Greatest Women Poets – The 101 Best Female Poets Of All Time

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private. Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is the loyal secretary of every hearts. Poem, which represents the beauty of art, is created by the poet to convey a profound content of thoughts, full of images, essence, conciseness, with strong and rhythmic sound …

Historically, many female poets had inspired and contributed many artistic works to the world. The poem contains the intense emotions, beautiful feelings and deep reflections on mankind and society.

There are many collections of poems written by female poets and they deserve praise and admiration. However among them, which great female poet do you think is the most inspiring until now.

1. Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson wrotempoetry in the 1850 and 1860s and she is considered to be one of the best American poets. Emily uses her imagination and experiments with her poetry. She is important because she writes about new subjects: science, religion, home life, loss and death.

To Read: Because I Could Not Stop For Death | Hope Is The Thing With Feathers | I Felt A Funeral, In My Brain

2. Sappho

Sappho (Aeolic Greek Ψαπφώ Psapphô; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Sappho’s poetry made her famous throughout the ancient Greek world, probably within her lifetime. Soon, like the medieval French poet François Villon, she became a subject of legend and figured later as a character in comedy.

To Read: To Atthis The Inconstant | Without Warning | No Word

3. Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. She grew up in St.Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. She is an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage andscreen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist.

To Read: Still I Rise | When Great Trees Fall | On Aging

4. Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), poet and novelist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 27 October 1932, the first child of Otto and Aurelia Schober Plath. Forty-seven at the time of her birth, Otto Plath had emigrated from his native Prussia in 1901, receiving a doctorate from Harvard in 1928 (published as Bumblebees and Their Ways in 1934) before lecturing at Boston University, where he meet Aurelia, a second generation Austrian-American student.

To Read: The Applicant | The Colossus | April Aubade

5. Phillis Wheatley

Born in Senegal/Gambia in about 1753, poet Phillis Wheatley was brought to Boston, Massachusetts, on a slave ship in 1761 and was purchased by John Wheatley as a personal servant to his wife. The Wheatley’s educated Phillis and she soon mastered Latin and Greek, going on to write highly acclaimed poetry.

To Read: On Being Brought From Africa To America | On Virtue | A Farewell To America To Mrs. S. W.

6. Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu (13 February 1879 – 2 March 1949) was an Indian independence activist and poet. She was born in a Bengali Hindu family at Hyderabad and was educated in Chennai, London and Cambridge. She took part in the Indian Nationalist Movement, became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and fought for the attainment of Swaraj or independence.

To Read: The Royal Tombs Of Golconda | Humayun To Zobeida | Palanquin Bearers

7. Christina Georgina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets of the 19th Century, was born in December 1830, into a family of poets and artists. Devoutly religious, she refused two offers of marriage because of religious differences.

To Read: When I Am Dead, My Dearest | In An Artist’s Studio | Shut Out

8. Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet, was among the first of Wisconsin’s writers to achieve literary fame. Her poems are framed in the popular style of the 1870’s and 1880’s when “the Fireside Poets” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Greenleaf Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, and Oliver Wendell Holmes among others — composed rhyming quatrains that “raised hope and made the blood sing.”

To Read: Life’s Scars | Solitude | A Naughty Little Comet

9. Jessie Pope

Pope, Jessie (1868–1941), poet and writer, was born at 11 Seymour Street, Leicester, on 18 March 1868, the second daughter (she had at least two sisters and two brothers) of Richard George Pope (1832/3–1903), commercial traveller and hop merchant, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Windover.

To Read: Who’s For The Game | Play The Game | No

10. Judith Wright

Judith Wright, born in the early 20th century, was a well-known Australian poet, short-story writer and conversationalist. She was also a highly acclaimed critic of Australian poetry. Apart from this, Wright was an uncompromising campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.

To Read: All Things Conspire | To A Child | Northern River

11. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett, an English poet of the Romantic Movement, was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England. The oldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was the first in her family born in England in over two hundred years.

To Read: The Runaway Slave At Pilgrim’s Point | A Musical Instrument | How Do I Love Thee

12. Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, (born September 10, 1935, Maple Heights, Ohio, U.S.—died January 17, 2019, Hobe Sound, Florida), American poet whose work reflects a deep communion with the natural world. Oliver attended the Ohio State University and Vassar College but did not earn a degree.

To Read: Song of the Builders | Wild Geese | The Summer Day

13. Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century”, and was credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.

To Read: What Kind of Times Are These | Prospective Immigrants Please Note | Diving Into the Wreck

14. Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks, in full Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks, (born June 7, 1917, Topeka, Kan., U.S.—died Dec. 3, 2000, Chicago, Ill.), American poet whose works deal with the everyday life of urban blacks. She was the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950), and in 1968 she was named the poet laureate of Illinois.

To Read: We Real Cool | The Mother | To Be In Love

15. Audre Lorde

Audre Geraldine Lorde was born on February 18, 1934, in New York City, and went on to become a leading African-American poet and essayist who gave voice to issues of race, gender and sexuality. Lorde’s love of poetry started at a young age, and she began writing as a teenager.

To Read: For Each Of You | Never To Dream Of Spiders | A Woman Speaks

16. Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright born on 23rd December 1955 in Glasgow. She grew up in a working class family that believed in social change and the politics of protest. One of her schoolteachers encouraged her to write poetry. So she published her first poems at sixteen.

To Read: Prayer | The Love Poem | Havisham

17. Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911 – 6 October 1979). Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970.

To Read: Arrival at Santos | Questions of Travel | Sestina

18. Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. Her mother, Cora, raised her three daughters on her own after asking her husband to leave the family home in 1899. Cora encouraged her girls to be ambitious and self-sufficient, teaching them an appreciation of music and literature from an early age.

To Read: Tavern | Sorrow | Ashes of Life

19. Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield was a short story writer from New Zealand. Mansfield was born in 1888 and died in 1923 due to tuberculosis. Mansfield is classified as a modernist, meaning that she wrote stories that didn’t conform to traditional literary standards.

To Read: A Little Boy’s Dream | Butterfly Laughter | Fairy Tale

20. Emily Jane Brontë

Emily Bronte (July 30, 1818 — December 19, 1848) – Poet and Novelist; famous for her classic novel Wuthering Heights. She lived a quiet life in Yorkshirewith her clergyman father; brother, BranwellBrontë; and twosisters, Charlotte and Anne. The sisters enjoyed writing poetryand novels, publishing under pseudonyms.

To Read: I Am The Only Being Whose Doom | A Little While, A Little While | Hope

21. Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936. Her first book of poems, Good Times (Random House, 1969), was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times.

To Read: Homage To My Hips | Poem In Praise Of Menstruation | I Am Accused Of Tending To The Past

22. Dorothy Parker

Most criticism on Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) highlights her literary persona only to the detriment of the study of a profuse work comprising six decades of narrative, poetry and drama. Probably her best-known contribution to literature was her condition of the voice of the Jazz Age generation, shifting from acquiescence to irony.

To Read: Symptom Recital | Men | Song Of One Of The Girls

23. Anne Sexton

Sexton, Anne Gray Harvey (9 Nov. 1928-4 Oct. 1974), poet and playwright, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ralph Harvey, a successful woolen manufacturer, and Mary Gray Staples. Anne was raised in comfortable middle-class circumstances in Weston, Massachusetts, and at the summer compound on Squirrel Island in Maine, but she was never at ease with the life prescribed for her.

To Read: 45 Mercy Street | After Auschwitz | Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

24. Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC (bornNovember 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literarycritic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a win-ner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of AsturiasAward for Literature, has been shortlisted for the BookerPrize five times, winning once, and has been a finalistfor the Governor General’s Award several times, winningtwice.

To Read: A Sad Child | You Fit Into Me | Variations On The Word Love

25. Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet (née Dudley; March 20, 1612 – September 16, 1672) was 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.

To Read: The Author to her Book | The Flesh and the Spirit | Verses Upon The Burning Of Our House, July 18th, 1666

26. Sharon Olds

Born in San Francisco on November 19, 1942, Sharon Olds earned a BA at Stanford University and a PhD at Columbia University. Her first collection of poems, Satan Says (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Olds’s following collection, The Dead & the Living (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), received the Lamont Poetry Selection in 1983 and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

To Read: The Unborn | The Victims | The End

27. Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy, who graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957, is a world-renowned poet, novelist, and feminist. She is the author of sixteen books of poetry and sixteen novels, as well as drama, essays, criticism, and a memoir entitled Sleeping With Cats (2002).

To Read: Barbie Doll | Colors Passing Through Us | A Work Of Artifice

28. Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell(9 February 1874 – 12 May 1925) an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Lowell was born into Brookline’s prominent Lowell family, sister to astronomer Percival Lowell and Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell.

To Read: A Lover | Nuit Blanche | Autumn

29. Wendy Cope

Wendy Cope (born 21 July 1945) is a contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She now lives in Ely with the poet Lachlan Mackinnon. Cope was born in Erith in Kent (now in London), and educated at Farrington’s School, Chislehurst in Kent (now also in London).

To Read: Some More Light Verse | Another Valentine | The Orange

30. Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova, pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, (born June 11 [June 23, New Style], 1889, Bolshoy Fontan, near Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died March 5, 1966, Domodedovo, near Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), Russian poet recognized at her death as the greatest woman poet in Russian literature.

To Read: I Wrung My Hands | Why Is This Age Worse | Lot’s Wife

31. Rita Dove

Rita Dove was born on August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio, African-American poet Rita Dove loved poetry and music from a young age. She was an exceptional student and was invited to the White House as a Presidential Scholar out of high school. She studied in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship, later teaching creative writing at Arizona State University.

To Read: Borderline Mambo | My Father Enters The Work Force | Golden Oldie

32. Alice Walker

Alice Walker (1944- ) is one of the most significant and outspoken black women writers in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is best known for her novels, particularly The Color Purple (1982) which won the Pulitzer Prize, but she also writes poetry, short stories, essays and autobiographical pieces.

To Read: Expect Nothing | Be Nobody’s Darling | If I Was President

33. Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore, in full Marianne Craig Moore, (born November 15, 1887, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died February 5, 1972, New York, New York), American poet whose work distilled moral and intellectual insights from the close and accurate observation of objective detail.

To Read: Marriage | Nevertheless | Rosemary

34. Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva(8 October 1892 – 31 August 1941), was born in Moscow. Her father, Ivan Tsvetayev, was a professor of art history and the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her mother Mariya, née Meyn, was a talented concert pianist.

To Read: Little World | Lady With Camelias | The Demon In Me

35. Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë, married name Mrs. Arthur Bell Nicholls, pseudonym Currer Bell, (born April 21, 1816, Thornton, Yorkshire, England—died March 31, 1855, Haworth, Yorkshire), English novelist noted for Jane Eyre (1847), a strong narrative of a woman in conflict with her natural desires and social condition. The novel gave new truthfulness to Victorian fiction. She later wrote Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853).

To Read: On The Death Of Anne Brontë | Evening Solace | Speak Of The North! A Lonely Moor

36. Warsan Shire

Warsan Shire is a Somali poet and activist. Born in Kenya in 1988, she was raised in London and lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of three poetry collections: teaching my mother how to give birth, published by Flipped Eye in 2011, Our Men Do Not Belong to Us, published by Slapering How Press and the Poetry Foundation in 2014, and Her Blue Body, published by Flipped Eye in 2015.

To Read: Her Blue Body Full of Light | Nail Technician as Palm Reader | Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle

37. Sara Teasdale

On August 8, 1884, Sara Trevor Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, into an old, established, and devout family. She was home-schooled until she was nine and traveled frequently to Chicago, where she became part of the circle surrounding Poetry magazine and Harriet Monroe. Teasdale published Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems, her first volume of verse, in 1907.

To Read: Winter Stars | I Shall Not Care | Christmas Carol

38. Wisława Szymborska

Actually, Wisława was her middle name. Her full name was María Wisława Anna Szymborska, born on July 2, 1923, in Prowent, now part of Kórnik, west of Poland. Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. She authored over 15 poetry books, but was also an editor and illustrator.

To Read: Under One Small Star | Hunger Camp At Jaslo | The End And The Beginning

39. Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni, byname of Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., (born June 7, 1943, Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.), American poet whose writings ranged from calls for black power to poems for children and intimate personal statements.

To Read: I Wrote A Good Omelet | Always There Are The Children | Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day

40. Louise Gluck

Born in 1943, Louise Glück is an American poet. She was born in New York City and grew up in Long Island. Her father helped invent the X-Acto Knife. Glück graduated in 1961 from George W. Hewlett High School, in Hewlett, New York. She went on to attend Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.

To Read: The Fear Of Burial | The Myth Of Innocence | Aboriginal Landscape

41. Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was born in Vicuña, Chile. The daughter of a dilettante poet, she began to write poetry as a village schoolteacher after a passionate romance with a railway employee who committed suicide.

To Read: Those Who Do Not Dance | Anniversary | The Shining Host

42. Hilda Doolittle

Doolittle, Hilda (10 September 1886–27 September 1961), poet and novelist, was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Charles Leander Doolittle, a professor of astronomy, and Helen Eugenia Wolle. With two older stepbrothers and one older and two younger brothers, the writer who later established herself as “H.D.”

To Read: The Mysteries Remain | Sheltered Garden | Wash Of Cold River

43. Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849 into a wealthy New York family that was descended from Sephardic Jewish Americans. She displayed an early talent for poetry, and attracted the notice of Ralph Waldo Emerson with her first book. Her poem “The New Colossus” was chosen to be displayed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It features the famous lines “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

To Read: The New Colossus | The New Year | Critic And Poet: An Epilogue

44. Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England, on October 24, 1923, English-born American poet, essayist, and political activist who wrote deceptively matter-of-fact verse on both personal and political themes.

To Read: To Live in the Mercy of God | At The Justice Department November 15, 1969 | The 90th Year

45. Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë, pseudonym Acton Bell, (born Jan. 17, 1820, Thornton, Yorkshire, Eng.—died May 28, 1849, Scarborough, Yorkshire), English poet and novelist, sister of Charlotte and Emily Brontë and author of Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

To Read: Farewell | Dreams | A Voice From The Dungeon

46. Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland, on September 24, 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an expressionist painter. Irish poet and literary critic whose expressive verse explored familiar domestic themes and examined both the isolation and the beauty of being a woman, wife, and mother.

To Read: My Country In Darkness | That the Science of Cartography Is Limited | Ode to Suburbia

47. Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein, (born Feb. 3, 1874, Allegheny City [now in Pittsburgh], Pa., U.S.—died July 27, 1946, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), avant-garde American writer, eccentric, and self-styled genius whose Paris home was a salon for the leading artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II.

To Read: A Long Dress | A Light in the Moon | A Mounted Umbrella

48. Laura Riding

Laura Riding, née Reichenthal, married name Jackson, pseudonyms Barbara Rich, Madeleine Vara, and Laura Riding Gottschalk, (born Jan. 16, 1901, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 2, 1991, Sebastian, Fla.), American poet, critic, and prose writer who was influential among the literary avant-garde during the 1920s and ’30s.

To Read: Yes And No | The World And I | With The Face

49. Louise Bogan

Louise Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897. She attended Boston Girls’ Latin School and spent one year at Boston University. She married in 1916 and was widowed in 1920. She was married again in 1925 to the poet Raymond Holden whom she divorced in 1937. In addition to publishing six highly acclaimed volumes of poetry and a number of collaborative translations, Bogan wrote and compiled three volumes of literary criticism.

To Read: Song For The Last Act | The Crossed Apple | Last Hill In A Vista

50. Elinor Wylie

Wylie, Elinor (1885–1928). American poet and novelist who became a social celebrity as well as a leading literary figure of the post-World War I years. Born Elinor Hoyt on September 7, 1885, in Somerville, New Jersey; died on December 16, 1928; first born of Henry Hoyt and Anne (McMichael) Hoyt; married Philip Hichborn (a Washington lawyer), in 1906 (committed suicide 1916); married Horace Wiley, in 1916 (divorced 1923); married William Rose Benét (the poet).

To Read: Sea Lullaby | Pretty Words | Madman’s Song

51. Marilyn Hacker

Marilyn Hacker (born 1942) is an American poet, critic, and reviewer. Her books of poetry include Going Back to the River (1990), Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986), and Presentation Piece (1975), which won the National Book Award.

To Read: Nearly A Valediction | Rune Of The Finland Woman | Scars On Paper

52. Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Barbauld (nee Aikin) was born in 1743, daughter of a nonconformist minister and schoolmaster, who taught her to read English before she was three and to master French, Italian, Latin and Greek while still a child. Her book of poems, published in 1773, was an astonishing success and established her at the time as a celebrated and widely read poet.

To Read: A School Eclogue | An Address To The Deity | To A Friend

53. Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Felicia Dorothea Hemans, née Felicia Dorothea Browne, (born Sept. 25, 1793, Liverpool—died May 16, 1835, Dublin), English poet who owed the immense popularity of her poems to a talent for treating Romantic themes—nature, the picturesque, childhood innocence, travels abroad, liberty, the heroic—with an easy and engaging fluency.

To Read: Invocation To The Fairies | Kindred Hearts | The Funeral Day Of Sir Walter Scott

54. Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1802–1838). After her schooling in Chelsea, she began contributing to a weekly literary magazine called Literary Gazette, eventually becoming one of its editors. She published several poetry collections including The Fate of Adelaide and The Improvisatrice.

To Read: Revenge | Children | The Power Of Words

55. Louise Labé

Louise Labé, original name Louise Charly, byname La Belle Cordière (French: “The Beautiful Rope Maker”), (born c. 1524, Lyon, France—died 1566, Parcieux-en-Dombes), French poet, the daughter of a rope maker (cordier).

To Read: Sonnet XI | Sonnet XVIII | Sonnet XXIII

56. Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American poet and author, known for writing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. She was also an advocate for abolitionism and a social activist, particularly for women’s suffrage.

To Read: The Dead Christ | Limitations Of Benevolence | Coquette et Froide

57. Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey (1966-) is an American poet and professor. She was born in Gulfport, Mississippi on April 26, 1966 to Eric Trethewey, poet and professor of English at Hollins University in Virginia, and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, a social worker. She is married to Professor Brett Gadsden.

To Read: Vespertina Cognitio | Providence | History Lesson

58. Delmira Agustini

Delmira Agustini (October 24, 1886 – July 6, 1914), an Uruguayan poet, is considered one of the greatest female Latin American poets of the early 20th century. Born in Montevideo, the daughter of Italian immigrants, Agustini was a precocious child. In addition to beginning to write poetry when she was 10 years old, she studied French, music and painting.

To Read: El Poeta Leva El Ancla | Al Claro De Luna | El Nudo

59. Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, original name Juana Ramírez de Asbaje, (born November 12, 1651?, San Miguel Nepantla, Viceroyalty of New Spain [now in Mexico]—died April 17, 1695, Mexico City), poet, dramatist, scholar, and nun, an outstanding writer of the Latin American colonial period and of the Hispanic Baroque.

To Read: I Approach And I Withdraw | My Divine Lysis | Arraignment Of The Men

60. Ingeborg Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann, (born June 25, 1926, Klagenfurt, Austria—died Oct. 17, 1973, Rome, Italy), Austrian author whose sombre, surreal writings often deal with women in failed love relationships, the nature of art and humanity, and the inadequacy of language.

To Read: I Step Outside Myself | I Know No Better World | A Kind Of Loss

61. Lisel Mueller

Lisel Mueller, née Lisel Neumann, (born February 8, 1924, Hamburg, Germany—died February 21, 2020, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), German-born American poet known for her warm introspective poetry. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997 for her volume Alive Together: New and Selected Poems.

To Read: Monet Refuses The Operation | The Laughter Of Women | What The Dog Perhaps Hears

62. Cecil Frances Alexander

Cecil Frances Alexander (April 1818 – 12 October 1895) was an Anglo-Irish hymnwriter and poet. Amongst other works, she wrote “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” and the Christmas carol “Once in Royal David’s City.”

To Read: There Is A Green Hill | Jesus Calls Us | The Fieldmouse

63. Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson, in full Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, née Fiske, (born Oct. 15, 1830, Amherst, Mass., U.S.—died Aug. 12, 1885, San Francisco, Calif.), American poet and novelist best known for her novel Ramona.

To Read: The Angel Of Pain | Unto One Who Lies At Rest | The End Of Harvest

64. Judith Viorst

Judith Viorst (née Stahl, February 2, 1931) is an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is known for her humorous observational poetry and for her children’s literature. This includes The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.

To Read: If I Were In Charge Of The World | The Pleasures Of Ordinary Life | Some Advice From A Mother To Her Married Son

65. Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith, pseudonym of Florence Margaret Smith, (born Sept. 20, 1902, Hull, Yorkshire, Eng.—died March 7, 1971, London), British poet who expressed an original and visionary personality in her work, combining a lively wit with penetrating honesty and an absence of sentiment.

To Read: To The Tune Of The Coventry Carol | Not Waving But Drowning | The Pleasures Of Friendship

66. Mirabai

Mira Bai, (born c. 1498, Kudaki, India—died 1547?, Dwarka, Gujarat), Hindu mystic and poet whose lyrical songs of devotion to the god Krishna are widely popular in northern India.

To Read: Mira Knows Why | O My Friends | Torn In Shreds

67. Rosanna Warren

Rosanna Phelps Warren (born July 27, 1953 in Fairfield, Connecticut) is an American poet and scholar. She is the author of Ghost in a Red Hat (W. W. Norton, 2011); Departure (2003); Stained Glass (1993), which was named the Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets; Each Leaf Shines Separate (1984); and Snow Day (1981).

To Read: The Triumph of Death | The Mink | Intimate Letters

68. Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin, (born February 21, 1903, Neuilly, France—died January 14, 1977, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), French-born author of novels and short stories whose literary reputation rests on the eight published volumes of her personal diaries. Her writing shows the influence of the Surrealist movement and her study of psychoanalysis under Otto Rank.

To Read: The Storm | The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1: 1931-1934 | Risk

69. Meena Kandasamy

Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist who is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.[1] Most of her works are centered on feminism and the anti-caste Caste Annihilation Movement of the contemporary Indian milieu.

To Read: ThisPoemWillProvokeYou | Dead Woman Walking | Flesh Finds A Form Of Address

70. Taslima Nasrin

Taslima Nasrin, (born August 25, 1962, Mymensingh, East Pakistan [now Bangladesh]), Bangladeshi feminist author who was forced out of her country because of her controversial writings, which many Muslims felt discredited Islam. Her plight was often compared to that of Sir Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses (1988).

To Read: Interned | The Safe House | My Bengal

71. Fanny Howe

Fanny Howe is a well-known poet and an author. She was born on Oct 15, 1940 in Buffalo, New-York but grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fanny was always surrounded by skilled people. Her father was a lawyer, her mother an actress, her sister a poet, her husband a poet and writer and one of her daughter is also a novelist.

To Read: Yellow Goblins | The Cenotaph | Everything

72. Kamini Roy

Roy, Kamini (1864-1933) poet and social worker, was born on 12 October 1864 in the village of Basanda in Bakerganj district. Her father, Chandicharan Sen, was a district judge and writer. She passed the Entrance examination in 1880 from Bethune Female School, and FA in 1883 and BA (Hons) in Sanskrit in 1886 from bethune college. The same year she started teaching at Bethune College. In 1894 she married Kedarnath Roy.

To Read: পাছে লোকে কিছু বলে | এরা যদি জানে | মাতৃপূজা

73. Emily Pauline Johnson

Pauline Johnson, in full Emily Pauline Johnson, (born March 10, 1862, Six Nation Indian Reserve, Brant county, Upper Canada [now in Ontario]—died March 7, 1913, Vancouver, B.C.), Canadian Indian poet who celebrated the heritage of her people in poems that had immense appeal in her lifetime.

To Read: Canadian Born | Your Mirror Frame | The Indian Corn Planter

74. Petya Dubarova

Petya Dubarova (April 25, 1962 – December 4, 1979) was a Bulgarian poet. She was born and lived in the seaside town of Burgas. Dubarova published poems in youth newspapers and magazines such as: Septemvriyche, Rodna Rech, and Mladezh (Youth).

To Read: Dedication | Saturdays | Winter Holidays

75. Nazik Al-Malaika

Nazik al-Malaika, one of Iraq’s most famous poets, died June 20, 2007, at the age of 83. Al-Malaika was best known for her role as a pioneer of the free verse movement, making a sharp departure from the classical rhyme form that had dominated Arabic poetry for centuries.

To Read: Love Song For Words | Revolt Against The Sun | New Year

76. Judith Sargent Murray

Judith Sargent Stevens Murray, née Judith Sargent, (born May 1, 1751, Gloucester, Mass. [U.S.]—died July 6, 1820, Natchez, Miss., U.S.), American writer during the early republic, remembered largely for her essays and journalistic comment on contemporary public issues, especially women’s rights.

To Read: Elegiack Lines | The Consolation | Apology For An Epilogue

77. Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek, (born October 20, 1946, Mürzzuschlag, Austria), Austrian novelist and playwright noted for her controversial works on gender relations, female sexuality, and popular culture. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.

To Read: Tonight | Spring | Our Motorbike

79. Sarah Flower Adams

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (or Sally Adams) (22 February 1805 – 14 August 1848) was an English poet and hymnwriter, best known for writing the words of the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee”.

To Read: To My Sister | A Summer Recollection | Nearer, My God, To Thee

80. Martha Collins

Martha Collins (born 1940) is a poet, translator, and editor. She has published nine books of poetry, including Night Unto Night (Milkweed, 2018),Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pitt Poetry Series, 2016), Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), and Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), as well as two chapbooks and four books of co-translations from the Vietnamese.

To Read: The Story We Know | Several Things | Over Time

81. Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur (born 4 October 1992) (Punjabi: ਰੂਪੀ ਕੌਰ) is an Indian-born Canadian poet and author. Her works have been at the forefront of Instapoetry, a new genre of social-media-centered, short, and easily accessible poetry. She received widespread popularity after the publication of her debut book Milk and Honey (2014) which went on to sell over 2.5 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on The New York Times Best Seller list.

To Read: The Second Birth | You Are Too Late | Immigrant

82. Kelli Russell Agodon

Kelli Russell Agodon (born in Seattle) is an American poet, writer, and editor. She was raised in Seattle, and graduated from the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University Rainier Writing Workshop with an MFA in creative writing.

To Read: Of a Forgetful Sea | Snapshot of a Lump | A Mermaid Questions God

83. Toru Dutt

Toru Dutt (Bengali: তরু দত্ত) (March 4, 1856 – August 30, 1877) was an Indian poet who wrote in English and French. She was born to father Govin Chunder Dutt and mother Kshetramoni of the Rambagan Dutt family. Toru was the youngest child after sister Aru and brother Abju. Romesh Chunder Dutt, writer and Indian civil servant, was their cousin. Their family became Christians in 1862.

To Read: The Sower | Our Casuarina Tree | My Vocation

84. Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Turner Smith (4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806) was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility.

To Read: Written Near A Port On A Dark Evening | Evening | Studies By The Sea

85. Anne Killigrew

Anne Killigrew (1660–1685) was an English poet, who was also a painter. Born in London, Killigrew is perhaps best known as the subject of a famous elegy by the poet John Dryden entitled To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish’d Young Lady Mrs. … Killigrew died of smallpox aged 25.

To Read: On Death | A Farewel To Worldly Joys | On A Young Lady

86. Erin Belieu

Erin Belieu (born September 25, 1965) is an American poet. Belieu was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, graduating from Central High School. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, where she learned how to construct poetry. Belieu then attended Boston University, and Ohio State University receiving advanced degrees in the area of poetry.

To Read: Another Poem For Mothers | Legend Of The Albino Farm | Dum Spiro Spero

87. Sandra McPherson

Sandra Jean McPherson (born August 2, 1943) is an American poet. Born in San Jose, California, McPherson received her B.A. at San Jose State University, and studied at the University of Washington, with Elizabeth Bishop and David Wagoner. She considers her “literary mothers” to be Elizabeth Bishop, Carolyn Kizer, and Adrienne Rich.

To Read: The War Surplus Store | The Study of Genius | Speech Crush

88. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death.

To Read: Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples | To a Skylark | I Arise From Dreams Of Thee

89. Lisa Zaran

Lisa was born on September 26, 1969 in Los Angeles, California to an American-Norwegian mother, Joan Ablett (1941) and Norwegian father, Leonhard Hoie (1937-1996) She has two sisters and one brother. Lisa grew up a shy and quiet girl. She did well in school and was gifted with her father’s love for the written word. She wrote her first poem entitled, Hallway, when she was six years old.

To Read: The Troubled Boy | Subtraction Flower | The Unnameable

90. Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout (born April 13, 1947) is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics.

To Read: Background Information | Confidential | The Difficulty

91. Fleda Brown

Fleda Brown (born 1944 in Columbia, Missouri) is an American poet and author. She is also known as Fleda Brown Jackson. Fleda Brown was born in Columbia, Missouri, and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 1978 she joined the University of Delaware English Department.

To Read: Canada Anemone | The Route We Take | Chicory

92. Mary Lamb

Mary Ann Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847) was an English writer. She is best known for the collaboration with her brother Charles on the collection Tales from Shakespeare. Lamb suffered from mental illness, and in 1796 she stabbed her mother to death during a mental breakdown. She was confined to mental facilities off and on for most of her life. She and Charles presided over a literary circle in London that included the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, among others.

To Read: A Child | Middle East Peace | The Gospel Of Jesus

93. Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine (born April 27, 1934) is an American poet and was the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 – 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965 – 2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

To Read: Archangel | Actuarial File | Dream Barker

94. Daisy Fried

Daisy Fried (born 1967, Ithaca, New York) is an American poet. Fried graduated from Swarthmore College in 1989. Her work has appeared in The London Review of Books, The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Threepenny Review, Triquarterly.

To Read: No God in Us but Song | Elegy | Il Penseroso

95. Alice Fulton

Alice Fulton (born 1952) is an American author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Fulton was born and raised in Troy, New York, the youngest of three daughters. Her father was the proprietor of the historic Phoenix Hotel, and her mother was a visiting nurse.

To Read: Wow Moment | What I Like | A Union House

96. Nadia Anjuman

Nadia Anjuman (December 27, 1980 – November 4, 2005) was a poet from Afghanistan. She was one of six children, raised during one of Aghanistan’s more recent periods of tumult. In September 1995, the Taliban captured Herat and ousted the then-Governor of the Province, Ismail Khan. With the new Taliban government in power, women had their liberties drastically restrained.

To Read: Light Blue Memories | A Voiceless Cry | A Poem

97. Carolyn D. Wright

Carolyn D. Wright (January 6, 1949 – January 12, 2016) was an American poet. She was a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island.

To Read: Imaginary Hollywood | Alla Breve Loving | Floating Trees

98. Ghada Al-Samman

Ghadah Al-Samman (Arabic: غادة السمّان‎) is a Syrian writer, journalist and novelist born in Damascus in 1942 to a prominent and conservative Damascene family, she is remotely related to Nizar Qabbani the famous poet. Her father was Ahmed Al-Samman, a president of the Syrian University. She was deeply influenced by him since her mother died at a very young age.

To Read: Three Poems | Dear eternity, I want a truce of love | The virtual impostor

99. Mary Elizabeth Frye

Mary Elizabeth Frye (November 13, 1905 – September 15, 2004) was an American poet and florist, best known as the author of the poem Do not stand at my grave and weep, written in 1932.

To Read: Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

100. Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye (Arabic: نعومي شهاب ناي‎; born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. She began composing her first poem at the age of six and has published or contributed to over 30 volumes.

To Read: Two Countries | Making A Fist | Hugging The Jukebox

101. Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood AO (8 June 1920 – 4 December 1995), née Gwendoline Nessie Foster, was an Australian poet and librettist. Gwen Harwood is regarded as one of Australia’s finest poets, publishing over 420 works, including 386 poems and 13 librettos.

To Read: Barn Owl | The Wound | The Glass Jar

Some Other Famous Female Poets

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