A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different cultures and time periods. Throughout each civilization and language, poets have used various styles that have changed through the course of literary history, resulting in a history of poets as diverse as the literature they have produced.

Australia w

• Dorothea MacKellar

Canada w

• Leonard Cohen

Finland

• Finnish Poets
• Finnish Rune (Poem) Singers and Old Karelian Tradition

France w

• Guillaume Apollinaire
• Louis Aragon
• Joachim du Bellay
• Marie Rouget, dite Mari-Noëlle
• Pierre de Ronsard
• Jean de Werchin
• Arthur Rimbaud

Ireland

• Irish Poets

Israel (& Hebrew language poets) w

• המלך שלמה - King Solomon, of the ancient United Kingdom of Israel (1027BCE - 975BCE)
• יהודה הלוי - Yehuda Halevi (1075 - 1141)
• ישראל בן משה נג׳ארה - Israel ben Moshe Najara (1555 - 1625)
• רבי שלום שבזי - Rabbi Shalom Shabazi (1619 -1720)
• חיים נחמן ביאליק - Haim Nachman Bialik (1873 - 1934)
• המשוררת רחל - Rachel Bluwstein (1890 - 1931)
• Hebrew-language poets

Persian w

• Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā; Abū Alī Sīnā)

Philippines

• Antonio Abad

Portugal (& Língua portuguesa) w

• António Aleixo

Netherlands w

• Isaäc Daniel Haim da Costa
• Leo Samuel Vroman

United Kingdom w

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Lord Byron
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Cecil Day-Lewis
• John Donne
• Richard Edwardes
• Edward FitzGerald
• John Keats
• Owen Meridith (1831-1891)
• William Morris
• Christina Rossetti
• Gabriel Rossetti
• William Shakespeare
• Walter Scott

United States w

• Anne Dudley Bradstreet (c. 1612 – 1672)
• Robert Bolling (1738 – 1775)
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)
• James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891)
• Ernest Lawrence Thayer (1863 – 1940)
• T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965) Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1948.
• Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992)
• Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) (born 1941) Nobel Laureate in Literature, 2016.
• Louise Glück (born 1943) Nobel Laureate in Literature, 2020.
• Patti Smith (born 1946)

References and Sources

• Scottish Poets