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I want to confirm or consider suitable choices for describing some one who writes artistically. The trouble is I'm having trouble finding a word with the right scope:

  • Lyricist - This was my first choice, but after thinking on it, I suppose this word would exclude broader forms of artistic writing like, poetry.
  • Poet - The converse of the preceding problem.
  • Versist - doesn't seem to be a word?
  • writer - Alas, the vanilla "writer" is too broad and includes prose

Was simply hoping to find a "-ist"-type of word to refer to the entire universe of artistic writing, are there any likely suitors?

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    Prose can be 'artistic' too! If you need to exclude prose, I think you have to use poet (which can include song lyrics).
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 9:37
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    Can you be clear here what you mean by artistic writing? You are looking for a word meaning someone who writes poetry or song lyrics? Are you excluding drama, essays, fiction, screenplays, etc? Normally prose literature is considered one of the arts.
    – Stuart F
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 10:12
  • rhymer is term that might refer to a poet or lyricist: normally it refers to rhyming verse, but "rhyme" can more generally mean all poetry according to Merriam-Webster. It doesn't refer to other forms of literary art.
    – Stuart F
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 10:58
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    You can always say "poets and lyricists". There isn't a rule that every natural concept has to be expressed by one word — consider how often people say "fruits and vegetables".
    – Peter Shor
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 11:03
  • You also have to consider people who compose verse or lyrics but without writing. Some rap artists, for example, often compose rhymes extemporaneously rather than having them written down first. Some Beat poets did this back in the day as well.
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 18:42

2 Answers 2

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"Wordsmith" should satisfy your needs, except that prose is not excluded.

(Cambridge Dictionary) wordsmith a person who has skill with using words, especially in writing:

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Based on your idea of 'versist', which definitely isn't in use, you could use versewriter or versemaker (both could include a hyphen if desired), which also aren't in wide use but would be easily understood by an English speaker to mean someone who writes verse.

In practice, I would agree with @Peter Shor in his comment, when he suggests just using poets and lyricists; as he says, "there isn't a rule that every natural concept has to be expressed by one word".

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    I'd think a versemaker was a program for writing poetry or traditional songs.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 18:17

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