Inspiration comes in short, clunky bursts. Thus, poetry breaks from life are important and necessary. On the worst of days, I’ve found myself reaching out for a soft poem to lie in. Poetry by women feels ensconced in blankets of sharp imagery and quieter understanding. Amidst words by female poets, the world is so much more fulfilling.
Escapism is not all that great on a full-time basis, but a poem a day does make my heart sing (or breaks it). Either way, I take a healthy dose of satisfaction in being led around by a poet. Poets know how to tread the delicate world between fantasy and reality. In their footsteps, we bring to you a list of female poets:
1. Mary Oliver
Prescribes: Wild Geese, When Death Comes
Most people end up in Mary Oliver’s world via Wild Geese. Disreputably, it remains a crowd favorite till date. While among best women poets of all time, Mary Oliver has proven why she has been revered as one among the greatest women poets.
Her simplistic poetry leans into the natural world. Her writing was influenced by Millay’s work. Precise articulation of the intersection where human life meets the natural world led Oliver to the Pulitzer. When Death Comes is a reminder to open our arms and live life fully. To focus on magic rather than fear.
2. Emily Dickinson
Prescribes: “Hope” Is A Thing With Feathers,“Faith” Is A Fine Invention
There is no formal middle-school English education without a Dickinson poem. What is overlooked is how much she challenged conventionality in poetry. Alongside Barrett Browning and Brontë, she gave her personas meaning without confinement. Employing language in its elliptical form, she birthed her own style.
“Faith” Is A Fine Invention dictates Dickinson’s wit through carefully chosen words. Her trust in her readers is sincere. Once you notice the details, you cannot help searching for the hidden truth. Like how “faith” stands in as a limit without actually setting one. Turns out, reading poetry is similar to a sleuth-in-training.
3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Prescribes: How do I love thee?, A Musical Instrument
Come 19th century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning awed everyone with her courage in writing. Appealed to as Wordsworth’s successor, her liberal views manifested in work. Though she had difficulties, familial support kept her writing. By 1844, she was admired more as an international celebrity than a poet.
Correspondence with Hugh Stuart Boyd rekindled her interest in classical Greek literature. In A Musical Instrument, with God Pan as the subject, she employed use of story-like language. Using commonplace notions of self-absorbed Greek gods, she presents a ruthless image as is. Her style inspires us to look beyond the typical structures of poetry.
4. Maya Angelou
Prescribes: Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise
Angelou’s poems rely on personal history, and Still I Rise is often credited to the celebration of African-American women resilience. Critiqued for lack of technique, her work proves otherwise. She continues to be revered among other contemporary female black poets.
The poem Still I Rise is rooted in its assertion of resilience and dignity of those marginalized. Marked self-assurance in every line boosts self-confidence. Angelou’s words carry a resonating effect, and a quiet reassurance in belief.
5. Sylvia Plath
We prescribe: Lady Lazarus, Ode On A Bitten Plum
In the 1950 November Issue of the Seventeen Magazine, a (then) little-known poem by Plath was published. While it is not difficult to fathom how she ended up on a list among female poets who killed themselves, her earlier work is lighter in comparison.
For that reason, Ode On A Bitten Plum is a glimpse of Plath’s teenage writing. Her later works are more mature and confessional, doused in mental anguish. Using plain imagery, the poem relies on sensory experience. Plath attempts to trace a transformation from innocence. The poem itself can be seen as a practice in trying to further her writing ability.
A controversial poet in her time, Plath was revered for the same. If you’ve read The Bell Jar, you know that she wrote deeply, doing away with platitudes. She put immense pressure on herself and her work, exploring heavier darker themes. They mostly revolved around turbulent relationships, and self-fulfilling prophecies she placed on herself. Her journal entries, published posthumously, continue to be idolized.
RELATED READING: 15 Inspirational Poems About Life To Uplift Your Soul
6. Adrienne Rich
Prescribes: Diving Into The Wreck, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
I came across Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers in my high school textbook. The image of her ring haunts me to this day. Her works resurfaced, in the form of Snapshots Of A Daughter-in-Law, in college. Ambitious in her poetic ventures, her works explore themes surrounding sexuality, identity and politics.
Critics’ notable remarks have included open writing, marking her language “non-poetic.” Rich’s preeminent efforts in feminist literature, A Human Eye: Essays In Art And Society, gained publicity. She refused the National Medal for Arts for political reasons.
7. Gwendolyn Brooks
Prescribes: We Real Cool, kitchenette building
If the above lines are familiar, you would know the impact Brooks had as a poet among women in poetry history. A widely-read 20th-century American poet, she was the first among female black poets to win the Pulitzer. Through her writing, she discovered ways to reconcile and redeem her identity. Fellow poets and writers admire her commitment to community, and as Poet Laureate.
Set in 1940s Chicago, kitchenette building reeks of racial discrimination. Depicting the endless cycle of penury, it proves how structural racism is responsible for the death of dreams. Why then is it supposedly inspiring? The way we see it, Brooks followed the most basic rule to get into writing: write what is in front of you. That led her to further creation, and ultimately her own place.
8. Christina Rossetti
Prescribes: A Birthday, Vanity Of Vanities
Rossetti’s background is steeped in the intellectual society of her Italian poet father Gabriele Rossetti and mother, Frances Polidori. Home-schooled, she was exposed to the world of writing at a very young age. Often compared to Barrett Browning, she was admired for her lyrical expertise in diction and tone.
There is nothing like Rossetti’s poem to bring us a taste of philosophy, with spoonfuls of decay and mortality. Laced with impermanence, Vanity Of Vanities highlights the futility of human effort in the face of inevitable end. We tend to get hung up on purpose, on fulfillment of some greater good.
This is where the poem offers a raft. It reminds us that we gain the most only when we experience, rather than when we tend to judge.
9. Carol Ann Duffy
We prescribe: Valentine, The Way My Mother Speaks
Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish award-winning poet, best known for her monologue love poems. She was almost awarded the role as Poet Laureate, but was rejected on the basis of public reception as a lesbian nominee. Her writing continued to move people, even outside poetry circles. Her work is received with much vigor due to high acclaim among critics.
Her collection The World’s Wife, subverting mythology and history in favor of the female species is full of original thought. Indulgent in humor and wit, Valentine is a straight-forward love poem listing out reasons for the unusual gift of an onion. Safe to say, we are free to dream.
10. Toru Dutt
Prescribes: Love Came To Flora Asking For A Flower, Our Casuarina Tree
Exploring the fundamental lines that intersect story-telling and relationships, Dutt’s fascination for the world reflects in writing. Steeped in symbolism and nostalgia, Our Casuarina Tree reads like a trip down memory lane. Tracing the path through her happy Indian childhood, Dutt embraces memory in its subjective form.
Dutt manifested the tree as a tribute to her childhood and home. The poem’s vivid descriptions are a reminder of how poets are simple creatures. Attuning sensitivity in the face of strong emotions resulting in such tender poems, cannot be an easy feat. It is a call to action, to turn inwards and revel in the worlds that end up on paper.
RELATED READING: 15 Poems That Heal Grieving Hearts
11. Anne Carson
Prescribes: The Glass Essay, Pinplay
For a multi-faceted, sly voice, Carson’s works would appeal and she is known as one of the best poets of the 21st century. Her Pinplay is a clever dark reimagining of Euripides’ Greek play, The Bacchae. Encasing devastation in humor, Pinplay offers a “genius spoof” of the original tragedy in modern vernacular. Titularly, the pins also stand to thematically represent “pinning” down the truth. Part of her first collection Float, it challenges conventional forms of both poems and plays.
The inspiration in Carson’s works isn’t limited to the product of her labor. It offers motivation to understand rules (of poetry and life), and to go beyond them. Her witty infusion of non-chronology presents an accidental, non-linear reading experience. The rediscovery of joy amidst shock is a recurring theme we ought to learn from.
12. Louise Glück
Prescribe: Ararat, The Wild Iris
Making individual experience universal, Glück is revered for treating sensitive topics with utmost grace. Several awards serve as proof. Containing existential questioning that stems from failed relationships and social encounters, her works trace the agony of one’s self. The best part about her poems is that they feel like warm invitations.
To read her work is like sitting down with a friend who listens: you are allowed to explore intimate, sincere feelings without any judgment. Further collections have proven that she can draw blood, but that she chooses not to – a coveted combination for a poet in the 21st century.
While The Wild Iris is a personified death poem of the iris, it is also one of hope. Embracing transformation and rebirth, Glück intentionally uses punctuation to slow down the reader. It hones in on the specific ability to communicate an experience. While humanity is assured of death’s inevitability, the iris appeals to impermanence as a mere stage of life.
13. Ada Limón
Prescribes: Instructions On Not Giving Up, Calling Things What They Are
Reiterating the weight in a name; especially, in calling things by their names (as opposed to description), Calling Things What They Are is a gentle reminder to come home, back to yourself. Operating on an ordinary principle, there is focus. Where there is focus, it is easy to call forth gratitude. To see things as they are, and have the courage to call them by name.
Limón’s writing has always captured hearts. Her poem collections, with their striking titles seem autobiographical, capturing memories chronologically. It displays maturity, and makes it more accessible.
14. Charlotte Brontë
Prescribes: Evening Solace, Winter Stores
With a partly Irish lineage, Charlotte Brontë has been a largely influential figure since the Victorian period. Known for her proficiency among female poets, she gave up writing poetry after the success of Jane Eyre. Her shifting taste was largely due to marketability of genres.
Her earlier writing was perceived as immature, ambitious though it was. She took to imitating poetic styles from before (and during) her time, but it was reminiscent of her enthusiasm for such self-conscious writing.
You might not notice this (yet another) grief poem until the second reading, but that proves the point. Written alongside themes of deep retrospection and solitude, it poses a contrast to life’s public chaos. The reading of the poem permits slowing down. As intense grief is met with gentle melancholy for all that is lost, it believes in time’s healing power.
15. Audre Lorde
Prescribes: Never To Dream Of Spiders, Power
Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet is how Lorde defines herself. Her place in white academia informed her life (and writing). Contributing to theories of critical race, feminist, and the queer, marginalization was a leading cause of concern. She actively participated in several liberalist movements among other activist poets. Her work is known for its revolutionary call to personal, social and political justice.
Never to Dream of Spiders is a presentation of the personal inner world. It addresses grief and loss metaphorically, highlighting a reinvention of self. Painting a vivid picture of the trail grief leaves behind, movement is blatantly posed.
The symbolic and titular “spiders” imagine rebuilding from a sort of brokenness. The weight of grief is validated in its mourning. It credits the act of mourning in acceptance. Though clarity in understanding can be slow and frustrating, it redeems itself as deep sincerity for oneself.
RELATED READING: 10 Best Books On Loneliness To Feel Understood & Connected
16. Wendy Cope
Prescribes: Some Rules, The Month Of May
Renewal is often left to spring, but not for Wendy Cope. Following Thomas Dekker’s The Merry Month, she cleverly incorporates form and style. Adopting a humorous tone, Cope’s The Month Of May is often regarded as the joyful counterpart to Geoffrey Ewart’s British Weather.
The shift in mood is evident, as is the zest for life. While the lines drip with optimism, the final stanza reiterates the gift of the present. Cope’s first poetry book, Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis, was a great success in the UK.
Critics compared her talent to that of Byron’s. Recipient of several awards, she has also authored prose collections. She might be more familiar to you as her poem, The Orange, has been making rounds on the Internet.
17. Diane Seuss
Prescribes: Romantic Poet, Ballad From The Soundhole Of An Unstrung Guitar
Confronting the starving artist, Seuss’s Ballad From The Soundhole Of An Unstrung Guitar depicts its picture. Reeking of trouble and fortitude, the determination of a “starving artist” lies in perseverance. It suggests that magic of a creator can come from any place.
She appears as “the final modern poet,” stringing along styles relating to Keats, Hopkins, Stevens and Plath. Upholding Romantics’ ideals in writing, Seuss is unafraid of getting her hands dirty. Her poems are wrought in self-deprecating humor that takes away rose-colored glasses that line ideas of idealized love, academia, and splendor.
18. Marina Tsvetaeva
Prescribes: After A Sleepless Night, I Am Happy Living Simply
Marina Tsvetaeva, a Russian-born poet, is renowned for her work turbulent with Russian history. Though her circumstances did not provide the kind of environs where creativity would thrive, her poetry is passionate. In her swift writing style, they offer an unusual syntax. Translators and critics praise her notable efforts to maintain and portray the experiences of women.
I Am Happy Living Simply can be seen as a celebration to contentment in a minimalist life. Personal obligations to the outside world are rejected, turning to favor sufficient happiness found in solitude and reflection. Small joys everyday are offered as token messages.
19. Marie Howe
Prescribes: What The Living Do, What Belongs To Us
Read one poem with a body of water, a photograph, or an entity hinting a violent passage of time. Then, tell me it does not scream of transience. Titularly ironic, What Belongs To Us operates as a list of ephemeral possessions. With concrete images, Howe purchases the metaphysical definition of what it means to be alive.
Exceeding personal experience, the objects allude a larger philosophical consciousness. It concludes on the idea of renouncement, for peace. In The Good Thief, 1988, Howe expressed interest in mythology and the Bible. She lost her brother, John Howe, to AIDS in 1989. What The Living Do was written as an elegy. His death marked the change in her “aesthetics” of writing.
In 2008, she completely took a break from the personal narrative, focusing instead on her return to the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of life. Her New And Selected Poems, 2024 won her the Pulitzer.
20. Wanda Coleman
Prescribes: About God & Things, A Stonehold
A Stonehold reads like an exercise in suppression. It reeks of loss and a hunger that is insatiable. While the poem tests the weight of basic necessities that run human lives, it also presents an image of the “other” side. The underlying plea for justice demands quiet empathy. Her lines carve a lasting impression of multiple interpretations for the singular goal of glimpsing into a poor Black’s life.
Following in the footsteps of Gwendolyn Brooks, Coleman’s writing has much to add. She is known for the way she gets words to jump off the page. Themes of racism outcast treatment and fight for women’s rights are stark in her works.
They carry the voice of the human pain in concrete forms that make it accessibly empathetic. Wicked Enchantments: Selected Poems, 2020 rekindled her recognition as a great woman poet. Her significant contribution to the TV soap opera Days of Our Lives, won her an Emmy.
RELATED READING: 200 Poetry Writing Prompts For Poets
21. Dorothy Parker
Prescribes: For A Lady Who Must Write Verse, Observation
For A Lady Who Must Write Verse is a satirical exhibit in its reasoning to stick to societal expectation. Serving also as a critique to human nature, the poem digs its heels into suppression of (emotional) vulnerability. Replacing the need for passion and authenticity, it is steeped in cold cynicism. This poem offers a tongue-in-cheek response to the well-meaning advice “show, don’t tell.”
Parker, who lost her parents young, established herself first in the world of magazine publishing. Her writing career took off with her bestselling (first) poetry book, Enough Rope. Her work is plagued by depression, with pockmarks of genius. They are also centered around power dynamics, contemplating gender. Work as a screenwriter for A Star Is Born, and other films brought her several Oscar nominations.
22. Joy Harjo
Prescribes: Perhaps The World Ends Here, Remember
Driven in her search for self-actualization and freedom, Harjo’s poetry is born out of impact from her natural world. Highly political in her stance, she is devoted to her identity as a Native American feminist. Her first volume of poetry, The Last Song, provides startling insights into fragments of indigenous peoples’ history.
Perhaps The World Ends Here is an ode to communal living. Using the kitchen for the central image, Harjo connects various areas of human life. It captures the true weight of the human spirit. The kitchen is a metaphor insisting on the importance of community, food and nurture. For Harjo, beginnings (and endings) of human connection can be traced at kitchen tables.
23. Gabriela Mistral
Prescribes: The Teller Of Tales, Give Me Your Hand
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga is a Chilean writer, pseudonymously Gabriela Mistral. She was the first Latin-American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her words pose the ability to transform weakness into power, giving it an uncanny understanding of others. Consolatory in its verse, it appears ritualistic or prayer-like.
Give Me Your Hand is an invitation to movement, particularly dance. Opting for musical rhythm, she offers nature in imagery. While the Spanish original of the poem indicates frustration, a good translation captures (intended) repetition.
Notably, the repetitions in the linking sentences coincide with the rhythm of Chile’s National dance, La Cueca. Mistral was determined to link poetry to dance. English words are not sufficient to explain how this Spanish poem puts dancing before love. Ultimately, nothing screams love (or inspiration) than dancing for oneself.
24. Safiya Sinclair
Prescribes: The Art Of Unselfing, The Ragged And The Beautiful
Jamaican, 21st century poet, Safiya Sinclair debuted with Cannibal, 2016, a full-length poetry collection. It confronts Shakespeare’s The Tempest (postcolonialism) with Jamaican history, her personal childhood, womanhood and linguistic exile. Portrait Of Eve As The Anaconda has gained much publicity.
Borrowing Iris Murdoch’s philosophy of “unselfing,” Sinclair journeys towards a clearer sense of self. Decoding experiences of loss and longing caused by exile, The Art Of Unselfing studies the process of giving up one’s ego.
Past notions of self rise to meet brutal circumstances, pushing forth the need to re-explore identity. Harboring the Caribbean landscape, it conveys the meaning of home (history) and reinvention of the same. Titularly, it posits the idea of seeking belonging outside of oneself while maintaining authenticity.
25. Edna St.Vincent Millay
Prescribes: First Fig, God’s World
Millay is credited with having a poet’s instinct. Combining modern attitude with traditional form, her writing heralded the “New Woman.” Her honest stance cemented her as a portrait figure for the embodiment of female experience.
First Fig from the collection A Few Figs From Thistles is notable. It established her place in great poetry by women since Sappho. It ushers the need to grab life by the horns. It celebrates carving one’s own path passionately. The poem’s (and the candle’s) brevity represents the need to be daring in a transient world. To have sacrifices worth making, it exudes the richness of the titular fig.
For more scalp tingles, chicken skin, and an unprecedented bout of tears, read:
- Tracy K.Smith’s The Universe As Primal Scream
- Sarah Kay’s If I Should Have A Daughter
- Tishani Doshi’s Face Exercises For Marionette Lines
- Anais Nin’s Risk
- Amy Lowell’s Paper Fishes
- Marie Ponsot’s Anti-Romatic
Conclusion
Good poetry inspires movement. Poets do not chase happiness, nor do they propose we should. They have proven that inspiration simply waits to be noticed; it is all around us. They write poems, telling us to entice life in all its experiences.
You don’t have to wait until Women’s Day to celebrate famous female poets. On your next poetry break, dive into a poem and tell us which one of these female poets you’d consider adding to your female poets list!
FAQs
1. Who is the most famous female poet?
Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath are top among famous female poets. As are Sappho, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Gwendolyn Brooks.
2. What are female poets called?
Female poets were traditionally called “poetesses.” It is now seen as an outdated, sexist suffix. The widely preferred gender-neutral term remains “poets.”
3. Which female poets were ahead of their time?
Which female poets were ahead of their time?
