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From Maya Angelou to Sylvia Plath to Amanda Lovelace, here are five female poets whose writing will inspire your inner feminist!

When was the last time you read – and I mean really read – a piece of poetry? If the answer is “not since my high school English class,” you’ve been missing out. In fact, reading poetry is not only an elegant hobby; studies have found that reading poetry can stimulate areas of the brain related to memory, increase self-reflection, and even give your brain a boost.

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If you want to get the most bang for your buck, though, you might want to explore poetic artists who can inspire you with more than the beauty or wittiness of their words – they can inspire you with their feminist message, too. Ready to embrace your poetic side? Here are five female poets whose writing will make your inner feminist want to roar!

1 Amanda Lovelace

You probably never heard of Amanda Lovelace in school, but this new poet has already earned an impressive following thanks to her first book of poetry – called “The Princess Saves Herself in This One” – released in 2016. The poetry collection, as you probably guessed, is all about female empowerment – which is perfect if you’re looking for some feminist creative inspiration.

From Maya Angelou to Sylvia Plath to Amanda Lovelace, here are five female poets whose writing will inspire your inner feminist!

In her personal life, Lovelace has admitted to struggling with self-doubt when expressing herself out-loud. So, instead, she writes. Her advice to other women? “You do not need anyone’s permission to express yourself; you do not need anyone to validate your experiences. Just write.”

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2 Maya Angelou

How could we not include Maya Angelou when rounding up some of our favorite feminist poets? Although Angelou passed away in 2014, her poetry still impacts readers all over the world. She didn’t avoid tough topics; in fact, she wrote about being raped as a child as well as issues like racism and injustice. She also spoke out about being pro-choice, working as a prostitute and the problems with Anglo-American feminism.

From Maya Angelou to Sylvia Plath to Amanda Lovelace, here are five female poets whose writing will inspire your inner feminist!

Beyond writing some amazing poetry – and, perhaps most famously, her memoir “Why The Caged Bird Sings” – Angelou also presented the inaugural poem at Bill Clinton’s swearing-in ceremony in 1993 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Talk about a woman of a many (inspirational) talents!

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3 Warsan Shire

Even amazing women like Beyonce need to find inspiration somewhere…and this female poet’s lyrics actually appear throughout Beyonce’s hit albumLemonade. As a poet and an activist, Shire’s poems cover everything from gender to sex to war to cultural assumptions.

From Maya Angelou to Sylvia Plath to Amanda Lovelace, here are five female poets whose writing will inspire your inner feminist!

In an interview, Shire explains: “Character driven poetry is important for me—it’s being able to tell the stories of those people, especially refugees and immigrants, that otherwise wouldn’t be told, or they’ll be told really inaccurately. And I don’t want to write victims, or martyrs, or vacuous stereotypes…my family will tell me, ‘I have a new story for you,’ and I’ll get my Dictaphone and record it, so I can stay as true as possible to the story.”

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4 Sarah Kay

If you’re a fan of TED Talks, this name might sound familiar. Kay appeared on the series back in 2011 to perform a spoken poem – called “If I Should Have a Daughter” that many people, especially women, have praised as genius. Since then, Kay has released a poetry volume called “The Type” focused on female empowerment and complex realities of living as a woman, along with various other projects.

From Maya Angelou to Sylvia Plath to Amanda Lovelace, here are five female poets whose writing will inspire your inner feminist!

Besides being a spoken word poetry teacher, a documentary maker, an editor and a best-selling author, Sarah Kay also founded and co-directs “Project Voice.” According to its website, “Project VOICE is dedicated to promoting empowerment, improving literacy, and encouraging empathy and creative collaboration in classrooms and communities around the world.”

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5 Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath is one of history’s more tragic female poets considering she committed suicide in 1963. However, her contributions to poetry are no less profound than those of any other woman in this list. She is even considered to have “founded” a style of feminist poetry, in which she explores the problems of patriarchy – but turns the magnifying glass just as brutally on herself.

Plath was the first poet to posthumously win a Pulitzer Prize, which she received in 1982 for her volume, “The Collected Poems.” Besides her poetry collections “The Colossus” and “Ariel,” Plath is most well-known for her novel, “The Bell Jar.”

From Maya Angelou to Sylvia Plath to Amanda Lovelace, here are five female poets whose writing will inspire your inner feminist!

When you’re trying to juggle a job, a social life, an education and maybe even a romantic relationship, reading poetry might not fall high on your to-do list. However, as these five feminist poets show, poetry isn’t a dead art. In fact, its subject matter can be just what the modern woman needs to hear (or read).

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So, the next time you need some inspiration to kick butt at a job interview or take down the patriarchy, read some poems by writers like these. You never know where their girl power can take you!

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