Poète maudit is a French term for a poet who is seen as cursed, alienated, or doomed by society, often because of a troubled life, poverty, rebellion, or unconventional art. The phrase is strongly associated with late 19th-century writers such as Arthur Rimbaud and with poets whose work and lives seem marked by suffering, scandal, or self-destruction.
It does not simply mean an underrated poet; it suggests a figure who stands outside respectability and is often admired for that very outsider status.
Example
He wrote by candlelight in a room above the tavern,
shunning polite applause, praising rain, ash, and ruin;
by dawn the town called him a poète maudit,
as if the poems themselves had chosen exile.