A poet is a person who writes poetry.

Etymology

From the ancient greek : ποιέω, poieō : "I make or compose" ; ποιητης, poïêtes : "artisan, creator, maker (also makar), author, poet" > Latin : poēta : "poet, author" > Old French : (1200-1400) poëte or poète > Used (poet) in 14th. century, in classical English language, for all sorts of writers or composers of works of literature. The term makar, which is another older term for poet, is a calque from the Greek.

List of many poets classed by language in alphabetical order

• The Ancient Greek language has some of the richest poetry in ancient history, including that of Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Alcaeus of Mytilene, Anacreon, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aratus, Archilochus, Arctinus of Miletus, Arion, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Epicharmus of Kos, Epimenides, Herodotus, Hesiod, Mimnermus, Philitas of Cos, Simonides of Ceos, Solon, Sophocles, Terpander, Theognis of Megara, Tyrtaeus and Xenophanes.

• In Arabic, the most notable poets include Al-Ma`arri, Al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas, Ahmed Shawqi, Khalil Gibran, Mahmoud Darwish.

• The Bengali language has been used by many poets including Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam.

• The Bulgarian language has been used by poets like Hristo Botev, Pencho Slaveikov, Peyo Yavorov and Ivan Vazov.

• In the Chinese language there have been used by such poets as Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Li Qingzhao, Qu Yuan, Shitao, Bei Dao, Xue Tao, Yu Xuanji, Su Xiaoxiao, Lu You, Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaochen, Gu Cheng, Li He, Bai Juyi, Su Shi, Yang Lian, Qiu Jin and Cao Zhi.

• The Czech language has been used by many poets, such as Karel Hynek Mácha, Jaroslav Seifert, Egon Bondy, Otokar Březina, Antonín Sova, Vítězslav Nezval, Jaroslav Durych, Viktor Dyk, Jiří Grossmann, Adolf Heyduk, Vladimír Holan, Josef Jungmann, Karel Kryl, Rio Preisner, Václav Renč and Fráňa Šrámek.

• In the Danish language we can read the poetry of Johannes Secundus, Jens Immanuel Baggesen, Jens Fink-Jensen, Piet Hein, Ambrosius Stub, Jeppe Aakjær, Hans Christian Andersen, Steen Steensen Blicher, Holger Drachmann, Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger and Johan Herman Wessel.

• The Dutch language has been used by poets such as Piet Paaltjens, Paul van Ostaijen, Guido Gezelle, Hugo Claus, P.C. Hooft.

• In the English language, poets generally considered to be the most influential include Christopher Marlow, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Wyatt, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, John Milton, William Blake, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Edgar Allan Poe, W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Isaac Rosenberg, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Hart Crane, Emma Lazarus, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, William Empson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Derek Walcott, Henry Lawson, Shel Silverstein, Banjo Patterson and Geoffrey Hill.