Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet. Her work is some of the most well-known in twentieth-century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote about the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Moscow famine.
William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Ceridwen or Cerridwen was an enchantress in Welsh medieval legend. She was the mother of a hideous son, Mordfran, and a beautiful daughter, Creirwy. Her husband was Tegid Foel and they lived near Bala Lake in north Wales. Medieval Welsh poetry refers to her as possessing the cauldron of poetic inspiration (Awen) and the Tale of Taliesin recounts her swallowing her servant Gwion Bach who is then reborn through her as the poet Taliesin. Ceridwen is regarded by many modern pagans as the Celtic goddess of rebirth, transformation, and inspiration.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships were based entirely upon correspondence.
Anne Bradstreet was among the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first writer in England's North American colonies to be published. She is the first Puritan figure in American Literature and notable for her large corpus of poetry, as well as personal writings published posthumously.
Ebenezer Elliott was an English poet, known as the Corn Law rhymer for his leading the fight to repeal the Corn Laws, which were causing hardship and starvation among the poor. Though a factory owner himself, his single-minded devotion to the welfare of the labouring classes won him a sympathetic reputation long after his poetry ceased to be read.
Eliza Cook was an English author and poet associated with the Chartist movement. She was a proponent of political freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education, something she called "levelling up." This made her hugely popular with the working class public in both England and America.
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, was an English poet and courtier. Finch wrote in many genres and on many topics - including fables, odes, songs, and religious verse - which are informed by "political ideology, religious orientation, and aesthetic sensibility". Her works also allude to other female authors of the time, such as Aphra Behn and Katherine Phillips. Through her commentary on the mental and spiritual equality of the sexes and the importance of women fulfilling their potential as a moral duty to themselves and to society, she is regarded as one of the integral female poets of the Augustan Era. Finch died in Westminster in 1720 and was buried at her home at Eastwell, Kent.
Jean Adam was a Scottish poet from the labouring classes; her best-known work is "There's Nae Luck Aboot The Hoose". In 1734 she published a volume of her poetry entitled Miscellany poems, but the cost of shipping a substantial number to the British colony of Boston in North America, where they did not sell well, forced her to turn first to teaching and then to domestic labour. She died penniless in Glasgow's Town's Hospital poorhouse at the age of sixty.
Mary Leapor (1722–1746) was an English poet, born in Marston St. Lawrence, Northamptonshire, the only child of Anne Sharman and Philip Leapor (1693–1771), a gardener. She, out of the many labouring-class writers of the period, was noticeably well received.
Rhina Polonia Espaillat is a bilingual Dominican-American poet and translator who is affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry. She has published eleven collections of poetry. Her work has been included in many popular anthologies, including The Heath Introduction to Poetry ; The Muse Strikes Back ; and In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the U.S..
Hadewijch, sometimes referred to as Hadewych or Hadewig, was a 13th-century poet and mystic, probably living in the Duchy of Brabant. Most of her extant writings are in a Brabantian form of Middle Dutch. Her writings include visions, prose letters and poetry. Hadewijch was one of the most important direct influences on John of Ruysbroeck.
Ann Yearsley, née Cromartie, also known as Lactilla, was an English poet and writer from the labouring class, in Bristol. The poet Robert Southey wrote a biography of her.
Stephen Duck was an English poet whose career reflected both Augustan interest in "naturals" and its resistance to classlessness.
Annie Finch is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, meter, and poetic form and for its themes of feminism, witchcraft, goddesses, and earth-based spirituality. Her books include The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, Spells: New and Selected Poems, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, A Poet's Craft, Calendars, and Among the Goddesses.
Mary Collier (1688–1762) was an English poet, perhaps best known for The Woman's Labour, a poem described by one commentator as a "plebeian female georgic that is also a protofeminist polemic."
The Silvae is a collection of Latin occasional poetry in hexameters, hendecasyllables, and lyric meters by Publius Papinius Statius. There are 32 poems in the collection, divided into five books. Each book contains a prose preface which introduces and dedicates the book. The subjects of the poetry are varied and provide scholars with a wealth of information on Domitian's Rome and Statius' life.
Political poetry brings together politics and poetry. According to "The Politics of Poetry" by David Orr, poetry and politics connect through expression and feeling, although both of them are matters of persuasion. Political poetry connects to people's feelings, and politics connects to current events. Poetry can also make political references and have real effects on the perception of politics.
Ágnes Lehóczky is a Hungarian-British poet, academic, and translator born in Budapest in 1976.
Letter to My Daughter (2009) is the third book of essays by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. By the time it was published, Angelou had written two other books of essays, several volumes of poetry, and six autobiographies. She was recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and had become "a major autobiographical voice of the time". Angelou had no daughters herself, but was inspired to write Letter as she was going through 20 years of notes and essay ideas, some of which were written for her friend Oprah Winfrey. Angelou wrote the book for the thousands of women who saw her as a mother figure, and to share the wisdom gained throughout her long life.
