Modern European poets

Giuseppe Ungaretti

Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970) was an Italian poet, forerunner of the Hermetic poets, who reinvented Italian verse with minimal, fragmented poems, beginning with the 1916 trench collection Il porto sepolto.

Gjergj Fishta

Gjergj Fishta (1871–1940) was an Albanian Franciscan friar, poet, and politician, author of the national epic Lahuta e Malcís, banned under communism and rehabilitated in the 1990s.

Goffredo Mameli

Goffredo Mameli was an Italian poet and patriot who wrote the lyrics of Il Canto degli Italiani, Italy's national anthem, and died at 21 defending the Roman Republic in 1849.

Göran Sonnevi

Göran Sonnevi, born in 1939, is a Swedish poet and translator whose 1965 poem on the Vietnam War made him a voice of left-wing political poetry.

Göran Tunström

Göran Tunström (1937–2000) was a Swedish poet and novelist whose autobiographical, magical realist work is largely set in Sunne, Värmland; his novel Juloratoriet won the 1984 Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn (1886–1956) was a German physician, poet, and essayist who won notoriety with Morgue (1912), supported the Nazis in 1933, and was banned from publishing in 1938.

Grigol Orbeliani

Grigol Orbeliani (გრიგოლ ორბელიანი, 1804–1883) was a Georgian Romantic poet and Imperial Russian general who took part in the 1832 independence plot and later served as governor-general of Tiflis.

Grigor Parlichev

Grigor Parlichev (1830–1893) was a writer and teacher from Ohrid who won the 1860 Athens poetry prize and made the first Bulgarian translation of Homer's Iliad.

Guido Gezelle

Guido Gezelle (1830–1899) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest and poet who wrote in Dutch and his native West Flemish, and is regarded as a founder of modern Flemish poetry.

Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, 1880-1918), French avant-garde poet born in Rome; author of Alcools and Calligrammes, inventor of the calligram, coiner of "surréalisme", died of Spanish flu two days before the 1918 armistice.

Gunnar Ekelöf

Gunnar Ekelöf, a Swedish poet and Swedish Academy member, is known for introducing surrealism and modernism to Swedish poetry, and received the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1966.

Gunvor Hofmo

Gunvor Hofmo (1921–1995) was a Norwegian lyrical modernist poet whose work is marked by the war and the loss of Ruth Maier, deported to Auschwitz in 1942.

Gustaf Fröding

Gustaf Fröding (1860–1911) was a Swedish poet from Värmland, regarded as the foremost renewer of Swedish lyric style; his 1891 debut Guitarr och dragharmonika sold 5,000 copies in five years.

Gustav Falke

Gustav Falke (1853–1916) was a German poet and writer from Lübeck, a leading poet-impressionist whose lyric verse, Hamburg novels, and children's books were set to music by composers including Richard Strauss and Arnold Schönberg.

Gustav Schwab

Gustav Schwab, full name Gustav Benjamin Schwab, was a German writer, pastor, and Stuttgart Gymnasium teacher known for his retelling of Greek myths, Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Alterthums.

Gustav Suits

Gustav Suits (1883–1956) was an Estonian poet and scholar who led the Noor-Eesti movement, wrote the symbolist collection Tuulemaa (1913), and became the first professor of Estonian literature, dying in exile in Stockholm.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida, was a Spanish Romantic poet and prose writer (1836–1870), best known for the lyric Rimas and the supernatural tales Leyendas.

Gyula Illyés

Gyula Illyés, born Illés Gyula, was a leading Hungarian poet, novelist, and dissident whose People of the Puszta (1936) exposed the plight of landless farm servants.

Halfdan Rasmussen

Halfdan Rasmussen (1915–2002) was a Danish poet known for humorous nonsense verse and children's rhymes, including the alphabet book Halfdans ABC, and for socially engaged adult poetry.

Halldis Moren Vesaas

Halldis Moren Vesaas (1907–1995) was a Norwegian poet and translator writing in Nynorsk, counted among Norway's most read poets; she translated over fifty stage works into Nynorsk.

Hans Børli

Hans Børli (1918–1989) was a Norwegian poet, author, and timber cutter who lived in Eidskog, Norway, and is known as the poet of the forest.

Hans Henrik Holm

Hans Henrik Holm (1896–1980) was a Norwegian poet and folk-life researcher who wrote in difficult archaic Nynorsk, debuting with the lyrical epic Jonsoknatt in 1933.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1929–2022), also published as Andreas Thalmayr, was a German poet, essayist, editor, and translator; Gruppe 47 member, founder of Kursbuch, editor of Die Andere Bibliothek, Georg Büchner Prize winner 1963.

Hans Verhagen

Hans Verhagen, full name Hans Pieter Verhagen (1939–2020), was a Dutch poet, journalist, and filmmaker, a leading figure of the neorealist movement De Nieuwe Stijl.

Hans Warren

Hans Warren, full name Johannes Adrianus Menne Warren (1921–2001), was a Dutch poet and literary critic whose candid diary series Geheim dagboek, published from 1981, made him one of the most discussed Dutch diarists.

Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine (Harry Heine, 1797–1856), German lyric poet and critic, author of Buch der Lieder and Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen; baptized 1825, Paris exile from 1831, works banned in Prussia 1835.

Heinrich Landesmann

Heinrich Landesmann, known by the pen name Hieronymus Lorm, was an Austrian poet, novelist, and philosopher who became deaf and blind and devised the Lorm alphabet.

Heiti Talvik

Heiti Talvik was an Estonian poet, known as the intellectual leader of the Arbujad literary group. He published Palavik (1934) and Kohtupäev (1937) before being arrested by the Soviets in 1945.

Hendrik Marsman

Hendrik Marsman (1899–1940) was a Dutch poet, translator, and critic, a leading interwar Dutch-language writer whose poem Herinnering aan Holland (1936) was named the Dutch-language poem of the century in 2000.