swap_horiz Benjamin Zephaniah Alternatives

1

T. S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot is a significant 20th-century poet known for his exploration of disillusionment and spiritual searching. Born...

American Modernist British Fragmentary

9.7 Brilliant

2

César Vallejo

César Vallejo (1895-1963) was a Peruvian poet renowned for his intensely personal and politically charged verse. His wor...

Modernist Experimental Political Peruvian

9.5 Brilliant

3

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam was a prominent Russian poet representing the Acmeist movement. His work, characterized by meticulous la...

Russian Modernist Political Acmeist

9.4 Excellent

4

Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet whose work became central to modern Arabic literature and Palestinian identity af...

Lyric Political Palestinian Exile

9.3 Excellent

5

Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes was an English poet and children's writer, UK Poet Laureate from 1984 to 1998 and author of the 1970 sequence...

Nature British Mythic Laureate

9.3 Excellent

6

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was an English poet and University of Hull librarian, noted in postwar Britain for the 1964 collection The...

Lyric Postwar British Plainstyle

9.3 Excellent

7

Nazım Hikmet

Nazım Hikmet was a Turkish poet and playwright, noted for free verse and leftist politics, and spent many years imprison...

Modernist Political Turkish Freeverse

8.9 Great

8

Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell was an English poet and politician, remembered for 17th-century metaphysical lyrics such as To His Coy Mi...

Lyric Political English Metaphysical

8.8 Great

9

Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet who became UK Poet Laureate in 2009, the first woman and first openly gay writer to h...

British Feminist Dramaticmonologue Laureate

8.7 Great

10

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was an American poet and essayist, known for feminist writing and winner of the 1974 National Book Award f...

Lyric American Political Feminist

8.6 Great

11

Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald is an English poet whose river poem Dart won the 2002 T. S. Eliot Prize, and she became Oxford Professor of...

Nature Classical Contemporary British

8.5 Great

12

Endre Ady

Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet whose 1906 collection New Poems helped modernize Hungarian literature with Symbolist and...

Hungarian Modernist Political Symbolist

8.4 Great

13

Nizar Qabbani

Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian poet and diplomat, known for Arabic love poetry and political verse after his 1944 debut The...

Political Arabic Love Syrian

8.4 Great

14

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet whose 1850 Sonnets from the Portuguese became a major Victorian sequence...

Political Victorian English Sonnet

8.3 Great

15

José Martí

José Martí was a Cuban poet, essayist, and independence leader, notable for Versos sencillos and his death in the 1895 w...

Cuban Political National Modernismo

8.3 Great

16

Nicolás Guillén

Nicolás Guillén was a Cuban poet known as Cuba's national poet, notable for Afro-Cuban rhythms in works such as Motivos...

Cuban Rhythmic Political Afrocuban

8.2 Great

17

Ernesto Cardenal

Ernesto Cardenal was a Nicaraguan poet, priest, and Sandinista figure whose Cántico cósmico is a major 1989 work of Lati...

Political Religious Nicaraguan Exteriorismo

8.2 Great

18

John Agard

John Agard is a Guyanese-born British poet and playwright, awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012 after decad...

Performance British Postcolonial Guyanese

7.9 Good

19

Lemn Sissay

Lemn Sissay is a British poet and broadcaster, appointed MBE in 2010 and Chancellor of the University of Manchester in 2...

Performance British Ethiopian Memoir

7.5 Good

20

Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi is a British poet and performer, selected for the 2004 Next Generation Poets and known for the Chaucer r...

Performance Contemporary British Chaucer

7.3 Good