Certainly, yes. Why not????

Yes, through learning.

I can say for sure they have written wonderful song lyrics. :-)

Well described Dr. Anastas Ivanov Ivanov sir & Dr. Wulf Rehder .

I think it is tough. Possible in certain case only.

Joseph Conrad, born in Poland who did not learn English until his twenties, is considered one of the foremost writers of his time (dying in 1924), producing vivid novels written in poetic prose of marked intensity with a philosophic edge-Lord Jim, and Heart of Darkness made into the marvellous film 'Apocalypse Now.'

I can continue what was said by Anastas Ivanov Ivanov (I am not limited by poets and England...). Joseph Conrad, English writer, has Polish origin (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski); Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet, also Pole (Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris de Wąż-Kostrowicki), well-known V. Nabokov, poet, writer and translator who start to write on Russian, but since 1938 he wrote mostly English. And persons with less fame: Faddei Bulgarin, Russian writer, Polish origin (Jan Tadeusz Krzysztof Bułharyn ); Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) - American writer of Russian origin and many many others... It should also be borne in mind that many British writers of the 19th-20th centuries are in fact Irish (for example K. Doyle), as Irish and English are very different languages. About the United States in general, we can talk for hours - this is a country of immigrants.

Continuation.

I remembered. Jack Kerouac till six years old speaks only French (much exactly - Bretonian, as his family has this origin), Allen Ginsberg, although born in USA, was son of Jude family from Lvov (Russian Empire), and studied English as second language...

Yes, a good extension to the question @ Vadim S. Gorshkov ; writing L2 poetry by L1 users, rather than only in English.

Yes, very possible.

Vadim, well done. I'd forgotten about Kerouac. I remember reading in an introduction to On the Road that although he took his style from Cassidy its apparently unformed structure can be seen in his attempts to write English as a child. But the Portuguese poet Pessoa actually experimented with writing English poems alongside Portuguese ones, and they are credible.

Dear colleages,

Completely support the previous answers substantiating that it is possible. Besides, there is multilingualism and V. Nabokov is a classical bilingual writer, and English hardly can be regarded as his second language as he stated himself.

What about the Irishman Beckett, who wrote in French and translated his work in French back to English?

For foreign learners of English (or any other L2) poetry is usually studied at the advanced stage of an arts oriented discipline at university. That is because poetry uses all sorts of varieties and non-standard, or marked, forms of the language, which demands advanced levels of competency to appreciate meanings that are usually implied or hidden between the lines. While, as an Arabic native speaker who appreciates English poetry, it has only on certain special occasions when I was "feeling in the mood" that I tried to dabble in poetry.

If you ask me nicely, I can you show you a sample of my attempts at English poetry.

I have several attempts in doing so! Here is an example that is published in Yemen Times Newspaper (http://yementimes.com): 1520

Below The Tyrant Antique Hoof

Something earned on an even keel

Might orthodoxically be deemed outlandish

If, furthermore, is usurped in a raw deal

Has then the reflection of rotten rubbish

They who, however, put their shoulders to the wheel

Will never come back with merely a blank dish

Strongly struggle, strive, deeply dive, and happily feel

The bitter ocean for the sweetest taste of its fish

To such a thought none are needed to set their seal

But thoughtful, insightful ones whose mouths smell no radish

Who believe in freedom and glorification as pivotally life concepts

Whose reification demands struggles engendering severe pains in their chests

Those who fear advocating for the vivid truth

Will always live below the tyrant antique hoof

Definitely yes.

Yes; anyone can write poetry; poetry is free from language barriers.

Peotry must have your own feelings. I think to express our feeling in other languages is quite difficult.

Giving it a try ain't a problem. Or is it? :)

if you are a poet, you can write with english / french / .. if you do not have a poet in your heart, you can not write poetry even in your native language.

I don't see why not. Some wonderful names of people are mentioned in the comments who were not native English speakers.

One can only agree with the statement of @Wulf Rehder that the list of remarkable poetry written in a non-native language is short. Still it is natural – could the highly talented personalities with the perfect skills in several languages (and. as stated in the previous answer, real poets) be numerous? And surely Russian was the native language for V.V. Nabokov but it is hard to agree with the statement about his “poor English” and the problem of translation is much deeper that one can understand from the citation about the difficulties to describe the abstract concepts in Russian (by the way, he begins with the statement that “hues of nature, everything tenderly human (strange as it may seem!), but also everything coarse and crude, juicy and bawdy, comes out no worse in Russian than in English, perhaps better …”) and possibly just this analysis illustrates the geniality of Nabokov. May be you have seen the wonderful chapter of N.Bond and V. Ginsburgh conserning the multilingual writers (they have addressed not only poetry but describe the problem of emotions and abstract conceppt descriptions in the different languages, https://ideas.repec.org/p/eca/wpaper/2013-229782.html) Regards

The real question is: will some day English language follow the linguistic rules (as defined by Swiss De Saussure), claiming language rules have to adapt themselves to use rules. When billions of non-native speakers will weight something in English language? Is English language copyrighted in USA, GB only? Will it be in a close future an English for masters and an English language for slaves (what originated blues in USA)? Grammar is of course one of the clues to joke the social classes' trap. That's why it's so important to study really great writers such as Mark Twain, to realize how the use of grammar can avoid students a lot of unnecessary words.

Fred, are you saying that English has to or that it will change? I agree with both. In fact it already is, slowly, and always has.

That there are those English writers who insist that English should reflect a number of rules, well they are rarely rules in fact, just preferences.

English has to and it will definitively change. The good point is English structure makes it more flexible and open to needed changes than French, for example, a language suffocated by (stupid) rules such as fighting English influence (always the same purity comic tale), that way fighting people's uses, which is a fight loosen in advance but that oppose people to institutions. For example, in French, you're not supposed to say "week-end" because it's English. The result is nobody says "fin de semaine" as the academy orders.

As far as I'm aware, Fred, the flexibility of English is because of its use of the sentence (English sentence-subject-verb-object in that specific order, with of course changes to the order for poetry, etc, to avoid monotony, and passive tense-a tense not advised in academia). It does not have, by and large, prescribed verb endings. Its complexity involves the employment of several languages (Anglo-Saxon makes up only 30%) and the occasional eruption of ancient grammar rules. And you are right, it is very open to change.

There is a journalist writing in the Times (economist and grammarian) who attacks those who want to set rules on English writing, insisting they're simply elitists who want to preserve the status of their supposedly superior knowledge of the language. I agree with him.

In response to Wulf Rehder

Dedication

To dear wife, I dedicate this work of mine

Through times, hard and fraught with turbulence

Patiently she stood by

Cheering, comforting… hardly ever the whine

Inspiring in me strength and confidence

To conquer reams of paper mountains high

Never could I have summoned such competence

No matter how hard I try

In dedicating due gratitude… nevertheless;

And for that professional ego of mine,

It was simply, a matter of do… or die.

And hence, for the sake of remembrance,

(Reda Elmabruk, September 2006)

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost: Extract from The Road Not Taken, 1915)

Yes dear Dr. Reda Elmabruk,

I am sure that he can do.

And the question her is why not?.

Wishes,

Naseer Almukhtar

By structure of English language, I wanted to speak about the way grammar is a real short-cut for ideas, that save you a lot of explanations and possibilities to loose your reader's attention. Grammar, specially in US English, is such a wonderful Mecano! It even happened to me grammar gave me the clue, by changing only one grammatical element in an idea, it gave me the solution to a problem that blocked me on that idea! English language helps me to be aware of what I'm doing. And I'm still not very good at grammar, as you most probably observe... ;-)