diane Di Prima
    Diane di Prima
    Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

  • Pete Doherty
    Pete Doherty
    Peter Doherty is an English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist. He is best known musically for being co-frontman of The Libertines, which he reformed with Carl Barât in 2010. His other musical project is indie band Babyshambles...

  • John Donaldson
    John Donaldson (author)
    John Donaldson , also known as Jon Inglis, was a British author and poet most particularly associated in later life with Oxford, England.- Life :...

    , aka Jon Inglis (1921–1989)
  • John Donne
    John Donne
    John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

     (1572–1631)
  • Theo Dorgan
    Theo Dorgan
    Theo Dorgan is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He currently lives in Dublin.- Career :Dorgan's poetry collections are The Ordinary House of Love ; Rosa Mundi; and Sappho’s Daughter...

     (born 1953)
  • Mark Doty
    Mark Doty
    Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist.-Biography:He was born in Maryville, Tennessee, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont.In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested...

  • Keith Douglas
    Keith Douglas
    Keith Castellain Douglas , was an English poet noted for his war poetry during World War II and his wry memoir of the Western Desert Campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed during the invasion of Normandy.-Poetry:...

     (1920–1944)
  • Mike Doughty
    Mike Doughty
    Mike Doughty is an American indie and alternative rock singer-songwriter. He led the band Soul Coughing in the 1990s, and in the 2000s, became a solo artist...

     (born 1970)
  • Rita Dove
    Rita Dove
    Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now popularly known as "U.S. Poet Laureate"...

  • Gordon Downie
    Gordon Downie
    Gordon Edgar Downie is a Canadian rock musician, writer and occasional actor. He is the lead singer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. He has released three solo albums, Coke Machine Glow in 2001, Battle of the Nudes in 2003; and The Grand Bounce in 2010...

  • Ernest Dowson
    Ernest Dowson
    Ernest Christopher Dowson , born in Lee, London, was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories, associated with the Decadent movement.- Biography :...

     (1867–1900)
  • Francis Hastings Doyle
    Francis Hastings Doyle
    Sir Francis Hastings Charles Doyle, 2nd Baronet was a British poet.-Biography:Doyle was born near Tadcaster, Yorkshire, to a military family which produced several distinguished officers, including his father, Major-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 1st Baronet, who was created a baronet in 1828...

     (1810–1888)
  • Kirby Doyle
    Kirby Doyle
    Kirby Doyle , born Stanton Doyle, was an American poet. He was featured in the New American Poetry anthology, with the so-called "third generation" of American modernist poets. He was one of the San Francisco Renaissance poets who laid the groundwork for Beat poetry in San Francisco...

     (1932–2003)

Dr-Dy

  • Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...

     (1563–1631)
  • Adam Drinan AKA Joseph Macleod
    Joseph Macleod
    Joseph Todd Gordon Macleod was a British poet, actor, playwright, theatre director, theatre historian and BBC Newsreader. He also published poetry under the pseudonym Adam Drinan.- Biography :...

     (1903–1984)
  • William Drummond of Hawthornden
    William Drummond of Hawthornden
    William Drummond , called "of Hawthornden", was a Scottish poet.-Life:Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian. His father, John Drummond, was the first laird of Hawthornden; and his mother was Susannah Fowler, sister of William Fowler, poet and courtier...

     (1585–1649)
  • John Dryden
    John Dryden
    John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

     (1631–1700)
  • Norman Dubie
    Norman Dubie
    Norman Dubie is an American poet.-Life:He is the author of more than eighteen books, often assuming historical personae in his works...

     (1945-
  • W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)
  • Carol Ann Duffy
    Carol Ann Duffy
    Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...

     (born 1955)
  • Charles Gavan Duffy
    Charles Gavan Duffy
    Additional Reading*, Allen & Unwin, 1973.*John Mitchel, A Cause Too Many, Aidan Hegarty, Camlane Press.*Thomas Davis, The Thinker and Teacher, Arthur Griffith, M.H. Gill & Son 1922....

     (1816–1903)
  • Alan Dugan
    Alan Dugan
    Alan Dugan was an American poet.His first volume Poems published in 1961 was a chosen by the Yale Series of Younger Poets and went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry....

     (1923–2003)
  • Paul Laurence Dunbar
    Paul Laurence Dunbar
    Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....

     (1872–1906)
  • William Dunbar
    William Dunbar
    William Dunbar was a Scottish poet. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie , where, too, it is hinted that he was a member of the noble house of Dunbar....

     (1465–1520)
  • Andrew Duncan
    Andrew Duncan (poet)
    Andrew Duncan is a British poet, critic, and editor. The author of at least seven books of poetry, including Anxiety Before Entering a Room Selected Poems 1977–99...

     (born 1956)
  • Robert Duncan
    Robert Duncan (poet)
    Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...

     (1919–1988)
  • Douglas Dunn
    Douglas Dunn
    Douglas Eaglesham Dunn, OBE is a Scottish poet, academic, and critic. He currently lives in Scotland.-Background:Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire. He was educated at the Scottish School of Librarianship, and worked as a librarian before he started his studies in Hull...

     (born 1942)
  • John Dyer
    John Dyer
    John Dyer was a painter and Welsh poet turned clergyman of the Church of England who maintained an interest in his Welsh ancestry...

  • Bob Dylan
    Bob Dylan
    Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

     (born 1941)

E-F

  • Richard Eberhart
    Richard Eberhart
    Richard Ghormley Eberhart was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total...

     (1904–2005) (died at the three digit age of 101)
  • Richard Edwards (c. 1523–1566)
  • T. S. Eliot
    T. S. Eliot
    Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

     (1888–1965)
  • Ebenezer Elliot (1781–1849)
  • Jean Elliot
    Jean Elliot
    Jean Elliot , also known as Jane Elliot, was a Scottish poet, and the third daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland....

     (1727–1805)
  • Ebenezer Elliott
    Ebenezer Elliott
    Ebenezer Elliott was an English poet, known as the Corn Law rhymer.-Early life:Elliott was born at the New Foundry, Masbrough, in the Parish of Rotherham, Yorkshire. His father, was an extreme Calvinist and a strong Radical, and was engaged in the iron trade...

     (1781–1849)
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

     (1803–1882)
  • Chris Emery
    Chris Emery
    Chris Emery also known as Chris Hamilton-Emery born in Manchester, England, on November 23, 1963 is a British poet and literary publisher.- Biography :...

     (born 1963)
  • William Empson
    William Empson
    Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.He was known as "燕卜荪" in Chinese.He was widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics...

     (1906–1984)
  • D. J. Enright
    D. J. Enright
    Dennis Joseph Enright was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic, and general man of letters.-Life:He was born in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and educated at Leamington College and Downing College, Cambridge...

     (1920–2002)
  • Theodore Enslin
    Theodore Enslin
    Theodore Vernon Enslin was an American poet associated with Cid Corman's Origin and press. He is widely regarded as one of the most musical of American avant-garde poets. Enslin was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father was a biblical scholar and his mother a Latin scholar...

     (born 1925)
  • Sir George Etherege
    George Etherege
    Sir George Etherege was an English dramatist. He wrote the plays The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub in 1664, She Would if She Could in 1668, and The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter in 1676.-Early life:George Etherege was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, around 1635, to George Etherege and...

     (1635–1691)
  • Mari Evans
    Mari Evans
    Mari Evans is an African-American poet, living in Indianapolis.-Education and Employment:Evans attended the University of Toledo where she majored in fashion design in 1939. The fashion design major did not hold her interest and she left the University of Toledo without a degree...

  • Samuel Ferguson
    Samuel Ferguson
    Sir Samuel Ferguson was an Irish poet, barrister, antiquarian, artist and public servant. Perhaps the most important Ulster-Scot poet of the 19th century, because of his interest in Irish mythology and early Irish history he can be seen as a forerunner of William Butler Yeats and the other poets...

     (1810–1886)
  • Jack Foley
    Jack Foley (poet)
    Jack Foley is an American poet living in Oakland, California.-Biography:Jack Foley is a widely-published San Francisco poet and critic. Born in Neptune, New Jersey , raised in Port Chester, New York, and educated at Cornell University, Foley moved to California in 1963 to attend U. C. Berkeley...

     (1940)
  • Richard Furness
    Richard Furness
    Richard Furness was a British poet.-Biography:Richard Furness was known as the "The Poet of Eyam" after the village in Derbyshire, England where he was born on 2 August 1791. His parents, Samuel and Margaret sent him to school, although he could already read fluently by the age of four...

     (1791–1857)

Ga-Go

  • Samuel Garth
    Samuel Garth
    Sir Samuel Garth FRS was an English physician and poet.Garth was born in Bolam in County Durham and matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1676, graduating B.A. in 1679 and...

  • George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...

     (1525–1577)
  • David Gascoyne
    David Gascoyne
    David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

     (1916–2001)
  • John Gay
    John Gay
    John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...

     (1685–1732)
  • Ross Gay
    Ross Gay
    Ross Gay is an American poet and professor. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Against Which and Bringing the Shovel Down...

  • William Gay
    William Gay (poet)
    William Gay was a Scottish-born Australian poet.-Early life:Gay was born at Bridge of Weir, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, eldest child of William Gay and his wife Jane née Tagg. Gay senior was a religious man, an engraver of patterns for wallpaper and calico, his mother came from an educated family...

     (1865–1897)
  • Theodor Seuss Geisel
    Dr. Seuss
    Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....

     (1904–1991)
  • Charles Ghigna (Father Goose) (born 1946)
  • Dame Mary Gilmour
  • Allen Ginsberg
    Allen Ginsberg
    Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

     (1926–1997)
  • Nikki Giovanni
    Nikki Giovanni
    Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Her primary focus is on the individual and the power one has to make a difference in oneself and in the lives of others. Giovanni’s poetry expresses strong racial pride, respect for family, and her...

     (born 1943)
  • Jesse Glass
    Jesse Glass
    -In America:Glass first began to write and publish experimental poetry in c. 1972. Starting in 1976, he edited and published the mimeographed Goethe’s Notes Magazine and Goethe's Press from his family home in Westminster, Maryland...

      (born 1954)
  • Denis Glover
    Denis Glover
    Lieutenant Commander Denis James Matthews Glover DSC was a New Zealand poet and publisher.Well-known for radical leftist opinions, he was often in trouble with authorities. In 1935 he founded the Caxton Press, which he used to encourage a less sentimental style of poetry in New Zealand than was...

      (1912–1980)
  • Louise Gluck
    Louise Glück
    Louise Elisabeth Glück is an American poet of Hungarian Jewish heritage. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000....

  • Albert Goldbarth
    Albert Goldbarth
    Albert Goldbarth is an American poet born January 31, 1948 in Chicago. He is known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive 'talky' style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only...

     (born 1948)
  • Kenneth Goldsmith
    Kenneth Goldsmith
    Kenneth Goldsmith is an American poet. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb, teaches Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and is Senior Editor of PennSound. He hosted a weekly radio show at WFMU from 1995 until June 2010...

     (born 1961)
  • Oliver Goldsmith
    Oliver Goldsmith
    Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...

     (1728–1774)
  • Hedwig Gorski
    Hedwig Gorski
    Dr. Hedwig Gorski is an American performance poet and an avant-garde artist who labels her aesthetic as American Futurism...

      (born 1949)

Gr-Gy

  • W. S. Graham
    W. S. Graham
    William Sydney Graham was a Scottish poet who is often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime but, partly due to the support of Harold Pinter, his work has enjoyed a revival in recent years...

  • Richard Graves
    Richard Graves
    Richard Graves was an English minister, poet, and novelist.Born at Mickleton Manor, Mickleton, Gloucestershire, to Richard Graves, gentleman, and his wife, Elizabeth, Graves was a student at Abingdon School and Pembroke College, Oxford...

     (1715–1804)
  • Robert Graves
    Robert Graves
    Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

     (1895–1985)
  • Thomas Gray
    Thomas Gray
    Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...

     (1716–1771)
  • Robert Greene
    Robert Greene (16th century)
    Robert Greene was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A...

     (1558–1592)
  • Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
    Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
    Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke , known before 1621 as Sir Fulke Greville, was an Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman....

     (1554–1628)
  • Gerald Griffin
    Gerald Griffin
    Gerald Griffin was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright.-Biography:He was born in Limerick, Ireland, the son of a brewer. He went to London in 1823 and became a reporter for one of the daily papers, and later turned to writing fiction...

     (1803–1840)
  • Bill Griffiths
    Bill Griffiths
    Bill Griffiths was a poet and Anglo-Saxon scholar associated with the British Poetry Revival.-Overview:...

     (born 1948)
  • Nicholas Grimald
    Nicholas Grimald
    Nicholas Grimald , English poet, was born in Huntingdonshire, the son probably of Giovanni Baptista Grimaldi, who had been a clerk in the service of Empson and Dudley in the reign of Henry VII....

     (1519–1562)
  • Angelina Weld Grimke
    Angelina Weld Grimke
    Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance and was one of the first African-American women to have a play performed.- Biography :...

     (1880–1958)
  • Charlotte Forten Grimke
    Charlotte Forten Grimké
    Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten Grimké was an African-American anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator.-Biography:...

     (1837–1914)
  • Barbara Guest
    Barbara Guest
    Barbara Guest née Barbara Ann Pinson was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry....

     (1920–2006)
  • Edgar Guest
    Edgar Guest
    Edgar Albert Guest was a prolific English-born American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People's Poet.In 1891, Guest came with his family to the United States from England...

     (1881–1959)
  • Arthur Guiterman
    Arthur Guiterman
    Arthur Guiterman was an American writer best known for his humorous poems.-Life and career:Guiterman was born of American parents in Vienna, graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1891, and was married in 1909 to Vida Lindo. He was an editor of the Woman's Home Companion and the...

     (1871–1943)
  • Thom Gunn
    Thom Gunn
    Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...

     (1929–2004)
  • Ivor Gurney
    Ivor Gurney
    Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English composer and poet.-Life:Born at 3 Queen Street, Gloucester in 1890, the second of four children of David Gurney, a tailor, and his wife Florence, a seamstress, Gurney showed musical ability early...

     (1890–1937)
  • Brion Gysin
    Brion Gysin
    Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...

     (1916–1986)

Ha-He

  • William Habington
    William Habington
    William Habington was an English poet.He was born at Hindlip Hall, Worcestershire, and belonged to a well-known Catholic family...

     (1605–1654)
  • Thomas Gordon Hake
    Thomas Gordon Hake
    Thomas Gordon Hake , English poet, was born at Leeds, of an old Devon family. His mother was a Gordon of the Huntly branch. He studied medicine at St George's hospital and at Edinburgh and Glasgow, but had given up practice for many years before his death and had devoted himself to a literary life...

     (1809–1895)
  • Alan Halsey
    Alan Halsey
    Alan Halsey is a British poet. He managed The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye from 1979 to 1997. Since 1997, Halsey has lived in Sheffield, working as a specialist bookseller and publishing West House Books....

  • Thomas Hardy
    Thomas Hardy
    Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

     (1840–1928)
  • Joy Harjo
    Joy Harjo
    Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee Nation and...

  • William Harmon
    William Harmon
    William Harmon is James Gordon Hanes Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of five books of poetry and editor of A Handbook to Literature. His most recent poetry has appeared in Blink and Light.- Life :William Harmon was born in Concord,...

  • Michael S. Harper
    Michael S. Harper
    Michael Steven Harper is an American poet from Brooklyn, who was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993. He has published ten books of poetry, two of which, "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" and "Images of Kin" , have been nominated for the National Book Award. A great deal of his poetry...

  • Tony Harrison
    Tony Harrison
    Tony Harrison is an English poet and playwright. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem V and Fram, as well as his versions of ancient Greek tragedies, including the Oresteia and Hecuba...

     (born 1937)
  • Carla Harryman
    Carla Harryman
    Carla Harryman is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College...

  • Sadakichi Hartmann
    Sadakichi Hartmann
    Carl Sadakichi Hartmann was a critic and poet of German and Japanese descent.Hartmann, born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki and raised in Germany, became an American citizen in 1894. An important early participant in modernism, Hartmann was a friend of such diverse figures as Walt...

     (1867–1944)
  • F. W. Harvey
    F. W. Harvey
    Frederick William Harvey was an English poet, known for poems composed in prisoner-of-war camps at Krefeld and Gütersloh that were sent back to England, during World War I....

  • Lee Harwood
    Lee Harwood
    Lee Harwood is a poet associated with the British Poetry Revival.-Life:Travers Rafe Lee Harwood was born in Leicester to maths teacher Wilfred Travers Lee-Harwood and Grace Ladkin Harwood, who were then living in Chertsey, Surrey...

     (born 1939)
  • Alamgir Hashmi
    Alamgir Hashmi
    Alamgir Hashmi is a major English poet of Pakistani origin in the latter half of the 20th century. Considered avant-garde, both his early and later works were published to universal critical acclaim and widespread influence...

  • Stephen Hawes
    Stephen Hawes
    Stephen Hawes was a popular English poet during the Tudor period who is now little known. He was probably born in Suffolk owing to the commonness of the name in that area and, if his own statement of his age may be trusted, was born about 1474. It has been suggested that he was an illegitimate...

     (died 1523)
  • Robert Hayden
    Robert Hayden
    Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, educator. He was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1976.-Biography:...

  • Robert Hayman
    Robert Hayman
    Robert Hayman was a poet, colonist and Proprietary Governor of Bristol's Hope colony in Newfoundland.-Early life and education:...

     (1575–1629)
  • Seamus Heaney
    Seamus Heaney
    Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

     (born 1939)
  • Jennifer Michael Hecht
    Jennifer Michael Hecht
    Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, philosopher, and author.Hecht's scholarly articles have been published in many journals and magazines, and her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Poetry Magazine, among others...

     (born 1965)
  • Anthony Hecht
    Anthony Hecht
    Anthony Evan Hecht was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.-Early years:Hecht was born in New York...

     (1923–2004)
  • Allison Hedge Coke
    Allison Hedge Coke
    Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American Book Award-winning American/Canadian poet of mixed Wendat/Huron/Metis/Tsalagi/ Creek/French Canadian/Portuguese/Irish/Scot/English ancestry.-Background:...

     (born 1958)
  • John Hegley
    John Hegley
    John Richard Hegley is an English performance poet, comedian, musician and songwriter.-Early life:He was born in the Newington Green area of Islington, London, England, into a Roman Catholic household. He was brought up in Luton and Bristol...

  • Lyn Hejinian
    Lyn Hejinian
    Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...

  • Felicia Hemans
    Felicia Hemans
    -Ancestry:Felicia Heman's paternal grandfather was George Browne of Passage, co. Cork, Ireland; her maternal grandparents were Elizabeth Haydock Wagner of Lancashire and Benedict Paul Wagner , wine importer at 9 Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool. Family legend gave the Wagners a Venetian origin;...

     (1793–1835)
  • Essex Hemphill
    Essex Hemphill
    Essex Hemphill was an American poet and activist. He was a 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts.-Biography:Essex Hemphill was born April 16, 1957 in Chicago and died on November 4, 1995 of AIDS-related complications...

  • William Ernest Henley
    William Ernest Henley
    William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem "Invictus".-Life and career:...

     (1849–1903)
  • George Herbert
    George Herbert
    George Herbert was a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest.Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education that led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert excelled in...

     (1593–1632)
  • Robert Herrick
    Robert Herrick (poet)
    Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English poet.-Early life:Born in Cheapside, London, he was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith....

     (1591–1674)
  • Phoebe Hesketh
    Phoebe Hesketh
    Phoebe Hesketh, , was an English poet from Lancashire notable for her poems depicting nature.-Life and writing:...

     (1909–2005)
  • Dorothy Hewett
    Dorothy Hewett
    Dorothy Coade Hewett was an Australian feminist poet, novelist, librettist and playwright. She was also a member of the Communist Party of Australia, though she clashed on many occasions with the party's leadership.-Early life:Hewett was born in Perth and was brought up on a sheep and wheat farm...

     (1923–2002)
  • John Hewitt (1907–1987)
  • Thomas Heywood
    Thomas Heywood
    Thomas Heywood was a prominent English playwright, actor, and author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre.-Early years:...

     (c. 1570s – 1650)

Hi-Hu

  • Dick Higgins
    Dick Higgins
    Dick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...

     (1938–1998)
  • Scott Hightower
    Scott Hightower
    Scott Hightower is an American poet and teacher. Hightower is the author of three books of poetry. His third, Part of the Bargain, won the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award...

     (born 1952)
  • Conrad Hilberry
    Conrad hilberry
    Conrad Hilberry is an American poet.Hilberry went to Oberlin College for his undergraduate Bachelor of Arts, and continued his studies with a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was a professor of English at Kalamazoo College from 1962 to 1998.Hilberry is the...

  • Geoffrey Hill
    Geoffrey Hill
    Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...

     (born 1932)
  • James Hogg
    James Hogg
    James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...

     (1770–1835)
  • Jane Holland
    Jane Holland
    Jane Holland is an award-winning English poet, performer and novelist whose poems have been widely published in magazines and broadcast on the radio. She won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors for her poetry in 1996...

     (born 1966)
  • Anselm Hollo
    Anselm Hollo
    Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo is a Finnish poet and translator. He has lived in the United States since 1967.-Life and work:...

  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat...

     (1809–1894)
  • Thomas Hood
    Thomas Hood
    Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...

     (1798–1845)
  • Alec Derwent Hope (1907–2000)
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins
    Gerard Manley Hopkins
    Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...

     (1844–1889)
  • Frances Horovitz
    Frances Horovitz
    Frances Horovitz was an English poet and broadcaster.-Biography:Frances Horovitz was born in London. She was educated at Bristol University and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. As a reader and presenter for the BBC, she acquired a reputation for care of preparation and quality of...

     (1938–1983)
  • Michael Horovitz
    Michael Horovitz
    Michael Horovitz is an English poet, artist and translator.-Life and career:Michael Horovitz was the youngest of ten children who were brought to England from Nazi Germany by their parents, both of whom were part of a network of European-rabbinical families...

     (born 1935)
  • George Moses Horton
    George Moses Horton
    George Moses Horton was an African-American poet.-Biography:He was born into slavery on William Horton's plantation in Northampton County, North Carolina. As a very young child, he and several family members were moved to a tobacco farm in rural Chatham County, when his owner relocated. Horton...

  • A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
  • Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
    Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
    Henry Howard, KG, , known as The Earl of Surrey although he never was a peer, was an English aristocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry.-Life:...

     (1517–1547)
  • Richard Howard
    Richard Howard
    Richard Howard is an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren, and where he now teaches...

  • Fanny Howe
    Fanny Howe
    Fanny Howe is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She has written many novels in prose collection. Howe was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S...

  • Susan Howe
    Susan Howe
    Susan Howe is a American poet, scholar, essayist and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among others poetry movements. Her work is often classified as Postmodern because it expands traditional notions of genre...

  • Ada Verdun Howell
    Ada Verdun Howell
    Ada Verdun Howell was an Australian author and poet. Born in Beaufort, Victoria, on her father's sheep property, she was educated at Ruytons Girls' School. Her sister was the artist Valma Howell. She lived in New York in the latter part of her life where she wrote most of her most famous works...

  • Anthony Howell
    Anthony Howell (performance artist)
    Anthony Howell is an English performance artist. He was a founder of the performance company The Theatre of Mistakes, in the 1970s and 1980s.-External links:*http://www.anthonyhowell.org...

  • Langston Hughes
    Langston Hughes
    James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...

     (1902–1967)
  • Ted Hughes
    Ted Hughes
    Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

     (1930–1998)
  • Richard Hugo
    Richard Hugo
    Richard Hugo , born Richard Hogan, was an American poet. Primarily a regionalist, Hugo's work reflects the economic depression of the Northwest, particularly Montana. Born in White Center, Washington, he was raised by his mother's parents after his father left the family...

     (1923–1982)
  • Alexander Hume
    Alexander Hume
    Alexander Hume was a Scottish poet.The son of Patrick, 5th Lord Polwarth, he was educated at the University of St. Andrews and on the Continent. He was originally destined for the law, but devoted himself to the service of the church, and became minister of Logie in Stirlingshire...

     (1560–1609)
  • Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)
  • Cynthia Huntington
    Cynthia Huntington
    Cynthia Huntington is an American poet, memoirist and a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. She has published several books of poetry, most recently The Radiant . In 2004 she was named Poet Laureate of New Hampshire...

     (born 1952)

I-K

  • P. Inman
    P. Inman
    Peter Inman is an American poet who was born in 1947 and raised on Long Island. He is a graduate of Georgetown University. Since 1980 he has worked at the Library of Congress, where he has been a union activist Peter Inman (writing as P. Inman) is an American poet who was born in 1947 and raised...

  • Richard Jago
    Richard Jago
    Richard Jago was an English poet. He was the third son of Richard Jago, Rector of Beaudesert, Warwickshire.-Education:Jago was educated at Solihull School in the West Midlands. One of the school's five houses bears his name...

     (1715–1781)
  • John James
    John James (poet)
    John James is a British poet.- Biography :John James was born 1939 in Cardiff and was educated at Saint Illtyd’s College there. He left the college in 1957 to read Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Bristol and later undertook postgraduate studies in American Literature at the...

  • Lisa Jarnot
    Lisa Jarnot
    Lisa Jarnot is an American poet and translator. She has published several volumes of poetry. She is an anti-war activist, works as a horticulturalist and lives in Sunnyside, Queens.-Bibliography :*The Fall of Orpheus, Shuffaloff Press, 1993....

     (born 1967)
  • Randall Jarrell
    Randall Jarrell
    Randall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role which now holds the title of US Poet Laureate.-Life:Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee...

     (1914–1965)
  • Robinson Jeffers
    Robinson Jeffers
    John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.-Life:Jeffers was born in...

     (1887–1962)
  • Fenton Johnson
    Fenton Johnson
    John Fenton Johnson was born ninth of nine children into a Kentucky whiskey-making family with a strong storytelling tradition.-Life:His most recent book Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey draws on time spent living as a member of the monastic communities of the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in...

  • Georgia Douglas Johnson
    Georgia Douglas Johnson
    Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson was an American poet and a member of the Harlem Renaissance.-Early life and education:...

     (10 September 1880 – 14 May 1966)
  • Helene Johnson
    Helene Johnson
    Helen Johnson, who was better known as Helene Johnson was an African American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a cousin of author Dorothy West.She spent her early years at her grandfather’s house in Boston...

     (1906–1995)
  • James Weldon Johnson
    James Weldon Johnson
    James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...

     (1871–1938)
  • Samuel Johnson
    Samuel Johnson
    Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

     (1709–1784)
  • David Jones
    David Jones (poet)
    David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...

     (1 November 1895 – 28 October 1974)
  • Ebenezer Jones
    Ebenezer Jones
    Ebenezer Jones wrote a good deal of poetry of very unequal merit, but at his best shows a true poetic vein. He was befriended by Browning and Rossetti....

     (1820–1860)
  • Emma Jones
    Emma Jones (poet)
    Emma Jones is an Australian poet. Her first poetry collection, The Striped World, was published by Faber & Faber in 2009.Jones was raised in Concord, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney. Her father was Australian; her British mother had emigrated to Australia...

     (born 1992)
  • Patrick Jones
    Patrick Jones
    Patrick Jones is a Welsh poet, playwright and filmmaker. His work is often in collaboration with the rock band Manic Street Preachers; his brother, Nicky Wire, is their bassist.-Biography:...

     (born 1965)
  • Erica Jong
    Erica Jong
    Erica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...

     (born 1942)
  • Ben Jonson
    Ben Jonson
    Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

     (1573–1637)
  • June Jordan
    June Jordan
    June Millicent Jordan was a Caribbean American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and committed activist...

     (born 1936)
  • Anthony Joseph
    Anthony Joseph
    Anthony Joseph is a British poet, novelist, musician and lecturer.Joseph was born in Trinidad and was raised by his grandparents. He began writing as a young child and cites his main influences as the Calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the...

  • Jenny Joseph
    Jenny Joseph
    -Life and career:She was born in Birmingham, and with a scholarship, studied English literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford .Her poems were first published when she was at university in the early 1950s...

     (born 1932)
  • James Joyce
    James Joyce
    James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

     (1882–1941)
  • Trevor Joyce
    Trevor Joyce
    Trevor Joyce is an Irish poet, born in Dublin.He co-founded New Writers' Press in Dublin in 1967 and was a founding editor of NWP's The Lace Curtain; A Magazine of Poetry and Criticism in 1968....

     (born 1947)
  • Donald Justice
    Donald Justice
    Donald Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing. In summing up Justice's career, David Orr has written, "In most ways, Justice was no different from any number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he was different in one important sense: sometimes his...

     (1925–2004)
  • Ilya Kaminsky
    Ilya Kaminsky
    Ilya Kaminsky is a Russian-American poet, critic, translator and professor. He began to write poetry seriously as a teenager in Odessa, publishing a chapbook in Russian entitled The Blessed City. His first published poetry collection in English was a chapbook, Musica Humana...

  • Bob Kaufman
    Bob Kaufman
    Bob Kaufman , born Robert Garnell Kaufman, was an American Beat poet and surrealist inspired by jazz music. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "American Rimbaud."-Biography:...

     (1925–1986)
  • Jayne Fenton Keane
    Jayne Fenton Keane
    Jayne Fenton Keane is a contemporary Australian poet.Jayne Fenton Keane has published several books of poetry, a CD recording and is active as a performance poet and in multimedia poetry. The Transparent Lung has been adapted for radio in collaboration with Mike Ladd...

  • John Keats
    John Keats
    John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

     (1795–1821)
  • Arthur Kelton
    Arthur Kelton
    Arthur Kelton was an author who wrote in rhyme about Welsh history.Kelton, whose date of birth and ancestry are unclear, is credited with Book of Poetry in Praise of Welshmen and A Chronicle with a Genealogie declaring that the Brittons and Welshmen are linealiye dyscended from Brute , which...

     (died c. 1550)
  • Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy
    Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy
    Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, MC , was an Anglican priest and poet. He was nicknamed 'Woodbine Willie' during World War I for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual aid to injured and dying soldiers.-Early Life:...

     ('Woodbine Willy'; 1883–1929)
  • Jack Kerouac
    Jack Kerouac
    Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

     (1922–1969)
  • Sidney Keyes
    Sidney Keyes
    Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes was an English poet of World War II.- Early years :Keyes was born on 27 May 1922. He attended Tonbridge School for his secondary education and later, for his tertiary, the University of Oxford...

     (1922–1943)
  • Keorapetse Kgositsile
    Keorapetse Kgositsile
    Keorapetse William Kgositsile is a South African poet and political activist, and was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. He lived in exile in the United States from 1962 until 1975, the peak of his literary career...

     (born 1938)
  • Joyce Kilmer
    Joyce Kilmer
    Alfred Joyce Kilmer was an American journalist, poet, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his religious faith, Kilmer is remembered most for a short poem entitled "Trees" , which was published in...

     (1886–1918)
  • Arthur Henry King
    Arthur Henry King
    Arthur Henry King , also found as Arthur H. King, was a British poet, writer and academic.King was educated at the University of Cambridge, England and Lund University, Sweden and held a Doctor of Literature in stylistics. He served as Assistant Director-General in charge of Education in England...

     (1910–2000)
  • Henry King
    Henry King (poet)
    -Life:The eldest son of John King, Bishop of London, and his wife Joan Freeman, he was baptised at Worminghall, Buckinghamshire, 16 January 1592. He was educated at Lord Williams's School, Westminster School and in 1608 became a student of Christ Church, Oxford...

     (1592–1669)
  • William King
    William King (poet)
    -Life:Born in London, the son of Ezekiel King, he was related to the family of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. From Westminster School, where he was a scholar under Richard Busby, at the age of eighteen he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford in 1681. There he is said to have dedicated himself...

     (1663–1712)
  • Galway Kinnell
    Galway Kinnell
    Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...

     (born 1927)
  • John Kinsella
  • Thomas Kinsella
    Thomas Kinsella
    Thomas Kinsella is an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher.-Early life and work:Kinsella was born in Lucan, County Dublin. He spent much of his childhood with relatives in rural Ireland. He was educated in the Irish language at the Model School, Inchicore and the O'Connell Christian...

     (born 1927)
  • Rudyard Kipling
    Rudyard Kipling
    Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

     (1865–1936)
  • Etheridge Knight
    Etheridge Knight
    Etheridge Knight was an African-American poet who became a notable poet in 1968 with his debut volume, Poems from Prison. The book recalls in verse his eight-year-long sentence after Etheridge was arrested for robbery in 1960...

  • Kenneth Koch
    Kenneth Koch
    Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...

     (1925–2002)
  • Yusef Komunyakaa
    Yusef Komunyakaa
    Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly...

     (born 1948)
  • Anatoly Kudryavitsky
    Anatoly Kudryavitsky
    Anthony Kudryavitsky born in Moscow on 17 August 1954, better known by his pen name Anatoly Kudryavitsky , is a Russian-Irish novelist, poet and literary translator.-Biography:...

     (born 1954)
  • Stanley Kunitz
    Stanley Kunitz
    Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.-Biography:...

     (1905–2006)
  • Joanne Kyger
    Joanne Kyger
    Joanne Kyger is an American poet. Her poetry is influenced by her practice of Zen Buddhism and her ties to the poets of Black Mountain, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat generation.-Overview:...


La-Ln

  • Sonnet L'Abbé
    Sonnet L'Abbé
    Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet and critic. As a poet, L'Abbé writes about national identity, race, gender and language. She has been shortlisted for the 2010 CBC Literary Award for poetry and has won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35.As a critic, she is a...

     (born 1973)
  • Nick Laird
    Nick Laird
    Nicholas 'Nick' Laird is a novelist and poet who was born, and grew up, in Cookstown, County Tyrone. He studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he attained a first in English. He went on to work at the global law firm Allen & Overy in London for six years, before leaving to concentrate...

     (born 1975)
  • Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
  • Tim Lander
    Tim Lander
    Tim Lander is a Canadian poet .Born in Surrey, England, he studied at the University of London. In 1964, Lander emigrated to Canada....

     (born 1938)
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon
    Letitia Elizabeth Landon
    Letitia Elizabeth Landon , English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L. E. L.- Early life :...

  • Walter Savage Landor
    Walter Savage Landor
    Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...

     (1775–1864)
  • Sydney Lanier (1842–1881)
  • Emilia Lanier
    Emilia Lanier
    Emilia Lanier, also spelled Lanyer, was the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet through her single volume of poems, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum...

     (1569–1645)
  • Beatrice Lao
  • Philip Larkin
    Philip Larkin
    Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

     (1922–1985)
  • Evelyn Lau
    Evelyn Lau
    - Biography :Lau was born in Vancouver, British Columbia to Chinese-Canadian parents, who intended for her to eventually become a doctor. Her parents' ambitions for her were wholly irreconcilable with her own; consequently, her home and school lives were desperately unhappy...

     (born 1971)
  • D. H. Lawrence
    D. H. Lawrence
    David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

     (1885–1930)
  • Henry Lawson
    Henry Lawson
    Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...

     (1867–1922)
  • Robert Lax
    Robert Lax
    Robert Lax was an American poet, known in particular for his association with famed 20th century Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton. A third friend of his youth, whose work sheds light on both Lax and Merton, was Ad Reinhardt. During the latter period of his life, Lax resided on the island of...

     (1915–2000)
  • Emma Lazarus
    Emma Lazarus
    Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot novel, Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject. She also began translating the works of Jewish poets into English...

     (1849–1887)
  • Edward Lear
    Edward Lear
    Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...

     (1812–1888)
  • Francis Ledwidge
    Francis Ledwidge
    Francis Edward Ledwidge was an Irish war poet from County Meath. Sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds", he was killed in action at the Battle of Passchendaele during World War I.-Early life:...

     (1887–1917)
  • Joy Leftow
    Joy Leftow
    Joy Leftow, born in Washington Heights in New York City, is an American poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Leftow's poetry is narrative and lyrical, and each poem tells a complete story...

     (born 1949)
  • Sue Lenier
    Sue Lenier
    Susan Jennifer Lenier is an English writer. She published two books of poetry and a number of plays.-Biography:Sue Lenier was born in Birmingham, schooled in Tyneside, and attended Clare College, Cambridge...

     (born 1957)
  • William Ellery Leonard
    William Ellery Leonard
    William Ellery Leonard was an American poet, playwright, translator, and literary scholar.-Early life:...

     (1876–1944)
  • John Leonard (born 1965)
  • Tom Leonard
    Tom Leonard (poet)
    Tom Leonard is a Scottish poet, best known for his poems written in Glaswegian dialect.Tom Leonard has been part of the Scottish literary renaissance for the past forty years...

     (born 1944)
  • Ben Lerner
    Ben Lerner
    Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, . In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry...

     (born 1979)
  • Philip Levine
    Philip Levine (poet)
    Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...

     (born 1928)
  • Larry Levis
    Larry Levis
    Larry Patrick Levis was an American poet.-Youth and Education:Larry Levis was born the son of a grape grower; he grew up driving a tractor, picking grapes, and pruning vines of Selma, California, a small fruit-growing town in the San Joaquin Valley...

     (1946–1996)
  • D. A. Levy
    D. A. Levy
    d.a. levy , born Darryl Alfred Levy , was an American poet, artist, and alternative publisher active during the 1960s, based in Cleveland, Ohio.- Biography :...

     (1942–1968)
  • Alun Lewis
    Alun Lewis
    Alun Lewis , was a poet of the Anglo-Welsh school, and is regarded by many as Britain's finest Second World War poet.- Education :...

     (1915–1944)
  • C. S. Lewis
    C. S. Lewis
    Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

     (1898–1963)
  • Tao Lin
    Tao Lin
    Tao Lin is an American writer. He was born of Taiwanese parents and grew up on the East Coast of the USA.He is the author of two novels, Eeeee Eee Eeee and Richard Yates ; a novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel ; a short story collection, Bed ; and two poetry collections, you are a little...

     (born 1983)

Lo-Ly

  • Douglas Lochhead
    Douglas Lochhead
    Douglas Lochhead, FRSC was a Canadian poet who lived in Sackville, New Brunswick, of which town he was the official poet laureate...

     (born 1922)
  • Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge was an English dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.-Early life and education:...

     (1556–1625)
  • James Longenbach
    James Longenbach
    James Longenbach is an American critic and poet. His early critical work focused on modernist poetry , but he writes extensively about contemporary poetry, too, and has authored four books of poems: Threshold, Fleet River, Draft of a Letter, and The Iron Key...

  • Christopher Logue
    Christopher Logue
    Christopher Logue, CBE is an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He has also written for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage...

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

     (1807–1882)
  • Michael Longley
    Michael Longley
    Michael Longley, CBE is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast.-Life and career:Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus...

  • Luis A. López
    Luis A. López
    Luis A. López is an American poet from San Jose, California. He has won numerous writing awards for his poetry and short stories.His book, Warrior-Poet of the Fifth Sun is currently available....

  • Audre Lorde
    Audre Lorde
    Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...

     (born 1934)
  • Richard Lovelace
    Richard Lovelace
    Richard Lovelace was an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of the king during the Civil war. His best known works are To Althea, from Prison, and To Lucasta, Going to the Warres....

     (1618–1658)
  • Samuel Lover
    Samuel Lover
    Samuel Lover was an Anglo-Irish songwriter, novelist, as well as a painter of portraits, chiefly miniatures. He was the grandfather of Victor Herbert....

     (1797–1868)
  • Amy Lowell
    Amy Lowell
    Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...

     (1874–1925)
  • James Russell Lowell
    James Russell Lowell
    James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets...

     (1819–1891)
  • Robert Lowell
    Robert Lowell
    Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...

  • Mina Loy
    Mina Loy
    Mina Loy born Mina Gertrude Löwry was an artist, poet, playwright, novelist, Futurist, actress, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by T. S...

  • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
    Fitz Hugh Ludlow
    Fitz Hugh Ludlow, sometimes seen as “Fitzhugh Ludlow,” was an American author, journalist, and explorer; best-known for his autobiographical book The Hasheesh Eater ....

     (1836–1870)
  • John Lydgate
    John Lydgate
    John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...

     (1370–1450)
  • John Lyly
    John Lyly
    John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...

     (1553–1606)
  • George Lyttelton
    George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton
    George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton PC , known as Sir George Lyttelton, Bt between 1751 and 1756, was a British politician and statesman and a patron of the arts.-Background and education:...

    , Lord Lyttelton (1709–1773)

Ma-Mi

  • Lord Macaulay (1800–1859)
  • Norman MacCaig
    Norman MacCaig
    Norman MacCaig was a Scottish poet. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.-Life:...

     (1910–1996)
  • Hugh MacDiarmid
    Hugh MacDiarmid
    Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

     (1892–1978)
  • Seán Mac Falls
    Seán Mac Falls
    Seán Mac Falls is an Irish poet.Belonging to no group or movement and operating outside of literary fashions, his brand of symbolist poetry can, at first reading, appear difficult. His use of allusion, startling diction and subtle punning display submerged metaphor in his work...

  • Roger McGough
    Roger McGough
    Roger Joseph McGough CBE is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly...

     (1937 -)
  • Thomas MacGreevy
    Thomas MacGreevy
    Thomas MacGreevy was a pivotal figure in the history of Irish literary modernism. A poet, he was also director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963 and served on the first Irish Arts Council .-Early life:MacGreevy was born in County Kerry, the son of a policeman and a primary...

     (1893–1967)
  • Nathaniel Mackey
    Nathaniel Mackey
    Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, editor and Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Mackey is a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teaching a poetry workshop at Duke University....

  • Lachlan Mackinnon
    Lachlan Mackinnon
    Lachlan Mackinnon is a contemporary Scottish poet, critic and literary journalist. He was born in Aberdeen and educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. He recently took early retirement from his job as a teacher of English at Winchester College and moved to Ely with his partner, the poet Wendy Cope...

  • Archibald MacLeish
    Archibald MacLeish
    Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...

     (1892–1982)
  • Isaac McLellan
    Isaac McLellan
    Isaac McLellan was an author and poet, some of whose work has achieved notability by republication in anthologies.-Biography:...

     (1806–1899)
  • Joseph Macleod
    Joseph Macleod
    Joseph Todd Gordon Macleod was a British poet, actor, playwright, theatre director, theatre historian and BBC Newsreader. He also published poetry under the pseudonym Adam Drinan.- Biography :...

     (1903–1984)
  • Jackson Mac Low
    Jackson Mac Low
    Jackson Mac Low was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which Mac Low first experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle...

  • Louis MacNeice
    Louis MacNeice
    Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...

     (1907–1963)
  • Barry MacSweeney
    Barry MacSweeney
    Barry MacSweeney was an English poet and journalist.-Life and work:Barry MacSweeney was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. He worked as a professional journalist throughout most of his life...

  • Haki R. Madhubuti
    Haki R. Madhubuti
    Haki R. Madhubuti is a renowned African-American author, educator, and poet. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and served in the U.S...

  • Derek Mahon (born 1941)
  • Jennifer Maiden
    Jennifer Maiden
    Jennifer Maiden is a contemporary Australian poet.Jennifer Maiden was born in Penrith, New South Wales. She began publishing professionally in the late 1960s and has been active in Sydney's literary scene since then. She took a BA at Macquarie University in the early 1970s...

  • Taylor Mali
    Taylor Mali
    Taylor Mali is an American slam poet, humorist, teacher, and voiceover artist.-Life:A 10th-generation native of New York City, Taylor Mali graduated from the Collegiate School, a private school for boys, in 1983. He received a B.A. in English from Bowdoin College in 1987 and an M.A. in...

  • David Mallet
  • Tom Mandel
    Tom Mandel (poet)
    Thomas Poeller Mandel is a contemporary American poet whose work is often associated with the Language poets.-Biography:...

  • James Clarence Mangan
    James Clarence Mangan
    James Clarence Mangan, born James Mangan was an Irish poet.-Early life:Mangan was the son of a former hedge school teacher who took over a grocery business and eventually became bankrupt....

     (1803–1849)
  • Bill Manhire
    Bill Manhire
    William "Bill" Manhire, CNZM is an award-winning New Zealand poet, short story writer, and professor, New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate.-Biography:...

     (born 1946)
  • Robert Mannyng of Brunne (1269–1340)
  • Chris Mansell
    Chris Mansell
    Chris Mansell is an Australian poet and publisher.Born in Sydney, Chris Mansell grew up on the Central Coast of New South Wales and in Lae, Papua New Guinea, later studying economics at the University of Sydney...

     (born 1953)
  • Peter Manson
    Peter Manson
    Peter Manson is a contemporary Scottish poet. His books include Between Cup and Lip . For the Good of Liars , Adjunct: an Undigest , Before and After Mallarmé , Two renga Peter Manson (born 1969) is a contemporary Scottish poet. His books include Between Cup and Lip (Miami University Press,...

     (born 1969)
  • Morton Marcus
    Morton Marcus (poet)
    Morton Marcus was a poet and author having published more than 500 poems in literary journals across the country, including Poetry , TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Chelsea, The Chicago Review, The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Poetry Northwest, and The Denver Quarterly...

     (1936–2009)
  • Richard Marggraf Turley
    Richard Marggraf Turley
    Richard Marggraf Turley is a British poet and literary critic, and is a professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.-Life:...

     (born 1970)
  • Christopher Marlowe
    Christopher Marlowe
    Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

     (1564–1593)
  • William Martin
    William Martin
    -People born in 20th century:* Bill Martin , rugby league footballer of the 1960s for Great Britain, and Workington Town* Bill Martin , Scottish songwriter* William A. Martin , American computer scientist...

     (born 1922)
  • Andrew Marvell
    Andrew Marvell
    Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...

     (1621–1678)
  • John Masefield
    John Masefield
    John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

     (1878–1967)
  • Cleopatra Mathis
    Cleopatra Mathis
    Cleopatra Mathis is an American poet who since 1982 has been the Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the English department at Dartmouth College, where she is also director of the Creative Writing Program...

     (born 1947)
  • Paula Meehan
    Paula Meehan
    Paula Meehan is an Irish poet and playwright. Born in Dublin in 1955, Meehan studied at Trinity College, Dublin,and at Eastern Washington University.-Biography:...

     (born 1955)
  • Herman Melville
    Herman Melville
    Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

     (1819–1891)
  • John Milton
    John Milton
    John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

     (1608–1674)
  • Gary Miranda
    Gary Miranda
    -Life:Miranda was raised in the Pacific Northwest.He spent six years in a Jesuit seminary, then did graduate work at San Jose State College and the University of California, Irvine...

     (born 1939)

Mo-Mu

  • H. D. Moe
    H. D. Moe
    H. D. Moe is considered one of the most important of the "baby beat" poets. Raised in Oregon and California, he served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, and later attended school on the G.I. Bill....

  • Anis Mojgani
    Anis Mojgani
    Anis Mojgani is a spoken word poet, visual artist and musician based in Portland, Oregon.Mojgani has been characterized as a "geek genius" with "fiercely hopeful word arias"...

  • Geraldine Monk
    Geraldine Monk
    Geraldine Monk is a British poet. She was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. Since the late 1970s, she has published many collections of poetry and has recorded her poetry in collaboration with musicians...

  • Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax
    Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax
    Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, KG, PC, FRS was an English poet and statesman.-Early life:Charles Montagu was born in Horton, Northamptonshire, the son of George Montagu, fifth son of 1st Earl of Manchester...

     (1661–1715)
  • James Montgomery
    James Montgomery
    James Montgomery was a British editor, hymnwriter and poet. He was particularly associated with humanitarian causes such as the campaigns to abolish slavery and to end the exploitation of child chimney sweeps....

     (1771–1854)
  • Marianne Moore
    Marianne Moore
    Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...

     (1887–1972)
  • Robin Moore
    Robin Moore
    Robert Lowell "Robin" Moore, Jr. was an American writer who is most known for his books The Green Berets, The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy and, with Xaviera Hollander and Yvonne Dunleavy, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story.Moore also co-authored...

    , (born 1954)
  • Thomas Moore
    Thomas Moore
    Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...

     (1779–1852)
  • Barbara Moraff
    Barbara Moraff
    Barbara Moraff is an American poet of the Beat generation currently living in Vermont. She continues to write, and also creates pottery and cooks.-Life:...

  • Edythe Morahan de Lauzon
    Edythe Morahan de Lauzon
    Edythe Morahan de Lauzon was a Canadian poet. She is possibly best known for her poem collection Angels' Songs from the Golden City of the Blessed published in 1918 and From The Kingdom Of The Stars in 1922. Inspired by the First World War, she engaged in issues concerning war and German...

  • Edwin Morgan
  • Robin Morgan
    Robin Morgan
    Robin Morgan is a former child actor turned American radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Sisterhood is Powerful and Ms. Magazine....

     (born 1941)
  • Mervyn Morris
    Mervyn Morris
    Mervyn Eustace Morris OM is a poet and professor emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.- Biography :...

  • William Morris
    William Morris
    William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

     (1834–1896)
  • James Douglas Morrison (1943–1971)
  • Morrissey
    Morrissey
    Steven Patrick Morrissey , known as Morrissey, is an English singer and lyricist. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The band was highly successful in the United Kingdom but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career,...

     (born 1959)
  • Frank Morton
    Frank Morton
    Frank Morton was a journalist and poet, active in Australia.Morton was born at Bromley, Kent, England, the son of James Morton, a plumber,and his wife Rhoda, née Hookham.. He was educated at a private school at Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire where he obtained a good grounding in the classics and...

     (1869–1923)
  • Andrew Motion
    Andrew Motion
    Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...

  • Eric Mottram
    Eric Mottram
    Eric Mottram was a teacher, critic, editor and poet who was one of the central figures in the British Poetry Revival.-Early life and education:...

  • Paul Muldoon
    Paul Muldoon
    Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

     (born 1951)
  • Harryette Mullen
    Harryette Mullen
    Harryette Mullen is an American poet, short story writer, and literary scholar. She was born in Florence, Alabama, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and attended graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As of 2008, she lives in Los...

  • Anthony Munday
    Anthony Munday
    Anthony Munday was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. The chief interest in Munday for the modern reader lies in his collaboration with Shakespeare and others on the play Sir Thomas More and his writings on Robin Hood.-Biography:He was once thought to have been born in 1553, because...

     (1553–1633)
  • Sheila Murphy
    Sheila Murphy
    Sheila E. Murphy is an American text and visual poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona.She earned:...

  • Les Murray
    Les Murray (poet)
    Leslie Allan Murray, AO , known as Les Murray, is an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spans over forty years, and he has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry, as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings...

     (born 1938)

N-O

  • Ogden Nash
    Ogden Nash
    Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...

     (1902–1971)
  • Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...

     (1567–1601)
  • Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
  • Howard Nemerov
    Howard Nemerov
    Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov...

  • Kenn Nesbitt
    Kenn Nesbitt
    Kenn Aylward Nesbitt is a children's poet He has written a number of collections of children's poetry, listed below.He was born on February 20, 1962 in Berkeley, California. He grew up in Fresno and San Diego, California, United States....

     (born 1962)
  • Aimee Nezhukumatathil
    Aimee Nezhukumatathil
    Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an Asian American poet, best known for her jovial and accessible reading style and lush descriptions of exotic foods and landscapes...

     (born 1974)
  • Henry Newbolt (1862–1938)
  • John Henry Newman (1801–1890)
  • Norman Nicholson
    Norman Nicholson
    Norman Cornthwaite Nicholson OBE, , was an English poet, known for his association with the Cumberland town of Millom...

     (1914–1987)
  • Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
    Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
    Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is an Irish poet born in Cork .-Life:Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is the daughter of Eilís Dillon and Professor Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. She was educated at University College Cork and The University of Oxford. She lives in Dublin with her husband Macdara Woods, and they have one...

     (born 1942)
  • Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
    Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
    Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is an Irish poet.Born in Lancashire, England in 1952, of Irish parents, she moved to Ireland at the age of 5, and was brought up in the Dingle Gaeltacht and in Nenagh, County Tipperary. Her uncle is Monsignor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta of An Daingean, the leading authority alive on...

     (born 1952)
  • Lorine Niedecker
    Lorine Niedecker
    Lorine Faith Niedecker was a Wisconsin poet and the only woman associated with the Objectivist poets...

     (1903–1970)
  • Harry Northup
    Harry Northup
    -Life and career:Northup was born in Amarillo, Texas. He lived in seventeen places by the time he was seventeen, but mostly lived in Sidney, Nebraska, where he graduated from high-school in 1958. From 1958 to 1961, he served in the United States Navy, where he attained the rank of Second Class...

     (born 1940)
  • Alice Notley
    Alice Notley
    Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...

  • Jeff Nuttall
    Jeff Nuttall
    Jeff Nuttall was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist sympathiser and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall.-Life and work:Jeff Nuttall was born in Clitheroe,...

     (1933–2004)
  • Naomi Shihab Nye
    Naomi Shihab Nye
    Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home.-Career:...

     (born 1952)
  • Sean O'Brien
    Sean O'Brien (writer)
    Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic, playwright. Prizes he has garnered include the Eric Gregory Award , the Somerset Maugham Award , the Cholmondeley Award , the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize...

     (born 1952)
  • Dennis O'Driscoll
    Dennis O'Driscoll
    Dennis O’Driscoll is an Irish poet, essayist, critic, and editor born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland. Although not widely recognized in the United States, he is considered one of the best European poets of his time. In all, he has written eight books of poetry, two chapbooks, and a...

     (born 1954)
  • Frank O'Hara
    Frank O'Hara
    Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...

  • Theodore O'Hara
    Theodore O'Hara
    Theodore O'Hara was a poet and an officer for the United States Army in the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate colonel in the American Civil War...

     (1820–1867)
  • Mary Oliver
    Mary Oliver
    Mary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's [America's] best-selling poet".-Early life:...

     (born 1935)
  • Charles Olson
    Charles Olson
    Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...

     (1910–1970)
  • Mary Devenport O'Neill
    Mary Devenport O'Neill
    Mary Devenport O'Neill was an Irish poet and dramatist and a friend and colleague of W. B. Yeats, George Russell,and Austin Clarke....

     (1879–1976)
  • George Oppen
    George Oppen
    George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...

     (1908–1984)
  • Peter Orlovsky
    Peter Orlovsky
    Peter Anton Orlovsky was an American poet.-Life and work:Orlovsky was born in the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of Katherine and Oleg Orlovsky, a Russian immigrant. He was raised in poverty and was forced to drop out of Newtown High School in his senior year so he could support his...

     (1933–2010)
  • Antoine Ó Raifteiri
    Antoine Ó Raifteiri
    Antoine Ó Raifteiri was an Irish language poet who is often called the last of the wandering bards.-Biography:...

     (1784–1835)
  • Maggie O'Sullivan
    Maggie O'Sullivan
    Maggie O'Sullivan is a British poet, performer and visual artist associated with the British Poetry Revival.O'Sullivan was born in Lincoln, England of Irish immigrant parents. She moved to London in 1971 and worked for the BBC until 1988. Her early work appeared in magazines such as Angel Exhaust...

  • Wilfred Owen
    Wilfred Owen
    Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...

     (1893–1918)

P-Q

  • Ruth Padel
    Ruth Padel
    Ruth Sophia Padel is a British poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London. She also writes non-fiction and more recently fiction, broadcasts on wildlife, poetry and literature for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and is Writer in Residence at The Environment Institute,...

     (born 1947)
  • Ron Padgett
    Ron Padgett
    Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...

  • Michael Palmer
    Michael Palmer
    Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...

     (born 1943)
  • Nettie Palmer
    Vance and Nettie Palmer
    Vance and Nettie Palmer were two of Australia's best-known literary figures from the 1920s to the 1950s. Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer was a novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic. Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer was a poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic...

  • Dorothy Parker
    Dorothy Parker
    Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....

     (1893–1967)
  • Thomas Parnell
    Thomas Parnell
    Thomas Parnell was a poet and clergyman, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He participated in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator, and he also aided Pope in his translation of The Iliad...

     (1670–1718)
  • Kenneth Patchen
    Kenneth Patchen
    Kenneth Patchen was an American poet and novelist. Though he denied any direct connection, Patchen's work and ideas regarding the role of artists paralleled those of the Dadaists, the Beats, and Surrealists...

     (1911–1972)
  • Brian Patten
    Brian Patten
    -Background:Born near Liverpool's docks, he attended Sefton Park School in the Smithdown Road area of Liverpool, where he was noted for his essays and greatly encouraged in his work by Harry Sutcliffe his form teacher. He left school at fifteen and began work for The Bootle Times writing a column...

     (born 1946)
  • Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson
    Banjo Paterson
    Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...

     (1864–1941)
  • Ricardo Pau-Llosa
    Ricardo Pau-Llosa
    Ricardo Pau-Llosa is a Cuban-American poet, art critic of Latin American art in the US and Europe, and author of short fiction.-Life:...

     (born 1954)
  • Molly Peacock
    Molly Peacock
    Molly Peacock is an American-Canadian poet, essayist and creative nonfiction writer. She is an alumna of Binghamton University.-Career:...

     (born 1947)
  • Thomas Love Peacock
    Thomas Love Peacock
    Thomas Love Peacock was an English satirist and author.Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work...

     (1785–1866)
  • Sam Pereira
    Sam Pereira
    Sam Pereira is an American poet from Los Banos, California. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Fresno and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa , where he was a student in the legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop.Pereira's literary...

  • Ambrose Philips
    Ambrose Philips
    -Life:He was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in...

  • Tom Pickard
    Tom Pickard
    Tom Pickard is a poet, radio and film maker who was an important initiator of the movement known as the British Poetry Revival....

     (born 1946)
  • Robert Pinsky
    Robert Pinsky
    Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry...

     (born 1940)
  • Ruth Pitter
    Ruth Pitter
    Emma Thomas "Ruth" Pitter, CBE, FRSL was a 20th century British poet.She was the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1955, and was appointed a CBE in 1979 to honour her many contributions to English literature.In 1974, she was named a "Companion of Literature", the highest...

     (1897–1992)
  • Sylvia Plath
    Sylvia Plath
    Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

     (1932–1963)
  • Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

     (1809–1849)
  • Robert Pollok
    Robert Pollok
    Robert Pollok was a Scottish poet best known for The Course of Time, published the year of his death.Pollok was born at North Moorhouse Farm, Loganswell Renfrewshire, Scotland. Sources differ on the exact year of his birth, some giving 1789, some 1798, and some 1799...

     (c. 1798–1827)
  • Alexander Pope
    Alexander Pope
    Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

     (1688–1744)
  • Charles Potts
    Charles Potts
    Charles Potts from Walla Walla, Washington is an American projectivist poet who was once mentored by Edward Dorn.- Bibliography :Books:*Kiot: Selected Early Poems, 1963–1977, Blue Begonia Press, Yakima, Washington, 2005...

     (born 1943)
  • Ezra Pound
    Ezra Pound
    Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

     (1885–1972)
  • Jack Prelutsky
    Jack Prelutsky
    Jack Prelutsky is an American writer of children's poetry. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife, Carolynn.-Early life:...

  • Nancy Price
    Nancy Price
    Nancy Price, CBE , was an English actress on stage and screen, authoress and theatre director. Her acting career began in a repertory theatre company before progressing to the London stage, silent films, talkies and finally television. In addition to appearing on stage she became involved in...

     (1880–1970)
  • Richard Price (poet)
    Richard Price (poet)
    Richard Price is a contemporary Scottish poet, novelist, and translator. -Life:He grew up in Renfrewshire.He studied at Napier College, in journalism, and graduated the University of Strathclyde in English and Librarianship, with a joint first.He earned a PhD at University of...

     (born 1966)
  • Matthew Prior
    Matthew Prior
    Matthew Prior was an English poet and diplomat.Prior was the son of a Nonconformist joiner at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr. Busby. On his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel...

     (1664–1721)
  • Pauline Prior-Pitt
    Pauline Prior-Pitt
    Pauline Prior-Pitt is a British poet who lives in North Uist, Scotland.- Personal life and career :Pauline lives in Grenitote in North Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.- Publications :...

  • J. H. Prynne
    J. H. Prynne
    Jeremy Halvard Prynne is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival.Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon...

  • Sheenagh Pugh
    Sheenagh Pugh
    Sheenagh Pugh is a British poet, novelist and translator who writes in the English language.-Life:Sheenagh Pugh studied languages at the University of Bristol. She now lives in Shetland but lived for many years in Cardiff and taught creative writing at the University of Glamorgan until retiring in...

     (born 1950)
  • Francis Quarles
    Francis Quarles
    Francis Quarles was an English poet most famous for his Emblem book aptly entitled Emblems.-Career:Francis was born in Romford, Essex, , and baptised there on 8 May 1592. He traced his ancestry to a family settled in England before the Norman Conquest with a long history in royal service...

     (1592–1644)

Ra-Ri

  • William Radice
    William Radice
    William Radice is a Poet, Writer and Translator.He is the Senior Lecturer in Bengali in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.His research area is in Bengali language and literature....

     (born 1951)
  • Craig Raine
    Craig Raine
    Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. Along with Christopher Reid, he is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.-Life:...

     (born 1944)
  • Kathleen Raine
    Kathleen Raine
    Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...

     (1908–2003)
  • Carl Rakosi
    Carl Rakosi
    Carl Rakosi was the last surviving member of the original group of poets who were given the rubric Objectivist. He was still publishing and performing his poetry well into his 90s.-Early life:...

     (1903–2004)
  • Sir Walter Raleigh
    Walter Raleigh
    Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....

     (1552–1618)
  • Dudley Randall
    Dudley Randall
    Dudley Randall was an African American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan. He founded a publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African American writers. Randall's most famous poem is "The Ballad of Birmingham", written during the 1960s, about...

     (1914–2000)
  • Julia Randall
    Julia Randall
    Julia Randall was an American poet.She was one of a number of female poets writing in English whose work retained rhyme and meter long past the time when they were considered fashionable by the U.S. poetry scene of the twentieth century...

     (1924–2005)
  • Thomas Randolph
    Thomas Randolph (poet)
    Thomas Randolph was an English poet and dramatist. He was baptized on 18 June 1605 and was the uncle of American colonist William Randolph.-Education:...

     (1605–1635)
  • Tom Raworth
    Tom Raworth
    Tom Raworth is a London-born poet and visual artist who has published over forty books of poetry and prose since 1966. His works has been translated and published in many countries. Raworth is a key figure in the British Poetry Revival. He lives in Brighton, England.-Early life and work:Raworth...

     (born 1938)
  • Henry Reed (1914–1986)
  • Ishmael Reed
    Ishmael Reed
    Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...

  • Abraham Regelson
    Abraham Regelson
    Abraham Regelson was a Hebrew poet, author, children's author, translator, and editor.-Biography:Abraham Regelson was born in Hlusk, now Belarus, in the Russian Empire in 1896, and died at his home in Neveh Monossohn, Israel in 1981...

     (1896–1981)
  • Joseph Relph
    Joseph Relph
    Joseph Relph was a Cumberland poet . His poetical works were first published in 1747 under the title of A Miscellany of Poems. They were edited by Thomas Sanderson, who supplied a biography of the author and a pastoral elegy on his death...

     (1712–1743),
  • Kenneth Rexroth
    Kenneth Rexroth
    Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...

     (1905–1982)
  • Charles Reznikoff
    Charles Reznikoff
    Charles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky provided his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of...

     (1894–1976)
  • Adrienne Rich
    Adrienne Rich
    Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

     (born 1929)
  • Lola Ridge
    Lola Ridge
    Lola Ridge was an anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences...

     (1873–1941)
  • Denise Riley
    Denise Riley
    Denise Riley is an English poet and philosopher who began to be published in the 1970s. Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, identity, and philosophy of language, are recognised as an...

  • John Riley
  • Peter Riley
    Peter Riley
    Peter Riley is a contemporary English poet, essayist, and editor. Riley is known as a Cambridge poet, part of the group vaguely associated with J. H. Prynne which today is acknowledged as an important epicenter of innovative poetry in the United Kingdom. Riley was an editor and major contributor...


Ro-Ru

  • Edwin Arlington Robinson
    Edwin Arlington Robinson
    Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.- Biography :Robinson was born in Head Tide, Lincoln County, Maine, but his family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870...

     (1869–1935)
  • Mary Robinson
    Mary Robinson
    Mary Therese Winifred Robinson served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate...

     (1758–1800)
  • Theodore Roethke
    Theodore Roethke
    Theodore Roethke was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking.-Biography:...

     (1908–1963)
  • Raymond Roseliep
    Raymond Roseliep
    Raymond Roseliep was a poet and contemporary master of the English haiku and Catholic priest. He has been described as "the John Donne of Western haiku."- Early life :...

     (1917–1983)
  • Franklin Rosemont
    Franklin Rosemont
    Franklin Rosemont was a poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group...

     (born 1943)
  • Penelope Rosemont
    Penelope Rosemont
    Penelope Rosemont , attended Lake Forest College. She has been a painter, photographer, collagist and writer, and "graphic designer for [Arsenal/Surrealist Subversions] and other...

  • Isaac Rosenberg
    Isaac Rosenberg
    Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets...

     (1890–1918)
  • Gabriel Rosenstock
    Gabriel Rosenstock
    Gabriel Rosenstock is an Irish poet, haiku writer, translator and author. He was born in Kilfinane, County Limerick in 1949. He currently resides in Dublin.-Biography:...

     (born 1949)
  • Christina Rossetti
    Christina Rossetti
    Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...

     (1830–1894)
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
    Dante Gabriel Rossetti
    Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

     (1828–1882)
  • Jerome Rothenberg
    Jerome Rothenberg
    Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known American poet, translator and anthologist who is noted for his work in ethnopoetics and poetry performance.-Early life and work:...

      (* 1931)
  • Nicholas Rowe
    Nicholas Rowe (dramatist)
    Nicholas Rowe , English dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1715.-Life:...

  • Richard Rowlands
    Richard Rowlands
    Richard Rowlands , Anglo-Dutch antiquary, whose real name was Verstegen , was the son of a cooper established in East London. His grandfather, Theodore Roland Verstegen, a Dutch emigrant, came from Gelderland to the Kingdom of England c...

     (1565–1630)

Sa-Si

  • Blanaid Salkeld
    Blanaid Salkeld
    Blanaid Salkeld was an Irish poet, dramatist, and actor, whose well-known literary salon was attended by, among others, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien...

     (2090–3199)
  • Fiona Sampson
    Fiona Sampson
    -Life :Born in London, Sampson grew up in the West Country, on the west coast of Wales and in Gloucestershire. She was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, and following a brief career as a concert violinist, studied at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate Prize...

     (born 1963)
  • Sonia Sanchez
    Sonia Sanchez
    Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books...

  • Carl Sandburg
    Carl Sandburg
    Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...

     (1878–1967)
  • May Sarton
    May Sarton
    May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton , an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.-Biography:...

     (1912–1995)
  • Siegfried Sassoon
    Siegfried Sassoon
    Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...

     (1886–1967)
  • Sir Walter Scott
    Walter Scott
    Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

     (1771–1832)
  • William Bell Scott
    William Bell Scott
    William Bell Scott was a Scottish poet and artist.-Life:The son of Robert Scott , the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, and he published verses in the Scottish magazines...

     (1811–1890)
  • Maurice Scully
    Maurice Scully
    Maurice Scully is an Irish poet who works in the modernist tradition. Scully was born in Dublin & educated at Trinity College.Scully's books include Love Poems & Others , 5 Freedoms of Movement , Steps , Livelihood , Sonata, , Tig and Humming...

  • Sir Charles Sedley
    Charles Sedley
    Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet was an English wit, dramatist and politician, ending his career as Speaker of the House of Commons.-Life:...

     (1639–1701)
  • Nina Serrano
    Nina Serrano
    Nina Serrano is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Oakland, California. She is the author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools...

     (born 1934)
  • Robert W. Service
    Robert W. Service
    Robert William Service was a poet and writer who has often been called "the Bard of the Yukon".Service is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough...

  • Anne Sexton
    Anne Sexton
    Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967...

     (1928–1974)
  • William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

     (1564–1616)
  • Ntozake Shange
    Ntozake Shange
    Ntozake Shange born October 18, 1948, is an American playwright, and poet. As a self proclaimed black feminist, much of the content of her work addresses issues relating to race and feminism....

     (born 1948)
  • Jo Shapcott
    Jo Shapcott
    Jo Shapcott FRSL, is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.-Career:...

  • Karl Shapiro
    Karl Shapiro
    Karl Jay Shapiro was an American poet. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.-Biography:...

     (1913–2000)
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

     (1792–1822)
  • William Shenstone
    William Shenstone
    William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.-Life:...

  • James Shirley
    James Shirley
    James Shirley was an English dramatist.He belonged to the great period of English dramatic literature, but, in Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly...

     (1596–1666)
  • Sir Philip Sidney
    Philip Sidney
    Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...

     (1554–1586)
  • Eli Siegel
    Eli Siegel
    Eli Siegel was the poet and critic who founded the philosophy Aesthetic Realism in 1941. He wrote the award-winning poem, "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana", two highly acclaimed volumes of poetry, a critical consideration of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw titled James and the Children,...

     (1902–1978)
  • Ron Silliman
    Ron Silliman
    Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...

     (born 1946)
  • Shel Silverstein
    Shel Silverstein
    Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein , was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books...

     (1930–1999)
  • Iain Sinclair
    Iain Sinclair
    Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...

  • Edith Sitwell
    Edith Sitwell
    Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...

     (1887–1964)

Sk-Sq

  • Beau Sia
    Beau Sia
    -Biography:Sia was born in Ohio. He is of Chinese-Filipino descent. Raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Sia discovered spoken word poetry on MTV as a teenager...

     (born 1976)
  • John Skelton
    John Skelton
    John Skelton, also known as John Shelton , possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet.-Education:...

     (1460–1529)
  • Myra Sklarew
    Myra Sklarew
    Myra Sklarew is an American biologist, poet and teacher.-Life:She received a biology degree from Tufts University, in 1956. She studied bacterial genetics and bacterial viruses with Salvador Luria and Max Delbruck at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory...

  • Alexander Smith (poet)
    Alexander Smith (poet)
    Alexander Smith was a Scottish poet, and labelled as one of the Spasmodic School.-Life and works:...

     (1830–1867)
  • Charlotte Turner Smith
    Charlotte Turner Smith
    Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....

     (1749–1806)
  • Marc Smith
  • Rod Smith
    Rod Smith (poet)
    Rod Smith, who was born in Gallipolis, Ohio in 1962, is an American poet, editor and publisher. He grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to Washington, DC in 1987. Smith has authored several collections of poetry, including In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, and Music or Honesty. He...

  • Patti Smith
    Patti Smith
    Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....

  • Stevie Smith
    Stevie Smith
    Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith was an English poet and novelist.-Life:Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. Contemporary Women Poets...

     (1902–1971)
  • Tracy K. Smith
    Tracy K. Smith
    Tracy K. Smith is an African American poet and educator. She has published three collections of poetry. About her most recent collection, Life on Mars , Joel Brouwer wrote: "Smith shows herself to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition......

  • Tobias Smollett
    Tobias Smollett
    Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...

     (1721–1771)
  • Gary Snyder
    Gary Snyder
    Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

  • William Somervile
    William Somervile
    William Somervile or Somerville was an English poet.-Ancestry:The name Somervile is derived from a town near Caen in Normandy subsequently named Somervile....

  • Charles Sorley
    Charles Sorley
    Charles Hamilton Sorley was a British poet of World War I.Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, he was the son of William Ritchie Sorley. He was educated, like Siegfried Sassoon, at Marlborough College...

     (1895–1915)
  • William Soutar
    William Soutar
    William Soutar was a Scottish poet, born 1898. He served in the navy in World War I, and afterwards studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he encountered the work of Hugh MacDiarmid. This led to a radical alteration in his work, and he became a leading poet of the Scottish Literary...

     (1898–1946)
  • Robert Southey
    Robert Southey
    Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...

     (1774–1843)
  • Robert Southwell (1561–1595)
  • Wole Soyinka
    Wole Soyinka
    Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...

     (born 1934)
  • Anne Spencer
    Anne Spencer
    Annie Bethel Spencer was an American Black poet and active participant in the New Negro Movement and Harlem Renaissance period....

  • Stephen Spender
    Stephen Spender
    Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...

  • Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

     (1552–1599)
  • Geoffrey Squires
    Geoffrey Squires
    Geoffrey Squires is an Irish poet who works in what might loosely be termed the modernist tradition.-Early life:While born in Derry, he grew up in County Donegal, Republic of Ireland...


St-Sy

  • Frank Stanford
    Frank Stanford
    Frank Stanford was a prolific American poet. He is most known for his epic, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You— a labyrinthine, highly lexical book absent stanzas and punctuation...

  • William Stafford
  • Gertrude Stein
    Gertrude Stein
    Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

  • Gerald Stern
    Gerald Stern
    Gerald Stern is an American poet. His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life, which was that year's Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review. He has subsequently been given many prestigious awards for his...

  • Ricardo Sternberg
    Ricardo Sternberg
    Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg is a Canadian poet.Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sternberg moved to the United States with his family when he was fifteen. He received a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Riverside and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from...

  • Wallace Stevens
    Wallace Stevens
    Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

     (1880–1955)
  • Robert Louis Stevenson
    Robert Louis Stevenson
    Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

     (1850–1894)
  • Mark Strand
    Mark Strand
    Mark Strand is an American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. Since 2005, he has been a professor of English at Columbia University.- Biography :...

  • Sir John Suckling
    John Suckling (poet)
    Sir John Suckling was an English poet and one prominent figure among those renowned for careless gaiety, wit, and all the accomplishments of a Cavalier poet; and also the inventor of the card game Cribbage...

     (1609–1642)
  • A.M. Sullivan (1896–1980)
  • Paul Summers (poet)
    Paul Summers (poet)
    Paul Summers is an English poet who was born in Blyth, Northumberland and currently residing in Emu Park. Summers was a founding co-editor of the following magazines: Billy Liar and Liar Republic.-Bibliography:...

     (born 1967)
  • Robert Sward
    Robert Sward
    Robert Sward is an American and Canadian poet and novelist. Jack Foley, in his Introduction to Sward's Collected Poems, 1957-2004 calls him, "in truth, a citizen, at heart, of both countries...

     (born 1933)
  • George Swede
    George Swede
    George Swede , is a Canadian psychologist, poet and children's writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario...

     (born 1940)
  • May Swenson
    May Swenson
    Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson was an American poet and playwright...

  • Jonathan Swift
    Jonathan Swift
    Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

     (1667–1745)
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne
    Algernon Charles Swinburne
    Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...

     (1837–1909)
  • Bobbi Sykes
    Bobbi Sykes
    Roberta "Bobbi" Sykes was an Australian poet and author...

     (born 1945)
  • Joshua Sylvester
    Joshua Sylvester
    Joshua Sylvester was an English poet.-Biography:Sylvester was the son of a Kentish clothier. In his tenth year he was sent to school at King Edward VI School, Southampton, where he gained a knowledge of French...

     (1563–1618)
  • Arthur Symons
    Arthur Symons
    Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...

     (1865–1945)

T-V

  • Barry Tebb
    Barry Tebb
    Barry Tebb is an English poet, publisher and author. He was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire in 1942.His poetry was first published by Alan Tarling's 'Poet and Printer Press' in the sixties, along with Ted Hughes, Michael Longley and Ian Crichton Smith...

     (born 1942)
  • Eileen Tabios
    Eileen Tabios
    Eileen Tabios is an award-winning Filipino-American poet, fiction writer, conceptual/visual artist, editor, anthologist, critic, and publisher....

  • F. W. Tancred
    F. W. Tancred
    Francis Willoughby Tancred was an English poet associated with the Poets' Club, a group of writers, established by T. E. Hulme, who were the forerunners of the Imagist movement. They carried out practical studies on Chinese poetry and haiku. Tancred's own influence on the genre has been relatively...

  • Dorothea Tanning
    Dorothea Tanning
    Dorothea Tanning is an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She has also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre.-Biography:...

     (born 1910)
  • Allen Tate
    Allen Tate
    John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...

     (1899–1979)
  • Edward Taylor
    Edward Taylor
    Edward Taylor was a colonial American poet, pastor and physician.-Early life:...

     (1645–1729)
  • Sara Teasdale
    Sara Teasdale
    Sara Teasdale , was an American lyrical poet. She was born Sara Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and after her marriage in 1914 she went by the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger.-Biography:...

     (1883–1933)
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
  • Fiona Templeton
    Fiona Templeton
    Fiona Templeton is an experimental director, playwright, poet and performer. Born in Scotland in 1951, she co-founded London's Theatre of Mistakes in the 70s and lived for many years in the East Village of Manhattan. Her performance work includes the pioneering urban theatrical journey, You-The...

  • Lucy Terry
    Lucy Terry
    Lucy Terry is the author of the oldest known work of literature by an African American.Terry was stolen from Africa and sold into slavery as an infant...

  • Celia Thaxter
    Celia Thaxter
    Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories. She was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.-Life and work:...

     (1824–1894)
  • Ernest Thayer
    Ernest Thayer
    Ernest Lawrence Thayer was an American writer and poet who wrote "Casey at the Bat".-Biography:Thayer was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts and raised in Worcester. He graduated magna cum laude in philosophy from Harvard in 1885, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon...

     (1863–1940)
  • William Thom (poet) (1799–1848)
  • Dylan Thomas
    Dylan Thomas
    Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

     (1914–1953)
  • Edward Thomas
    Edward Thomas (poet)
    Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914...

     (1878–1917)
  • R. S. Thomas (1913–2000)
  • Francis Thompson
    Francis Thompson
    Francis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, Poems in 1893...

     (1859–1907)
  • James Thomson (B.V.)
    James Thomson (B.V.)
    James Thomson , who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night , an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment.-Life:Thomson was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, and, after...

     (1834–1882)
  • James Thomson (poet) (Seasons)
  • Henry David Thoreau
    Henry David Thoreau
    Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

     (1817–1862)
  • Tim Thorne
    Tim Thorne
    Tim Thorne is a contemporary Australian poet.Thorne lives in Launceston, Tasmania. He is the author of ten volumes of poetry, the most recent being Best Bitter in 2006 and I Con in 2008....

  • Chidiock Tichborne
    Chidiock Tichborne
    Chidiock Tichborne is remembered as an English conspirator and poet.-Biography:He was born in Southampton sometime after 24 August 1562 to Roman Catholic parents, Peter Tichborne and his wife Elizabeth . His birth date has been given as circa 1558 in many sources, though unverified, and thus...

     (1558–1586)
  • Thomas Tickell
    Thomas Tickell
    Thomas Tickell was a minor English poet and man of letters.-Life:The son of a clergyman, he was born at Bridekirk near Cockermouth, Cumberland. He was educated at St Bees School 1695-1701, and in 1701 entered the Queen's College, Oxford, taking his M.A. degree in 1709...

  • Mary Tighe
    Mary Tighe
    Mary Tighe , was an Anglo-Irish poet.She was born in Dublin to Theodosia Tighe, a Methodist leader, and William Blachford , a Church of Ireland clergyman and librarian...

     (1772–1810)
  • Nick Toczek
    Nick Toczek
    Nick Toczek is a British writer and performer working variously as poet, journalist, magician, vocalist, lyricist and radio broadcaster. He was raised in Bradford and then took a degree in Industrial Metallurgy at Birmingham University where he began reading and publishing his poetry...

     (born 1950)
  • John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973)
  • Melvin B. Tolson
    Melvin B. Tolson
    Melvin Beaunorus Tolson was an American Modernist poet, educator, columnist, and politician. His work concentrated on the experience of African Americans and includes several long historical poems. His work was influenced by his study of the Harlem Renaissance, although he spent nearly all of...

  • Jean Toomer
    Jean Toomer
    Jean Toomer was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His first book Cane is considered by many as his most significant.-Early life:...

  • Angela Topping
    Angela Topping
    Angela Topping is a British poet, literary critic and author. She has published three solo poetry collections, Dandelions for Mothers' Day , The Fiddle and The Way We Came ....

     (born 1954)
  • Thomas Traherne
    Thomas Traherne
    Thomas Traherne, MA was an English poet and religious writer. His style is often considered Metaphysical.-Life:...

  • Roland Michel Tremblay
    Roland Michel Tremblay
    Roland Michel Tremblay is a French Canadian author, poet, scriptwriter, development producer and science-fiction consultant. He has been living in London since 1995.- Biography :...

     (born 1972)
  • Quincy Troupe
    Quincy Troupe
    Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr., , is a poet, editor, journalist-Early life:The son of Negro League baseball catcher Quincy Trouppe , Troupe Jr. attended Grambling State University on a baseball scholarship...

  • Gael Turnbull
    Gael Turnbull
    Gael Turnbull was a Scottish poet who was an important precursor of the British Poetry Revival.Turnbull was born in Edinburgh and grew up in the North of England and in Canada...

  • Julian Turner
    Julian Turner
    Julian Turner is a British poet and mental health worker. Turner was born in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, then moved to Cheshire in 1955...

     (born 1955)
  • Hone Tuwhare
    Hone Tuwhare
    Hone Tuwhare was a noted New Zealand poet of Māori ancestry. He is closely associated with The Catlins in the Otago region of New Zealand, where he lived for the latter part of his life.-Early years:...

     (born 1922)
  • Chase Twichell
    Chase Twichell
    Chase Twichell is an American poet, professor, and publisher, the founder in 1999, of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, which earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award....

     (born 1950)
  • John Updike
    John Updike
    John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

  • Allen Upward
    Allen Upward
    Allen Upward was a poet, lawyer, politician and teacher. His work was included in the first anthology of Imagist poetry, Des Imagistes, which was edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914....

    , Imagist
  • Cor van den Heuvel
    Cor Van Den Heuvel
    Cor van den Heuvel is an American haiku poet, editor, commentator and archivist.-Biography:Van den Heuvel was born in Biddeford, Maine, and grew up in Maine and New Hampshire. He lives in New York City with his wife Leonia Leigh Larrecq....

     (born 1931)
  • Henry Vaughan
    Henry Vaughan
    Henry Vaughan was a Welsh physician and metaphysical poet.Vaughan and his twin brother the hermetic philosopher and alchemist Thomas Vaughan, were the sons of Thomas Vaughan and his wife Denise of 'Trenewydd', Newton, in Brecknockshire, Wales...

     (1621–1695)
  • Janine Pommy Vega
    Janine Pommy Vega
    Janine Pommy Vega was an American poet associated with the Beats.Vega grew up in Union City, New Jersey. At the age of sixteen, inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, she travelled to Manhattan to become involved in the Beat scene there.In 1962, Vega moved to Europe with her husband, painter...

  • Jones Very
    Jones Very
    Jones Very was an American essayist, poet, clergymen, and mystic associated with the American Transcendentalism movement. He was known as a scholar of William Shakespeare and many of his poems were Shakespearean sonnets...

     (1813–1880)

Wa-We

  • Diane Wakoski
    Diane Wakoski
    Diane Wakoski is a American poet who is primarily associated with the deep image poets, as well as the confessional and Beat poets of the 1960s.-Biography:...

  • Derek Walcott
    Derek Walcott
    Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...

     (born 1930)
  • Anne Waldman
    Anne Waldman
    Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....

  • Rosmarie Waldrop
    Rosmarie Waldrop
    Rosmarie Waldrop is a contemporary American poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958. She has lived in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s...

  • Keith Waldrop
    Keith Waldrop
    Keith Waldrop is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, and has translated the work of Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, and Edmond Jabès, among others. A recent translation is Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal .With his wife Rosmarie Waldrop, he co-edits Burning Deck Press...

  • Alice Walker
    Alice Walker
    Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

     (born 1944)
  • Margaret Walker
    Margaret Walker
    Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander was an African-American poet and writer. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she wrote as Margaret Walker. One of her best-known poems is For My People.-Biography:...

  • Rob Walker (poet)
    Rob Walker (poet)
    Rob Walker new article content ...Rob Walker is a contemporary Australian poet and writer. His poetry has been published widely in magazines, journals, anthologies and online since the mid 1990s. His work has been translated into Arabic , Spanish and Dutch , text-published in English in France ...

     (born 1953)
  • Mark Wallace
    Mark Wallace
    Mark Alexander Wallace is a Welsh cricketer; a left-handed batsman and wicket-keeper....

  • Edmund Waller
    Edmund Waller
    Edmund Waller, FRS was an English poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1624 and 1679.- Early life :...

     (1606–1687)
  • Agnes Walsh
    Agnes Walsh
    Agnes Walsh is a Canadian actor, poet, playwright and storyteller from Newfoundland.Walsh has won Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters awards for poetry as well as TickleAce poetry and ballad writing awards. Her poems have been translated into French and Portuguese...

  • Sarah Wardle
    Sarah Wardle
    Sarah Wardle was born in London in 1969, and educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College. She studied Classics at Lincoln College, Oxford and English at Sussex University. She was President of Oxford University Conservative Association during Trinity term, 1989. In 1999, she won the Geoffrey Dearmer...

     (born 1969)
  • Robert Penn Warren
    Robert Penn Warren
    Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

     (1905–1989)
  • Thomas Warton
    Thomas Warton
    Thomas Warton was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. From 1785 to 1790 he was the Poet Laureate of England...

     (1728–1790)
  • Isaac Watts
    Isaac Watts
    Isaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...

     (1674–1748)
  • Barrett Watten
    Barrett Watten
    Barrett Watten is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets.Since 1994, Watten has taught modernism and cultural studies at Wayne State University in Detroit...

     (born 1948)
  • John Webster
    John Webster
    John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...

     (died 1630)
  • Hannah Weiner
    Hannah Weiner
    Hannah Adelle Weiner was an American poet who is often grouped with the Language poets because of the prominent place she assumed in the poetics of that group.- Early life and writings :...

  • Marjorie Welish
    Marjorie Welish
    Marjorie Welish is an American poet, artist, and art critic.Welish is a graduate of Columbia University and received her M.F.A. degree from Vermont College and Norwich University...


Wh-Wy

  • Gordon Wharton
    Gordon Wharton
    Gordon Wharton is a British poet.He left school aged 14 and says that anything he knows now was self-taught...

     (born 1929)
  • Phillis Wheatley
    Phillis Wheatley
    Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published. Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was sold into slavery at age seven...

     (1753–1784)
  • Walt Whitman
    Walt Whitman
    Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

     (1819–1892)
  • John Greenleaf Whittier
    John Greenleaf Whittier
    John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...

     (1807–1892)
  • Les Wicks
    Les Wicks
    Les Wicks is an Australian poet, publisher and editor. He has a long list of achievements in writing, publishing and broadcasting. This includes the publication of eight books of poetry.-Life:...

     (born 1955)
  • Richard Wilbur
    Richard Wilbur
    Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....

     (born 1921)
  • Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

     (1854–1900)
  • John Wilkinson
    John Wilkinson (poet)
    John Wilkinson is a contemporary English poet.From 1972 to 1975, he studied English at Jesus College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, where he founded, with Charlie Bulbeck and Charles Lambert, the Blue Room, a society devoted to the propagation of poetry and the other fine arts.His first publication,...

     (born 1953)
  • William of Shoreham
    William of Shoreham
    William of Shoreham was an English poet.Little is known of his life, but he probably lived in Shoreham, Kent and was vicar of Chart . Seven poems in English are attributed to him, all contained in a single manuscript now in the British Library...

     (14th century)
  • Emmett Williams
    Emmett Williams
    Emmett Williams was an American poet and visual artist.Williams was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and grew up in Virginia, and lived in Europe from 1949 to 1966...

     (1925–2007)
  • Hugo Williams
    Hugo Williams
    Hugo Williams is a British poet, journalist and travel writer. His full name is Hugh Mordaunt Vyner Williams He is the son of actor Hugh Williams and the model and actress Margaret Vyner, who co-wrote some upper-middle-class comedies in the late 1950s...

     (born 1942)
  • Oscar Williams
    Oscar Williams
    Oscar Williams was an American anthologist and poet. Oscar Williams was his pen name.-Life:He was born Oscar Kaplan in Letychiv, Ukraine, son of Jewish parents Mouzya Kaplan and Chana Rapoport...

     (1900–1964)
  • Saul Williams
    Saul Williams
    Saul Stacey Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.-Biography:...

     (born 1972)
  • Sherley Anne Williams
    Sherley Anne Williams
    Sherley Anne Williams was born in Bakersfield, California and was an African-American poet. Many of her works tell stories about her life in the African-American community. When she was little her family picked cotton in order to get money. At the age of eight her father died of tuberculosis and...

     (1944–1999)
  • William Carlos Williams
    William Carlos Williams
    William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

     (1883–1963)
  • Frank S. Williamson
    Frank S. Williamson
    Francis Samuel Williamson was an Australian poet who was published under the name Frank S. Williamson.-Early life:Williamson was the son of an English-born coachmaker and his Scottish wife...

     (1865–1936)
  • Elizabeth Willis
    Elizabeth Willis
    Elizabeth Willis is an American poet, literary critic and professor of literature and creative writing at Wesleyan University. Her most notable work includes four major books of poetry and a scholarly collection of essays on Lorine Niedecker which she edited...

     (born 1961)
  • John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
    John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
    John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester , styled Viscount Wilmot between 1652 and 1658, was an English Libertine poet, a friend of King Charles II, and the writer of much satirical and bawdy poetry. He was the toast of the Restoration court and a patron of the arts...

     (1647–1680)
  • Peter Lamborn Wilson
    Peter Lamborn Wilson
    Peter Lamborn Wilson , is an American political writer, essayist, and poet, known for first proposing the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone , based, in part, on a historical review of pirate utopias...

     (born 1945)
  • George Wither
    George Wither
    George Wither was an English poet, pamphleteer, and satirist. He was a prolific writer who adopted a deliberate plainness of style; he was several times imprisoned. C. V...

     (1588–1667)
  • Charles Wolfe
    Charles Wolfe (poet)
    Charles Wolfe was an Irish poet, chiefly remembered for his "exquisite elegy", The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna-Family:...

     (1791–1823)
  • Dorothy Wordsworth
    Dorothy Wordsworth
    Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives...

     (1771–1855)
  • William Wordsworth
    William Wordsworth
    William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

     (1770–1850)
  • Sir Henry Wotton
    Henry Wotton
    Sir Henry Wotton was an English author and diplomat. He is often quoted as saying, "An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." -Life:The son of Thomas Wotton , brother of Edward Wotton, 1st Baron Wotton, and grandnephew of the diplomat...

     (1568–1639)
  • C. D. Wright
    C. D. Wright
    Carolyn D. "C. D." Wright is an American poet.-Biography:Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas to a chancery judge and a court reporter. She earned a BA from Memphis State College in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which...

     (born 1949)
  • Judith Wright
    Judith Wright
    Judith Arundell Wright was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.-Biography:...

     (1915–2000)
  • Kirby Wright
    Kirby Wright
    Kirby Wright is an American writer best known for his coming of age island novel PUNAHOU BLUES and the epic novel "MOLOKA'I NUI AHINA," which is based on the life and times of Wright's paniolo grandmother...

  • Robert Wrigley
    Robert Wrigley
    Robert Wrigley is an American poet and educator.His most recent book is Beautiful Country'. Other collections include Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems Lives of the Animals ; Reign of Snakes ; In the Bank of Beautiful Sins ; What My Father Believed ; Moon in a...

     (born 1951)
  • Thomas Wyatt
    Thomas Wyatt (poet)
    Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English. He was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent – though his family was originally from Yorkshire...

     (1503–1542)

X-Z

  • W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)
  • Edward Young
    Edward Young
    Edward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.-Early life:He was the son of Edward Young, later Dean of Salisbury, and was born at his father's rectory at Upham, near Winchester, where he was baptized on 3 July 1683. He was educated at Winchester College, and matriculated...

     (1683–1765)
  • Benjamin Zephaniah
    Benjamin Zephaniah
    Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is an English writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English literature, and was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008....

     (born 1958)
  • Louis Zukofsky
    Louis Zukofsky
    Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...

     (1904–1978)

Lists of English language poets by nationality


See also

  • English poetry
    English poetry
    The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...

  • List of poets
  • List of women poets
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