Anne Carson
Carson made me reevaluate my notion that poetry cannot be both intellectually daunting and incredibly FUN.
Hera Lindsay Bird
The writer of the most beautiful love poems I have ever read, and I firmly believe her words will become staples at hipster weddings for the rest of time (which probably won’t be that long given the forthcoming climate apocalypse lol).
Allen Ginsberg
Like many whiteboys, Ginsberg was the first poet I ever read who made me feel something bubble deep within: in his words I first experienced a cognisance of my own physicality and reality and life.
Claudia Rankine
Like all of these, Rankine is a predictable answer for a hipster millennial poet, but I believe that one can’t undersell the importance of her work: political, personal and deeply poetic.
Sharon Olds
When I began reading and writing poetry in my bald late twenties (having studied it but never got any deeper “in” than the Beats when a floppy-haired undergraduate), Sharon Olds was the first poet whose writing (about death, love, rejection, sex) made me realise that the style of writing I’d been neglecting was one I needed deeply embedded in my life. Now it is!
Scott Manley Hadley (@Scott_Hadley) is Satire Editor at Queen Mob’s Teahouse (@queenmobs) and co-Publisher at Truther Press (@PressTruther). He was ‘Highly Commended’ in the Forward Prizes for Poetry 2019 and he blogs at TriumphoftheNow.com.