The Lives of Iconic Women Poets in Documentaries & Biopics
By Nava Atlas | On August 13, 2025 | Updated August 16, 2025 | Comments (0)
Presented here is a collection of documentaries and biopics exploring the lives of iconic women poets: Maya Angelou, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Julia de Burgos, Emily Dickinson, Ingrid Jonker, and Sylvia Plath.
On the surface, it wouldn’t seem like a full-length film about a poet would be anything to write home about, so to speak. But behind their deep, soulful lines were complex lives, not always spent at a desk.
Best of all, most of the films in this roundup can be viewed gratis on YouTube by following the links provided.
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Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
This 2017 documentary about Maya Angelou, who personifies the “Phenomenal Woman” of her famous poem, is available to view gratis on YouTube. The description from the producer, BBC One:
“Documentary portrait of the trail-blazing activist, poet and writer Maya Angelou. Born in 1928, she enthused generations with her bold and inspirational championing of the African-American experience that pushed boundaries and redefined the way people think about race and culture.
Maya Angelou was captured on film just before she died in 2014, and this documentary celebrates her life and work, weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos.
It reveals hidden episodes of her exuberant life during some of America’s defining moments, from her upbringing in the Depression-era south to her work with Malcolm X in Ghana and her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, the film takes us on an incredible journey through the life of a true American icon. Contributors include Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, Hillary Clinton, and Maya Angelou’s son Guy Johnson.”
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Burning Candles:
The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Burning Candles: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay is a documentary celebrating the iconic American poet. It’s available to view gratis on YouTube. From the producer’s description of the 2009 film:
“Encouraged to read the classics at home, she was too rebellious to make a success of formal education, but she won poetry prizes from an early age, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, and went on to use verse as a medium for her feminist activism. She also wrote verse-dramas and a highly praised opera, The King’s Henchman.
Millay was a prominent social figure of New York City’s Greenwich Village just as it was becoming known as a bohemian writer’s colony, and she was noted for her uninhibited lifestyle, forming many passing relationships with both men and women. She was also a social and political activist and those relationships included prominent anti-war activists.
She became a prominent feminist of her time; her poetry and her example, both subversive, inspired a generation of American women. Her career as a poet was meteoric. She became a performance artist super-star, reading her poetry to rapt audiences across the country.”
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A Quiet Passion (Emily Dickinson)
Film critics loved Terence Davies’s A Quiet Passion, but Emily Dickinson fans gave this 2016 biopic mixed reviews, as you can see in the Amazon reviews.Though it’s a beautifully photographed film, one wonders how much “poetic license” was taken with the story of the brilliant poet who rarely strayed from her family’s Amherst home.
Some viewers objected to how Emily and her family are portrayed in the film, feeling that it took too many liberties. I’m more on the thumbs-down side of this film. It took me bit of adjustment to accept Cynthia Nixon as the poet, having become used to seeing her as Miranda on Sex and the City. Her performance can be commended, but scenes of Emily’s illness and what seem like seizures seemed over the top.
At the very least, the film can nudge us to read more of Emily Dickinson’s breathtaking poetry. Here are 10 of her well-loved poems, a mere fraction of her incredible output.
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My Letter to the World (Emily Dickinson)
If you prefer a documentary to a fictionalization like the one above, My Letter to the World came out in 2018, not long after A Quiet Passion, above. The same producers of the latter created this documentary. From Music Box Films:
“An in-depth exploration of the life and work of the great American poet Emily Dickinson, narrated by Cynthia Nixon. Bringing to light new theories about Dickinson’s personal relationships and most revered work, this feature documentary rewrites the widely accepted narrative of the poet as a strange recluse in white, and breathes new life into the Dickinson legacy over 130 years after her death.”
Watch the trailer of My Letter to the World.
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Julia, Todo en Mí (Julia de Burgos)
This 2002 film is a docudrama — part documentary, part re-enacted — about the esteemed Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos. A lovely Spanish language film with English subtitles, it’s available to watch for free on YouTube. Here, the description is translated by Google Translate & edited by yours truly (a student of Spanish!):
“Julia, All in Me offers a poetic journey through the life, literary work, and humanistic thought of Puerto Rican Julia de Burgos, who Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda prophesied as “one of the great poets of the Americas.” The story of Julia de Burgos is told in her own voice, through fragments of the letters she wrote to her sister Consuelo, from her voluntary exile in New York and Cuba from 1940 until her early death in 1953.
Historical moments—the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the social and political climate in Puerto Rico, New York, Cuba, and Europe—are intertwined with Julia’s loves and passions, described with a revelatory vision that transcends time. This moving epistolary testimony is intertwined with the participation of personalities from Puerto Rico and abroad, who read her poems and pay a beautiful tribute to the island nations distinguished poet Julia de Burgos.”
Enjoy this selection of poems by Julia de Burgos in their original Spanish and in English translation.
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Black Butterflies (Ingrid Jonker)
Ingrid Jonker (1933 – 1965) was a South African poet and founder of the emerging counterculture literary movement of her time. Her views and work strongly opposed the apartheid government of the time. From the producers, here’s a brief description of Black Butterflies, a fictionalized biopic (2012):
“Poetry, politics, madness, and desire collide in the true story of the woman hailed as South Africa’s Sylvia Plath. In 1960s Cape Town, as Apartheid steals the expressive rights of blacks and whites alike, young Ingrid Jonker finds her freedom scrawling verse while frittering through a series of stormy affairs.
Amid escalating quarrels with her lovers and her rigid father, a parliament censorship minister, the poet witnesses an unconscionable event that will alter the course of both her artistic and personal lives … As a woman governed by equal parts genius and mercurial gloom, Jonker could inspire passion but never, it seems, love — a sad truth critically conveyed by van Houten. Jonker’s inner turmoil mirrored her country’s upheaval, but van der Oest is never heavy-handed with her parallels of the poet and the South African maelstrom happening around her.”
Like several other films in this roundup, it’s available to watch in full on YouTube, gratis.
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Sylvia (Sylvia Plath)
Of course, I have to mention Sylvia, the 2002 biopic starring Gwyneth Paltrow. She was a great casting choice for the brilliant American poet Sylvia Plath (with Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes, her husband and fellow poet in their awful marriage), but the film received tepid reviews at best, and audiences had mixed reactions. In this lengthy article, the screenwriter details the difficulties of bringing Plath’s tragic life to film.
It’s now quite difficult to find the film online, though holdouts with DVD players might have more luck finding it through their local library systems. Here’s the official trailer.
There don’t seem to be any documentaries of a full scale — that is, 90 minutes or so — about Sylvia Plath. This one from 1988, part of the Voices and Visions series nearly does the job at 56 minutes. It’s available to watch on YouTube. However, its production values make it a bit dated and dull, so if you do want to watch it, do so with lowered expectations.
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