The Best Female Poets of All Time

Voting Rules
Vote up the all time greatest female poets

Who are the best female poets? This list includes great female poets such as Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sylvia Plath, and Emily Dickinson. The women on this list have all changed poetry in their own way and left their mark on the genre. Women have been writing poetry through many eras and generations, but the poets on this list are the best.

Written works have the ability to make us feel. They make us want to believe, be inspired, and live vicariously through the stories on the page. Whether short or long form, poetry is often illusory, and full of rich imagery or hidden meaning. It is these elements which provoke readers to dig deeper. The best poems and poets are read throughout the ages. They are passed from generation to generation and taught throughout schools to young students.

Poets and their poetry have the ability to take readers places and into worlds never imagined. Poets can often be tortured souls or great thinkers who allow readers a new view on the world. These greatest women poets provide the kind of emotional connection to the written word that few can.

Vote up the best woman poets on the list below, or add the women poets you think are the top if they aren't already on the list.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY
Ranked by
  • Emily Dickinson
    1
    412 votes
    The complete poems, The letters, Acts of Light: The World of Emily Dickinson
  • Sappho
    2
    218 votes
    Sappho, the poems and fragments, Woman from child (Sappho)
  • Sylvia Plath
    3
    285 votes
    The Bell Jar, Ariel, The Collected Poems
  • Maya Angelou
    4
    328 votes
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Sister, Sister
  • Wisława Szymborska
    5
    38 votes
    View with a Grain of Sand, Non-required Reading, That's Why We Are Alive
  • Anna Akhmatova
    6
    117 votes
    Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems, Chetki