Top 10 Poets

William Shakespeare

It might have been too easy to leave Shakespeare out of a list of poets - or too obvious to include him - but the Bard of Avon produced some of the most memorable and admired sonnets and poems in history and has earned his place. As with his plays, Shakespeare’s poetry usually carried themes relating to love, relationships, family, death and moral dilemmas. Shakespeare developed his poetic techniques throughout his career, indicating his continuing scholarship of poetic form.

Edgar Allen Poe

Creator of the short story; quite a poet as well. Quoth the raven, "Nevermore".

T. S. Eliot

Considered by some to be the greatest poet, or at least the greatest modernist poet, T.S. Eliot produced some astounding poetry that was dense with cultural and literary references, such as “The Hollow Men”, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “ The Waste Land”. The significance and recognition of his poetry somewhat makes up for the fact that he didn’t really produce a lot of it. T.S. Eliot was also a celebrated nonfiction essay writer and playwright. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Jesus Christ

Loved poems

Philip Larkin

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was a prodigious poet who wrote from the age of eight and, while studying English at university, won almost all available awards for her poetry. She was also a writer of fiction and plays. Her first collection of poetry, “Colossus and Other Poems” received critical acclaim when released in 1960. Throughout her career as a poet, her poetry took a sharp turn towards more reflective, confessional and personal subject matter as it developed. Twenty years after her suicide in 1963, Plath won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her “Collected Poems”.

Bob Dillon

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet and artist who is now thought to be one of the best poets England has produced, but he was not always considered brilliant in his day. In the late 18th century when Blake was producing much of his work, he was considered anarchic or even insane. While he respected the bible and its teachings, he was opposed to some organised religion such as the prevailing Church of England, and his metaphysical and philosophical explorations in his art and poetry seemed bizarre to the god-fearing public.