Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

Poet-diplomats are poets who have also served their countries as diplomats. The best known poet-diplomats are perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Wyatt; the category also includes recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Ivo Andrić, Gabriela Mistral, Saint-John Perse, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, George Seferis, Czesław Miłosz and Octavio Paz. Contemporary poet-diplomats include Abhay K, Indran Amirthanayagam, Kofi Awoonor, Philip McDonagh and Yiorgos Chouliaras.