Mary Oliver was an “indefatigable guide to the natural world,” wrote Maxine Kumin in the Women’s Review of Books. Oliver’s poetry won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and a Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement

You can read the poem here

http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_thejourney.html

Wendy Cope was raised in Kent, England, where her parents often recited poetry to her. She earned a BA in history and trained as a teacher at Oxford University. Cope taught in primary schools for many years before publishing her first book of poetry, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986). The collection was an incredible success, selling tens of thousands of copies in the UK. It also announced Cope’s remarkable talents for parody, word play, dexterity with received forms, and the use of humor to address grave topics. In the Los Angeles Review of Books, critic and poet A.M. Juster declared, “one has to go back to Byron to find a poet as consistently witty, wide-ranging, and technically outstanding as Cope.” You can read the poem here

https://www.best-poems.net/wendy-cope/being-boring.html

Rudy Francisco is one of the most recognizable names in Spoken Word Poetry. At the age of 21, Rudy completed his B.A in Psychology and decided to continue his education by pursuing a M.A in Organizational Studies. As an artist, Rudy Francisco is an amalgamation of social critique, introspection, honesty and humor. He uses personal narratives to discuss the politics of race, class, gender and religion while simultaneously pinpointing and reinforcing the interconnected nature of human existence. Francisco is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Helium (Button Poetry, 2017) and I’ll Fly Away (Button Poetry, 2020). Rudy was the first spoken word poet to perform on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and was most recently seen on ABC’s The Bachelorette as the contestant’s poetry coach. You can read the poem here

https://genius.com/Rudy-francisco-horizon-annotated

Timothy Tocher is the author of several books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for both children and adults. His books for children often focus on sports and athletics. You can read the poem here

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58519/help-wanted

Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar .

Alexander’s career as a poet has likewise been impressive. Her book American Sublime (2005) was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2005 she was awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize. She is often recognized as a pivotal figure in African American poetry. When Barack Obama asked her to compose and read a poem for his Presidential inauguration, she joined the ranks of Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Miller Williams; her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” became a bestseller after it was published as a chapbook by Graywolf Press. Alexander writes on a variety of subjects, most notably race and gender, politics and history, and motherhood. You can read the poem here

⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52416/butter-56d230df0abef

This poem is about finding words for the human heart and all the emotions we ascribe to it.

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, on August 28, 1952. A poet and writer, she was a high school Presidential Scholar and graduated with a BA in English from Miami University of Ohio in 1973. She then studied German poetry as a Fulbright scholar at Universität Tübingen before getting an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Dove’s work traverses a wide range of landscapes, applying an unflinching eye upon historical and political events.

You can read the poem here:

https://poets.org/poem/heart-heart

Lucille Clifton was born in 1936 in DePew, New York, and grew up in Buffalo. She studied at Howard University, before transferring to SUNY Fredonia, near her hometown. She was discovered as a poet by Langston Hughes , and Hughes published Clifton's poetry in his highly influential anthology, The Poetry of the Negro (1970). A prolific and widely respected poet, Lucille Clifton’s work emphasizes endurance and strength through adversity, focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. You can read the poem here-

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49487/homage-to-my-hips