Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
Events
January — Philosopher Hu Shih, the primary advocate for the revolution in Chinese literature at this time to replace scholarly language with the vernacular, publishes an article in the magazine New Youth (Xin Qingnian) titled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", in which he originally emphasizes eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart (next year he will compress the list to four points). February — The Little Review moves from Chicago to New York City with the help of Ezra Pound (its foreign editor from May). May — W. B. Yeats acquires Thoor Ballylee in Ireland. May 2 — English poet Marian Allen completes the poem "To A. T. G." a few days after hearing of the death in action of her fiancé Arthur Greg, the first of several to his memory. May–June — T. S. Eliot takes over as editor of The Egoist, a London literary monthly, when Richard Aldington leaves for the British Army. July English poet Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" against prolongation of World War I and is sent (with assistance from Robert Graves) by the military authorities to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where on August 17 Wilfred Owen introduces himself. With his encouragement, Owen writes "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est"; the latter work's horrifying ry makes it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written. Like almost all Owen's poetry, these remain unpublished until after his death in action next year. With the United States not yet fighting in World War I, Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings and Robert Hillyer volunteer for the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. Last issue of Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, founded by Alfred Kreymborg in 1915 and publishing poetry and other writing, as well as visual art; contributors include William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, T. S. Eliot, Amy Lowell, H.D., Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, Skipwith Cannell and Lola Ridge.
July 15 — Welsh-language poet Hedd Wyn posts his awdl "Yr Arwr" ("The Hero") as his entry for the poetry competition at the National Eisteddfod of Wales on the same day as he marches off with the 15th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers towards the Battle of Passchendaele in which he will be killed a fortnight later. On September 6 at the ceremony of Chairing of the Bard at the Eisteddfod, held at Birkenhead, the empty druidical chair which Wyn, as winner, should have occupied is draped in a black sheet, "The festival in tears and the poet in his grave." This becomes known as "The Eisteddfod of the Black Chair." Summer — Russian writer Boris Pasternak composes My Sister, My Life; this circulates orally and in manuscript for several years before publication. c. Summer — The Siuru expressionistic and neo-romantic literary movement in Estonia is formed by a group of young poets and writers. October 20 — 51-year-old poet W. B. Yeats marries 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees at Harrow Road register office in London (with Ezra Pound as best man), a couple of months after having had a proposal of marriage to his ex-mistress's daughter, Iseult Gonne, rejected. November — Publication of The Muse in Arms, an anthology of British war poetry.
Works published in English
Australia Arthur Henry Adams, Australian Nursery Rimes, Australia C. J. Dennis: The Glugs of Gosh Doreen Henry Lawson, "Scots of the Riverina", Australia
United Kingdom
Aftermath of Easter Week, Ireland Rupert Brooke, Selected Poems May Wedderburn Cannan, In War Time Richard Church, The Flood of Life Austin Clarke, The Vengeance of Fionn (Irish poet) Walter de la Mare, The Sunken Garden, and Other Poems John Drinkwater, Tides T. S. Eliot: Prufrock, and other observations Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (criticism) Robert Graves, Fairies and Fusiliers Ronald Gurner, War's Echo Ivor Gurney, Severn and Somme H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), The Tribute And Circe: Two Poems (American poet published in the UK) Thomas Hardy: Collected Poems Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous F. W. Harvey, Gloucestershire Friends: Poems from a German Prison Camp May Herschel-Clarke, Behind the Firing Line and other poems of the War W. N. Hodgson, Verse and Prose in Peace and War (posthumous) E. W. Hornung, Ballad of Ensign Joy D. H. Lawrence, Look! We Have Come Through Joseph Lee, Work-a-Day Warriors (Scottish poet) Ewart Alan Mackintosh, A Highland Regiment and Other Poems (Scottish poet) Frederic Manning, Ediola, a collection of poems influenced by Ezra Pound’s imagism John Masefield, Lollingdon Downs, and Other Poems Alice Meynell, A Father of Women, and Other Poems A. Mellema, The Poems of a Canadian Woodman, Canadian Forestry Corps, No. 108 Coy. (Canadian poet published in Scotland) Charles Murray, The Sough o' War (Scottish poet writing in Doric dialect) George William Russell ("Æ"), Salutation Vita Sackville-West, Poems of East and West Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems Will Streets, The Undying Splendour (posthumous) Edward Thomas, Poems (posthumous) (including "Adlestrop") Sir William Watson, The Man Who Saw, and Other Poems Arising Out of the War Charles Williams, Poems of Conformity W. B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse (Irish poet)
United States Conrad Aiken, Nocturne of Remembered SpringLudwig, Richard M., and Clifford A. Nault, Jr., Annals of American Literature: 1602–1983, 1986, New York: Oxford University Press ("If the title page is one year later than the copyright date, we used the latter since publishers frequently postdate books published near the end of the calendar year." — from the Preface, p vi) John Peale Bishop, Green Fruit , Jevons BlockCatalogue of Copyright Entries, pg. 165. Witter Bynner, Grenstone Poems Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927), Pro Patria A 16-page pamphlet of seven war poems published privately in Philadelphia in support of American involvement in World War I. Edgar A. Guest, Just Folks H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), The Tribute And Circe: Two Poems American poet published in the United Kingdom Archibald MacLeish, Tower of Ivory Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems James Oppenheim, The Book of Self Edward Arlington Robinson, Merlin George Murphy, Thirty-five Sonnets Alan Seeger, Poems (posthumous) Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"Published in October 1917 by Alfred Kreymborg in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse and two months later in the December issue of Others: A Magazine of the New Verse. See Others: An Anthology of the New Verse on Internet Archive. Sara Teasdale, Love Songs William Carlos Williams, A Book of Poems: Al Que Quiere!
Other in English Nizamat Jung, Sonnets, London: Erskine Macdonald; Indian, Indian poetry in English, published in the United KingdomVinayak Krishna Gokak, The Golden Treasury and Indo-Anglian Poetry (1828-1965), p 313, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi (1970, first edition; 2006 reprint), , retrieved August 6, 2010 Sarojini Naidu, The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring, London; India, Indian poetry in English, published in the United Kingdom E. J. Pratt, Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, private."Bibliography," Selected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Peter Buitenhuis ed., Toronto: Macmillan, 1968, 207-208. Canada.
Works published in other languages
France Guillaume Apollinaire, pen name of Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, Vitam impendere amoriWeb page titled "Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)" at the Poetry Foundation website, retrieved August 9, 2009. 2009-09-03. Max Jacob, Le cornet a désAuster, Paul, editor, The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry: with Translations by American and British Poets, New York: Random House, 1982 Philippe Soupault, Aquarium Paul Valéry, La Jeune ParquePreminger, Alex and T. V. F. Brogan, et al., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1993. New York: MJF Books/Fine Communications
Indian subcontinent Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname: Balawantrai Thakore, Bhanakar, Gujarati languageMohan, Sarala Jag, Chapter 4: "Twentieth-Century Gujarati Literature" (Google books link), in Natarajan, Nalini, and Emanuel Sampath Nelson, editors, Handbook of Twentieth-century Literatures of India, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, , retrieved December 10, 2008 Ci. Subrahamaniya Bharati, Kannan Pattu, Tamil languageDas, Sisir Kumar and various, History of Indian Literature: 1911-1956: struggle for freedom: triumph and tragedy, Volume 2, 1995, published by Sahitya Akademi, , retrieved via Google Books on December 23, 2008 C. R. Sahasrabuddha, Kakaduta, a parody (a book with the same name by a different author was published in 1940), Sanskrit language Daulat Ram, Raja Gopi Cand, long narrative poem in the traditional genre of "Kissa", about the legend of Raja Gopi Chand, Punjabi language Duvvuri Rami Reddi, Nalajaramma agnipravesamu, Telugu language Hiteshwar Bar Barua, Desdimona Kavya, narrative poem inspired by Shakespeare's ' 'Othello' ', Assamese language Hiteshwar Barua, Angila, Assamese language Vallathol Narayana Menon, also known simply as "Vallathol", Sahityamanjari, Part I, Malayalam language
Other Artur Adson, Henge palango, Estonia Gottfried Benn, Fleisch, GermanyWeb page titled "Poet: Gottfried Benn", at Poetry Foundation website, retrieved December 16, 2009 António Botto, Trovas, Portugal Albert Ehrenstein, Die rote Zeit, Germany Walter Flex, Im Felde zwischen Nacht und Tag, Germany Stefan George, Der Krieg ("The War"); German"Stefan George", article, Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004, retrieved February 23, 2010 Ulric-L. Gingras, La chanson du paysans; French language;, CanadaStory, Noah, The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature, "Poetry in French" article, pp 651-654, Oxford University Press, 1967 Juan Ramón Jiménez, Diario de un poeta recién casado ("Diary of a Newly Married Poet"; later retitled Diario de poeta y mar ["Diary of Poet and Sea"), SpainDebicki, Andrew P., Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Modernity and Beyond, pp 11 (Machado), 14 (Jimenez), University Press of Kentucky, 1995, , retrieved via Google Books, November 21, 2009 Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla ("Fields of Castile"), enlarged edition (first edition 1912); Spain Julio Molina Núñez and Juan Agustín Araya. Selva lírica, preparada, anthology, including work by Gabriela Mistral; ChileWeb page titled "Gabriela Mistral/Cronologia 1889-1921" , at the Centro Virtual Cervantes website, retrieved September 22, 2010 Giuseppe Ungaretti, Il porto sepolto ("The Buried Port"), Italy Henrik Visnapuu, Amores, Estonia
Births Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article: March 1 Robert Lowell (died 1977), American poet Fadwa Tuqan (died 2003), Palestinian poet March 17 – Takis Sinopoulos (died 1981), Greek poet April 9 – Johannes Bobrowski (died 1965), German lyric poet, fiction writer, adaptor and essayist June 7 – Gwendolyn Brooks (died 2000), African American poet June 30 – Judson Crews (died 2010), American poet July 5 – Stella Sierra (died 1997), Panamanian poet July 15 – Robert Conquest (died 2015), English-born historian and poet August 9 – Jao Tsung-I (died 2018), Chinese scholar, poet, translator, calligrapher and painter October 12 – James McAuley (died 1976), Australian poet December 9 – James Jesus Angleton (died 1987), American counterintelligence agent and poet December 14 – Tove Ditlevsen (suicide 1976), Danish poet and fiction writer