Who are the World's greatest living Poets?

Who are the world's greatest poets who are still living, now that Seamus Heaney and so many other bright lights have departed our planet?

With the recent deaths of Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur, Geoffrey Hill, Wisława Szymborska, John Ashbery and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among other luminaries, this has become an interesting question.

Candidates for the greatest living poet, in my opinion, include the following. But it’s impossible to keep up with contemporary poetry around the globe, so please let me know your candidates in the comments.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST LIVING POETS

• Bob Dylan
  
  Bob Dylan considers himself more a poet than a musician. Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a first for a songwriter, and has also published books of poems.

• Paul Muldoon, an Irish poet
  
  Among writers considered primarily poets, I have seen Muldoon’s name pop up the most in discussions about the greatest living poet.

• Ko Un, a Korean poet
  
  Speechless
  by Ko Un
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  At Auschwitz
  piles of glasses,
  mountains of shoes ...
  returning, we stared out different windows.

• Vera Pavlova, a Russian poet
  
  Shattered
  by Vera Pavlova
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  I shattered your heart;
  now I limp through the shards
  barefoot.
  

• Zhai Yongming, a Chinese poet
  
  Zhai Yongming was born in Chengdu in 1955. She was one of the instigators and prime movers of the “Black Tornado” of women’s poetry that swept China in 1986-1989. Since then she has been regarded as one of China’s most prominent poets.
  
  Waves
  Zhai Yongming
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  The waves manhandle me like a midwife pounding my back relentlessly,
  and so the world abuses my body—
  accosting me, bewildering me, according me a certain ecstasy ...
  
  Monologue
  Zhai Yongming
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  I am a wild thought, born of the abyss
  and—only incidentally—of you. The earth and sky
  combine in me—their concubine—they consolidate in my body.
  
  I am an ordinary embryo, encased in pale, watery flesh,
  and yet in the sunlight I dazzle and amaze you.
  
  I am the gentlest, the most understanding of women.
  Yet I long for winter, the interminable black night, drawn out to my heart's bleakest limit.
  
  When you leave, my pain makes me want to vomit my heart up through my mouth—
  to destroy you through love—where's the taboo in that?
  
  The sun rises for the rest of the world, but only for you do I focus the hostile tenderness of my body.
  I have my ways.
  
  A chorus of cries rises. The sea screams in my blood but who remembers me?
  What is life?

• Margaret Atwood

• Walid Khazindar, a Palestinian poet
  
  Walid Khazindar was born in 1950 in Gaza City. He is considered to be one of the very best Palestinian poets; his poetry has been said to be "characterized by metaphoric originality and a novel thematic approach unprecedented in Arabic poetry." He was awarded the first Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1997.
  
  This Distant Light
  by Walid Khazindar
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  Bitterly cold,
  winter clings to the naked trees.
  
  If only you would free
  the bright sparrows
  from your fingertips
  and unleash a smile—that shy, tentative smile—
  from the imprisoned anguish I see.
  
  Sing! Can we not sing
  as if we were warm, hand-in-hand,
  sheltered by shade from a sweltering sun?
  
  Can you not always remain like this:
  stoking the fire, more beautiful than expected, in reverie?
  
  Darkness increases and we must remain vigilant
  now that this distant light is our sole consolation ...
  this imperiled flame, which from the beginning
  has constantly flickered,
  in danger of going out.
  
  Come to me, closer and closer.
  I don't want to be able to tell my hand from yours.
  And let's stay awake, lest the snow smother us.

• Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
  
  Mirror
  by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  My era's obscuring mirror
  shattered
  because it magnified the small
  and made the great seem insignificant.
  Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
  Now when I breathe
  its jagged shards pierce my heart
  and instead of sweat
  I exude glass.
  
  The Lonely Earth
  by Kajal Ahmad
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  The pale celestial bodies
  never bid her "Good morning!"
  nor do the creative stars
  kiss her.
  Earth, where so many tender persuasions and roses lie interred,
  might expire for the lack of a glance, or an odor.
  She's a lonely dusty orb,
  so very lonely!, as she observes the moon's patchwork attire
  knowing the sun's an imposter
  who sears with rays he has stolen for himself
  and who looks down on the moon and earth like lodgers.
  
  Kurds are Birds
  by Kajal Ahmad
  translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
  
  Per the latest scientific classification, Kurds
  now belong to a species of bird!
  This is why,
  traveling across the torn, fraying pages of history,
  they are nomads recognized by their caravans.
  Yes, Kurds are birds! And,
  even worse, when
  there's nowhere left to nest, no refuge from their pain,
  they turn to the illusion of traveling again
  between the warm and arctic sectors of their homeland.
  So I don't think it strange Kurds can fly but not land.
  They wander from region to region
  never realizing their dreams
  of settling,
  of forming a colony, of nesting.
  No, they never settle down long enough
  to visit Rumi and inquire about his health,
  or to bow down deeply in the gust-
  stirred dust,
  like Nali.

• Maya Angelou

• Jared Carter

• Tom Merrill

• Bob Zisk

• Martin Mc Carthy, an Irish poet

• Rhina P. Espaillat

• Janet Kenny, an Australian poet, peace activist and former opera singer.

• Billy Collins

• Ted Kooser

• Wendy Cope

• Simon Armitage

• A. E. Stallings

• Derek Mahon

• Tony Harrison

• Charles Wright

• Rupi Kaur

• Ocean Vuong

• David Whyte was nominated by Stoic Journeys

CONTEMPORARY POETS

It takes time to sort out which contemporary poets will be read in the future, but these are my personal picks for future immortality: Conrad Aiken, Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jared Carter, Ann Drysdale, Rhina P. Espaillat, Seamus Heaney, Anthony Hecht, Robert Hayden, Randall Jarrell, Philip Larkin, Archibald MacLeish, Louis MacNeice, Tom Merrill, Robert Mezey, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Howard Nemerov, Richard Thomas Moore, John Crowe Ransom, Kevin N. Roberts, W.D Snodgrass, A. E. Stallings, Allen Tate, Derek Walcott (esp. “Omeros”), Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur (esp. “The Death of a Toad”)

STILL GOING STRONG

R. S. Gwynn, Janet Kenny, Martin Mc Carthy, Harvey Stanbrough, F. F. Teague, Gail White, Bob Zisk

YOUNGER POETS TO KEEP AN EYE ON

Annie Diamond, Amanda Gorman, John Masella, Anais Vionet, Shannon Winestone

RECENTLY DEPARTED

Ann Drysdale, Jim Dunlap, Louise Glück, Zyskandar Jaimot, Joe M. Ruggier, Luis Omar Salinas, Charles Simic

SINGER-SONGWRITERS

In addition to the great Bob Dylan, singer-songwriters who deserve consideration include Adele, Leonard Cohen, Eminem, Mick Jagger, Alicia Keys, Carole King, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, Keith Richards, Sade, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Sting, Bernie Taupin and Stevie Wonder.