Charles Baudelaire
After discovering poetry at school, this one is a must read for any French teens. His writing poetry and prose are still my main fuel to keep on writing myself.
Elizabeth Bishop
First woman poet I ever read as far as I remember. Discovered at Uni. Her Geography III short collection is full of gems.
Margaret Atwood
I discovered The Handmaid’s Tale in the early 2000s. I’m currently reading the last novel that was missing in my collection. Just superb!
Kate Atkinson
Popular writer from Britain. Her first novels are kind of eerie. Her detective stories are darker than dark but so realistic and funny sometimes. Her WW2 series is captivating.
Bernardine Evaristo
I’ve just read “Girl, Woman, Other”. This verse fiction is just fantastic and I want to read more from Evaristo. It is important for an open-minded, white-European male to discover the work of such authors as her, Zadie Smith, Roxane Gay, or Toni Morrisson, James Baldwin, Ted Hughes…
Walter Ruhlmann works as an English teacher, edits Datura, Beakful and Urtica. He has published close to thirty chapbooks and poetry collections both in French and English, and hundreds of poems worldwide. His blogs http://thenightorchid.blogspot.fr/ and https://nightorchidsselectedpoems.blogspot.com/