The great voices of verse
Poetry has been shaped by some truly memorable writers, and this word search gathers many of them. You'll be finding the Romantics WORDSWORTH, KEATS, BYRON, BLAKE and SHELLEY, the American voices FROST and WHITMAN, and modern poets like PLATH and HUGHES.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection of surnames from the list, so the anthology changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a longer-word challenge once the diagonals and backwards words appear on Hard.
Poets across the centuries
From classic verse to the modern day, the words are here. There's the Irish great YEATS, the Scottish bard BURNS, and famous names like TENNYSON, ELIOT, ROSSETTI, BROWNING, COLERIDGE and LONGFELLOW, plus AUDEN, LARKIN, HEANEY, CUMMINGS and the Chilean NERUDA.
The poems behind the names
Each name here is tied to verse you may already half-know. WORDSWORTH wrote about wandering 'lonely as a cloud' and a field of daffodils; Robert FROST is famous for 'two roads diverged in a wood'; and Robert BURNS gave the world 'Auld Lang Syne', sung every New Year. The Romantics like KEATS, BYRON, BLAKE, SHELLEY and COLERIDGE wrote about nature, imagination and big feelings in the early 1800s, and their work is still studied everywhere today.
Poets love to break the rules, too. E. E. CUMMINGS played with punctuation and lower-case letters; Walt WHITMAN wrote sprawling free verse with no rhyme at all; and modern voices like Sylvia PLATH, Ted HUGHES and Seamus HEANEY found poetry in everyday life. Reading a poem aloud is the best way to feel its rhythm and rhyme, and recognising a name like FROST or YEATS is a friendly first step — which makes this a great fit for an English or poetry topic.
Great for an English topic
It's a great fit for an English or poetry topic — we use surnames to keep words short, and Easy mode uses a small grid with no diagonals or reverse words (longer names like WORDSWORTH appear on Medium and Hard). Play online, print a PDF pack, or use Make Your Own to build a grid from your own favourite poets.
Frequently asked questions
Which poets are in the word search?
Great poets across the centuries — Wordsworth, Keats, Frost, Byron, Whitman, Plath, Yeats and more. Each puzzle uses a fresh selection of surnames.
Does it span the Romantics and modern poets?
It does — Romantics WORDSWORTH, KEATS, BYRON, BLAKE and SHELLEY, American voices FROST and WHITMAN, the Irish YEATS and Scottish BURNS, plus TENNYSON, ELIOT, PLATH, HUGHES, HEANEY and NERUDA.
Is it good for an English topic?
Great fit for an English or poetry topic. We use surnames to keep words short, and Easy mode uses a small grid with no diagonals or reverse words.