A Timeline of Poetry in English

Note that these divisions simplify the history of poetry and are useful only for characterizing general trends. A poet in one period may have more in common with a poet in another than with contemporaries.

Old English 449-1066

383-407

ROMAN LEGIONS LEAVE BRITAIN

449

ANGLO-SAXONS INVADE BRITAIN

537

BATTLE OF CAMLAN: ARTHUR, A ROMANO-BRITON LEADER, KILLED

596

AUGUSTINE LEAVES ROME AS MISSIONARY TO BRITAIN

658

Touchstone poems
Caedmon, an uneducated herdsman, about this date discovers that he can extemporaneously utter poetry at the newly-founded monastery at Strenæshalc (Whitby) and makes verses on creation. He is the first known poet and this the first known poem in English. Inspired Denise Levertov's "Caedmon" (1987)

673

700-800

Cynewulf writes and signs four Anglo-Saxon poems: Christ IIEleneThe Fates of the Apostles, andJuliana.

700

About this time runic extracts from The Dream of the Rood are carved on the Ruthwell Cross.

735

The Venerable Bede's "Death Song"

871

ALFRED, KING OF ENGLAND (-899)

900-999

Deor, a scop, writes a poem of consolation, probably in this century

937

The battle of Brunanburh, at which King Athelstan defeated the Scots, is celebrated in a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

943

EDWY (-957)

950-1000

Period of the making of the four great poetry manuscripts: the Junius MS, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf MS. The Beowulf can be dated as early as 680.

957

EDGAR (-975)

975

EDWARD THE MARTYR (-978)

978

ETHELRED (-1013)

1000

Touchstone poems
"The Battle of Maldon," a poem on the fight between the English and the Danes in 991, translated by Emily Henrietta Hickey (1880)

1013

SWEGN FORKBEARD (-1014)

1016

EDMUND IRONSIDE (-1016); CNUT (-1035)

1035

HAROLD HAREFOOT (-1040)

1040

HARTHACNUT (-1042)

1042

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR (-1066)

Middle English 1066-1485

1066

HAROLD GODWINSON (-1066); DEFEATED BY WILLIAM OF NORMANDY ON OCT. 14 (-1087)

1087

WILLIAM II (-1100)

1100-1200

Layamon, late 12th cent. author of Brut, a 32,000-line poem.

1100

HENRY I (-1135)

1135

STEPHEN (-1154)

1154

HENRY II (-1189)

1155

Wace's Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut (?)

1160-1170

Period of Walter Map, Anglo-Latin poet

1160

Thomas of Britain's Anglo-Norman Tristan

1172

Wace's Anglo-Norman Roman de Rou (?)

1189

RICHARD I (-1199)

1199

JOHN (-1216)

1216

HENRY III (-1272)

1230

Guillaume de Lorris composed the first 4,000 lines of the Roman de la Rose

1250

 The Owl and the Nightingale, an amusing verse debate probably written by Nicholas of Guildford about this time

1265

Births
Dante Alighieri

1272

EDWARD I (-1307)

1275

Jean de Meun extends Roman de la Rose by over 17,500 lines

before 1300

 Dame Sirith (?)

1300-1400

Huchown

1300

Two romances, Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, were composed about this time.
Births
Richard Rolle (?)

ca. 1307-1321

Dante's Divina Commedia

1307

EDWARD II (-1327)

1314

ROBERT BRUCE DEFEATS EDWARD II AT BANNOCKBURN

ca. 1314-25

Lyrics from British Library Harley 2253, including "Alysoun" and "Lenten ys come with love to toune."

1321

Deaths
Dante Alighieri

before 1325

 Cursor Mundi, a verse history of the world in about 24,000 lines.

1327

EDWARD III (-1377)

1330

 Sir Orfeo, a romance (?)
Births
John Gower(?); William Langland (ca. 1325); John Barbour (ca.).

1343

Births
Geoffrey Chaucer (early 1340s)

1349

Deaths
Richard Rolle

ca. 1350-52

Boccaccio's Decameron

1350

Births
Andrew Wyntoun (Scotland) (ca.)

1352

 Wynnere and Wastoure

1361

Births
Henry Scogan (?)

1362

ENGLISH REPLACES FRENCH IN PARLIAMENT AND LAW COURTS

1369

 Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess (ca. 1368-72, remembering the death of John of Gaunt's wife, Blanche)
Births
Thomas Hoccleve (ca. 1367)

1370

Births
John Lydgate (ca.)

1376

 John Gower writes his Mirour de l'Omme, or Speculum Meditantis, about 1376-79.
John Barbour (Scotland) writes The Bruce, a verse chronicle of about 13,000 lines (1372-75).

1377

RICHARD II (-1399)
A-text of Langland's Piers Plowman is written after 1370.

1379

 John Gower's Vox Clamantis is written about 1379-81.

1380-1400

Works of the so-called Gawain poet, containing PearlPatienceCleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from British Library manuscript Cotton Nero A.x

1380

John Wyclif translates the Bible (?), into English.
B-text of Langland's Piers Plowman about 1381

1384

Deaths
Wyclif

1385

 Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (ca. 1381-88)
C-text of Langland's Piers Plowman about 1385-86

ca. 1387-1400

1390-1393

 John Gower's Confessio Amantis is published at this time in its first version.
Deaths
William Langland (ca.1390)

1391

Deaths
Sir John Clanvow, supposed author of The Book of Cupid, whose two characters are the cuckoo and the nightingale. 

1394

about 1395

 Pierce the Ploughmans Crede

1395

Deaths
John Barbour

1399

HENRY IV (-1413)

before 1400

The alliterative Morte Arthure (?)
 Sir Launfal, by Thomas Chestre

1400

Deaths
Geoffrey Chaucer (Oct. 25)

ca. 1406-25

 James I of Scotland, while captured in England, writes "The Kingis Quair".

1407

Henry Scogan's "Moral Balade" (ca. 1406-07)
Deaths
Henry Scogan

1408

Deaths
John Gower

1412

 John Lydgate's Troy Book, written about 1412-20 (commissioned by Prince Henry Oct 31, 1412)

1413

HENRY V (-1422)

1420

 John Lydgate's The Siege of Thebes, written about 1420-22
Andrew Wyntoun completed his Original Chronicle

1422

HENRY VI (-1461, 1470-71; RPO) 
John Lydgate's The Life of Our Lady (ca. 1421-22)
Deaths
Andrew Wyntoun (ca.)

1424

Births
Robert Henryson (a master of arts by 1462) 

1426

 John Lydgate's The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, a translation of Guillaume de Deguileville'sPèleringe, written about 1426-28

1431

 John Lydgate's The Fall of Princes, written about 1431-39, 36, 365 lines, based on Laurent de Premierfait's version (in French) of Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium

1437

Deaths
James I of Scotland, killed

1440

Births
Henry the Minstrel, otherwise known as "Blind Hary" (Scotland).

1449

Deaths
John Lydgate (ca. 1449-50)

about 1450

Sir Richard Holland's The Buke of the Howlat.

1455

RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK, DEFEATS HENRY VI AT ST. ALBANS ON MAY 22, THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR OF THE ROSES
Births
Walter Kennedy (ca.)

1460

Births
John Skelton (ca.); William Dunbar (ca.)

1461

EDWARD IV (-1469, 1471-83), BATTLE OF TOWTON 

1471

BATTLES OF BARNET AND TEWKESBURY 
Deaths
Henry VI

1474

CAXTON PRINTS THE FIRST BOOK IN ENGLAND
Births
Stephen Hawes (ca.)
Deaths
Peter Idley (?)

before 1475

 The Floure and the Leaf composed (?)

1476

Births
Gavin Douglas (ca.); Henry Parker Morley, lord

1477

William Caxton prints Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (?)
Births
Thomas More

1483

EDWARD V (-1483); RICHARD III (-1485)
William Caxton prints John Gower's Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's House of Fame
William Caxton prints Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
Deaths
Richard Holland (in or after)

1484

Births
Alexander Barclay (ca.)

Early Modern English 1485-1800

Renaissance 1485-1603

1485

HENRY TUDOR DEFEATS RICHARD III ON BOSWORTH FIELD; HENRY VII (-1509)

1486

Blind Hary's The Actis and Deidis of the Illuster and Vailzeand Campioun Schir William Wallace by 1488
Births
Sir David Lindsay (Scotland) (ca.)

1491

1492

COLUMBUS DISCOVERS SAN SALVADOR ON OCT. 12
 Robert Henryson composed The Testament of Cresseid by this date when G. Myll refers to it
 John Skelton made laureate by the University of Louvain (ca.)
Deaths
"Blind Hary" (in or after)

1497

JOHN CABOT DISCOVERS NEWFOUNDLAND
Births
John Heywood (ca. 1496-97)

1498

 John Skelton's The Bowge of Courte composed (ca.)
 The Assembly of the Gods (anon.; published)

1503

 William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois composed
 Henry, son of Henry VII, becomes the Prince of Wales
Stephen Hawes' Example of Virtue written for Henry VII (1503-04)

1506

Alexander Barclay's Castle of Labour (?)
Deaths
Robert Henryson (before 1505)

1507

 William Dunbar's The Dance of the Sevin Deidly SynnisThe Goldyn TargeThe Lament for the Makaris, and The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen composed by this time.

1508

 William Dunbar's poems are published in Edinburgh
Deaths
Walter Kennedy (?).

1509

HENRY VIII (-1547) 
Alexander Barclay's Ship of Fools
 Stephen HawesPastime of Pleasure published
Henry Tudor is married to Catherine of Aragon on June 11 and succeeds his father Henry VII on Aug. 21 as Henry VIII
Births
Thomas Vaux, 2nd baron Vaux of Harrowden; William Gray of Reading

1511

 Stephen HawesConfort of Lovers composed (ca. 1510-11)

1513

DEFEAT OF SCOTS AT THE BATTLE OF FLODDEN 
 Gavin Douglas completes his translation of Eneados , Virgil's Æneid
Alexander Barclay's five eclogues (ca. 1513-14)
Deaths
William Dunbar (?), perhaps at Flodden Field

1514

 Dr. D. Cooper, active at the court of Henry VIII

1517

 John Skelton wrote "Elynour Rummynge" about Alianora Romyng of Leatherhead, Surrey (ca.)
Births
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (ca. 1516-17)

1519

Births
Nicholas Grimald (ca. 1519-20)

1520

Births
William Cecil (?); William Bullokar (ca.)

1521

 John Skelton's "Speke Parott" satirizes Cardinal Wolsey (ca.); and his "Collyn Clout" (ca. 1521-22)
Births
Anne Askew (ca.)

1522

 John Skelton's "Why Come Ye Not to Court?" attacks Cardinal Wolsey (Nov.)

1523

 John Skelton's The Garlande of Laurell published (Oct. 23)
Alexander Barclay's first Eclogue 
Births
Thomas Churchyard (?)

1528

Sir David Lindsay's "Dreme" (ca.)
Births
Thomas Whithorne (ca.)

1529

Births
George Puttenham (?)
Deaths
John Skelton, on June 21; Stephen Hawes by 1529

1530

Alexander Barclay's first three eclogues published in 1530
Sir David Lindsay's "Complaynt" and "The Testament and Complaynt of our Soverane Lordis Papyngo"
Births
Thomas Norton (ca. 1530-32)

1532

W. Thynne edits Chaucer's works and The Book of the Duchess and The Legend of Good Women for the first time.
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso

1533

HENRY VIII SECRETLY MARRIES ANNE BOLEYN
Births
Elizabeth Tudor, later Elizabeth I

1534

Births
George Gascoigne (ca. 1534-35)

1535

Births
Arthur Golding (ca. 1535-36)
Deaths
Sir Thomas More, executed

1536

ANNE BOLEYN EXECUTED 
Births
Thomas Sackville, 1st earl of Dorset (ca.)

1540

 Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, develops blank verse 1537-46 in his translation of the Aeneid, Books 2-6
Births
Barnabe Googe; Isabella Whitney
Floruit
Hugh Rhodes 

1542

Deaths
Sir Thomas Wyatt, on Oct. 11

1543

Births
William Byrd (ca. 1539-43); Sir Edward Dyer; George Turberville (ca. 1543-44)

1546

John Heywood's verse proverbs
Births
Giles Fletcher the elder (baptized)
Deaths
Anne Askew, burned at Smithfield; William Thynne (Aug. 10)

1547

EDWARD VI (-1553)
Deaths
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, executed by Henry VIII by decapitation; Henry VIII

1548

John Bale's Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scriptorum Summarium, biographical entries on major British writers
Deaths
John Bellenden or Bannatyne (ca. 1545-48)

1549

 R. Wever devises Lusty Juventus about 1549-53
 Sir Thomas Wyatt's Certayne Psalmes, an English translation of part of the Biblical psalms.

1550

Births
Alexander Montgomerie (Scotland) (early 1550s)
Floruit
Francis Seager 

1552

Thomas Churchyard's A Mirror for Man
Births
Edmund Spenser (?)
Deaths
Alexander Barclay

1553

JANE (-1553); MARY I (-1558)
 Gavin Douglas' translation of Virgil's Æneid, published posthumously
 William Stevenson about this year wrote Gammer Gurton's Needle
Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric
Births
Gabriel Harvey (ca. 1552-53)

1554

Henry Howard's translation of book IV of Virgil's Æneid published about this time. 
Births
Fulke Greville, 1st baron Brooke; John Lyly (?); Sir Philip Sidney, on Nov. 30; Walter Ralegh (ca.); Stephen Gosson (baptized)

1555

John Heywood's Epigrams
Births
Nicholas Breton (ca. 1554-55); Richard Carew of Anthony; Thomas Watson (ca. 1555-56)
Deaths
Sir David Lindsay; Robert Smith 

1556

John Heywood's The Spider and the Fly
 Songes and Sonettes by...Lorde Henry Haward...and other (Richard Tottel's miscellany) including Nicholas Grimald's innovations in heroic couplets and blank verse
Births
George Peele, baptized; Thomas Morley (ca. 1556-57)
Deaths
Henry Parker Morley, lord; Thomas Vaux, 2nd baron Vaux of Harrowden (RPO)

1557

The translation by Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, of books II and IV of Virgil's Æneid is published.
Thomas Tusser's Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie
 Tottel's Miscellany
 William Gray of Reading is active about this time.
Births
Sir Arthur Gorges (ca.)

1558

ELIZABETH I (-1603) 
Births
Chidiock Tichborne (ca.); Thomas LodgeWilliam Warner (ca. 1558-59); Robert Greene (1558 baptized)

1559

 The Mirror of Magistrates, with 20 tragic tales; enlarged repeatedly until 1609

1560

Births
Anthony Munday, baptized; Sir John Harington (?), baptized

1561

Julius Caesar Scaliger's poetics published in France
Births
Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke; Robert Southwell (?)

1562

Births
Henry Constable; Samuel Daniel; Nicholas Grimald
Deaths
Nicholas Grimald (ca.); William Gray of Reading (ca.)

1563

Barnabe Googe's Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonettes
Second edition of The Mirror of Magistrates, including Thomas Sackville's Induction and Complaint 
Births
John Dowland (ca.); Michael Drayton; Sir Robert Sidney (Philip's younger brother); Joshua Sylvester(?)
Floruit
Thomas Newberry 

1564

Births
Christopher Marlowe, baptized on Feb. 6; William Shakespeare, baptized on April 26 in Stratford upon Avon parish church

1565

Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, books I-IV, published, completed in 1575
Births
John Davies (ca. 1564-65); Francis Meres (ca. 1565-66)

1566

Isabella Whitney's The Copy of a Letter (1566-67)
Births
John Hoskyns; James I of England (James VI of Scotland).

1567

1568

 John Skelton's poems published

1569

Barnabe Barnes' sonnet sequence Parthenophil and Parthenophe
Births
Sir John Davies; Æmilia Lanyer, née Bassano

1570

Births
Sir Robert Aytoun (Scotland); Thomas Bateson (?); Thomas Dekker (?); Samuel Rowlands (?)

1571

Births
Martin Peerson (?)

1572

 Rauf Coilyear (late 15th cent. Scot.), published
Births
John DonneBen Jonson (June 11)

1573

 George Gascoigne's A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, reissued as Poesies in 1575
 Isabella Whitney's A Sweet Nosegay 

1574

1575

 George Gascoigne's Certayne notes of instruction concerning the Making of verse or ryme in English names "Poulter's Measure," iambic couplets of 12- and 14-syllable lines
Births
John Marston (?); Robert Hayman

1576

Richard Edwards' compilation of Paradyse of Dainty Devises
 George Gascoigne's The Steele glas; his Poesies was confiscated as scandalous
Thomas Whethorne's Duos, or, Songs for Two Voices, composed by 1576
Births
Thomas Weelkes (?)

1577

Deaths
George Gascoigne on Nov. 15

1578

Thomas Proctor's A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions
Births
George Sandys; John Taylor the "water poet" (?)
Deaths
John Heywood (ca.)

1579

Stephen Gosson's prose The School of Abuse attacks poets and players
Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, in which Hobbinol is Gabriel Harvey

1580

Thomas Churchyard's translation of Ovid's Tristia, I-III
 Humphrey Gifford's A Posie of Gilloflowers 
Births
Thomas Ford (?); Thomas Middleton (baptised); John Webster (ca. 1576-80)
Deaths
John Heywood (?); Isabella Whitney (after); Thomas Tusser

1581

 Sir Philip Sidney completes the Old Arcadia and writes his Defence of Poetry or An Apologie for Poetrie 1579-83 (published in 1595), in response to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse

1582

Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil's Aeneid, I-IV
 Philip Sidney writes Astrophel and Stella about this time: 108 sonnets and 11 songs about his unrequited love for Penelope Rich
 Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway on November 27
Thomas Watson's Hekatompathia 

1583

 Sir Philip Sidney completes the New Arcadia within two years
Births
Orlando Gibbons baptized; Aurelian Townshend (ca.); Susanna Shakespeare (baptized May 26)

1584

Births
Francis Beaumont (ca.); Sir John Beaumont (ca.)
Deaths
Thomas Norton; Thomas Proctor

1585

James VI of Scotland writes Essays of a Prentice in the Arte of Poesie, using the poems of Alexander Montgomerie
Births
William Drummond of HawthorndenGiles Fletcher the younger; Judith and Hamnet Shakespeare (baptized February 2)

1586

William Warner's Albions England
William Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie
Births
Robert Chester (ca.)
Deaths
Sir Philip Sidney on Oct. 17, from a war wound; Chidiock Tichborne, hanged, castrated, and disemboweled for Treason

1587

Births
Lady Mary Sidney Wroth (?); Walter Porter (?)

1588

William Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs of sadnes and pietie
Births
George Wither; John Wilson

1589

William Byrd's Songs of Sundrie Natures
George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie
Deaths
Humphrey Gifford (?)

1590

 Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde: Euphues golden legacie
 George Peele's Polyhymnia
Thomas Watson's Italian Madrigals Englished
revised version of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia published posthumously
 Edmund SpenserThe Faerie Queene, Books I-III
Deaths
George Puttenham; William Bullokar (ca.)
Touchstone poems
Sir Philip Sidney's "You Gote-heard Gods" by Roseanna Warren's "Lena's House: Watercolor" (1993)

1591

Sir John Harrington's translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, 33, 000 lines
 Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella
 Edmund Spenser's Daphnaida and Complaints
Births
Robert Herrick (baptized)
Deaths
William Webbe
Touchstone poems
Sir Philip Sidney's "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies" by Philip Larkin's "Sad Steps" (1974)

1592

 Samuel Daniel's Delia. Contayning certayne sonnets: with the complaint of Rosamond
 Joshua Sylvester's translation of The Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, completed in 1608
 John Donne writes the first two satires, most elegies, and some songs and sonnets while at Lincoln's Inn, 1592-94
Robert Greene attacks Shakespeare as "an upstart Crow," mocking a line in his 3 Henry VI
Deaths
Thomas Watson; Robert Greene

1593

Henry Constable's sonnet sequence Diana
 Michael DraytonIdea: the Shepheards Garland
Thomas Morley's Canzonets
 The Phoenix Nest, compiled by R. S.
 Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
 Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia republished with the three books of the old version
Births
George Herbert (April 3)
Deaths
Christopher Marlowe on May 30, murdered, 29 years old

1594

 George Chapman's The Shadow of Night
 Michael Drayton's Ideas Mirrour: Amours in Quatorzains
R. Carew's translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata
Thomas Morley's Canzonets and Madrigalls
 Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece
 Ben Jonson marries Anne Louis (November 14)
 Shakespeare is a member of the Lord Chamberlain's men
Sir John Davies' Nosce teipsum
Deaths
Barnabe Googe

1595

 George Chapman's Ovid's Banquet of Sense
 Samuel Daniel's Civil Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York, completed in 8 books in 1609.
 Michael Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe
Thomas Morley's Balletts and Canzonets
 Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie and sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella posthumously published
 Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence "Amoretti," and his wedding poem "Epithalamion," both about Elizabeth Boyle
 Robert Southwell's St. Peter's Complaint, with Other Poems
Deaths
Robert Southwell, hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn (and canonized in 1970)

1596

Sir John Davies' Orchestra or a Poeme of Dauncing
 Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Books IV-VI, Fowre Hymnes, and Prothalamion
Michael Drayton's Mortimeriados
Births
James Shirley; Benjamin, son of Ben Jonson
Deaths
George Peele; George Whithorne; Hamnet Shakespeare (August 12)

1597

Francis Bacon's Essays, first edition
 John DowlandThe First Booke of Songes or Ayres
Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum
Francis Mere's Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury, including a critical survey of English writers, such as Shakespeare, his "signed Sonnets among his private friends", and 12 plays
 Shakespeare bought New Place in Stratford upon Avon (May)
Michael Drayton's England's Heroicale Epistles 
Deaths
George Turberville (after this year)

1598

Richard Barnfield's Lady Pecunia
 George Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad, I-II, VII-XI
 Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander, posthumously published, and completed by George Chapman
 Shakespeare acts in Ben Jonson's Sejanus
Deaths
Alexander Montgomerie; William Cecil (?)

1599

 Samuel Daniel's Musophilus
Sir John Davies, in Hymnes of Astraea, writes 26 acrostic poems dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.
 The Passionate Pilgrim includes Shakespeare's sonnets 138 and 144
Deaths
Edmund Spenser, on Jan. 16
Touchstone poems
Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" by Sir Walter Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply" (1600) and William Carlos Williams's "Raleigh was Right" (1950)

1600

 Englands Helicon, an anthology of poems, including Christopher Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my love"
 Thomas MorleyFirst Booke of Ayres
 Thomas NasheSummers Last Will and Testament (play)
 John DowlandSecond Booke of Songs
 Christopher Marlowe's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia posthumously published
 Thomas WeelkesMadrigals
Births
Charles I; John Ogilby (Scots.)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Sir Walter Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply" (1600), about Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"

1601

Robert Chester's Loues martyr: or, Rosalins complaint
 John Donne secretly weds Ann More, niece of his employer, Sir Thomas Egerton
 Thomas MorleyMadrigals
Thomas Campion's A Booke of Ayres

1602

 Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie
 A Poetical Rapsody, compiled by Francis and Walter Davison
 Robert Southwell's St. Peter's Complaint, with Other Poems
 Shakespeare living on Silver Street, Cripplegate, London (to 1604)
 Shakespeare granted a coat of arms
Births
Edward Benlowes; Owen Felltham (?)
Deaths
Thomas Morley (in or after)
17th Century 1603-1667

1603

JAMES I (-1625)
 Samuel Daniel's Defence of Rhyme, a reply to Thomas Campion's Observations
 John Dowland's Third and Last Booke of Songs
James VI of Scotland is crowned James I of England
Births
Shackerley Marmion
Deaths
Elizabeth I; Benjamin, son of Ben Jonson

1604

John Dowland's Lachrimæ
 Thomas Bateson's Cantus. The first set of English Madrigales
Michael Drayton's Owle
James I becomes patron of Shakespeare's acting company
Deaths
Thomas Churchyard; Robert Chester

1605

 Bartas: his Devine weekes and workes, translated by Joshua Sylvester

1606

 Michael Drayton's Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall, including "The Ballad of Agincourt," "To the Virginian Voyage," and "To Cupid"
About this time John Donne wrote "The Sunne Rising" and "The Cannonization"
Births
Sir William Davenant, on March 3; Edmund Waller
Deaths
John Lyly

1607

JAMESTOWN FOUNDED IN VIRGINIA
 Thomas Ford's Musicke of sundrie kindes
John Hoskins' "on the fart in Parliament house"
Deaths
Sir Edward Dyer; Edmund Shakespeare, William's younger brother, a player

1608

 John Donne wrote his holy sonnets about 1608-09
Births
John Milton on Dec. 9; Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's granddaughter
Deaths
Thomas Sackville, 1st earl of Dorset

1609

 Shakespeares sonnets (including "A Lover's Complaint") published by Thomas Thorpe
 John Wilbye's The Second Set of Madrigales
A folio edition of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene includes "Two cantos of Mutabilitie"
Touchstone poems
William Shakespeare's "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments" by Robert Graves's "Beauty in Trouble" (1955)
William Shakespeare's "Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame" by Karl Jay Shapiro's "Adult Bookstore" (1976), Wendy Cope's "The expense of spirits is a crying shame" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986), Dorothy Hickson's "129F. A Response to Shaxper's Sonnet 129" (1997), and W. D. Snodgrass's "Sonnet #129 -- de/composed from Shakespeare, A" and "Sonnet #129 -- de/composed from Shakespeare, B" (2001)
William Shakespeare's "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck" by Wendy Cope's "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) 
William Shakespeare's "My glass shall not persuade me I am old" by Wendy Cope's "My glass shall not persuade me I'm senescent" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986)
William Shakespeare's "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments" by Wendy Cope's "Not only marble, but the plastic toys" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986)
William Shakespeare's "How like a winter hath my absence been" by Wendy Cope's "How like a sprinter you have turned and run" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986)
William Shakespeare's "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" by Wendy Cope's "Let me not to the marriage of true swine" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986)
William Shakespeare's "Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there" by Wendy Cope's "Indeed 'tis true. I travel here and there" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986)
William Shakespeare's "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" by Marilyn Hacker's "Did you love well what very soon you left?" (1986) 
William Shakespeare's "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" by T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" (1930)

1610

GALILEO SHOWS EARTH'S ROTATION AROUND THE SUN
 Giles Fletcher the younger's Christs Victorie and Triumph
John Davies' The Scourge of Folly
Births
Lucius Cary, second Viscount, Falkland

1611

Æmilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
 John Donne's "La Corona" sonnet sequence, written about this time; and An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary
King James' version of the Bible
 Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle published in Chester's Loves Martyr
William Byrd's Psalmes, Songs, and Sonnets 
Deaths
Giles Fletcher the elder

1612

second edition of Francis Bacon's Essays
 John Donne's Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary
 John Dowland's A Pilgrimes Solace
 Michael Drayton's The Poly-Olbion, Part I (1612-13)
 Orlando Gibbons's First Set of Madrigals and Mottets
Births
Anne BradstreetJames Graham, 5th earl and first marquis of Montrose (Scotland)
Deaths
Sir John Harington
Touchstone poems
John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by Adrienne Rich's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (1971)

1613

 William Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, completed in 1616
 Joshua Sylvester's Lachrymae Lachrymarum
 George Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt
 John Donne's "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward"
 Richard Carew of Anthony's "The Excellency of the English Tongue" (1614)
Deaths
Henry Constable
Touchstone poems
John Donne's "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" by Elizabeth Spires's "Good Friday. Driving Westward" (1995)

1615

1616

 George Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and The Divine Poem of Musaeus(translation of the Greek Hero and Leander)
 William Drummond's Poems
 Ben Jonson's Works, including "On My First Son"
 Ben Jonson receives a royal pension, making him unofficially the first British Poet Laureate
Births
Joseph Beaumont; Richard Lovelace

1618

George Chapman's translation of Hesiod's Georgics
Thomas Bateson's Second Set of Madrigals 
Deaths
John Davies; Sir Walter Ralegh, executed; Joshua Sylvester

1619

1620

MAYFLOWER LANDS ON DEC. 22
 Martin Peerson's Private Musicke
 Francis QuarlesA Feast for Wormes
Births
Alexander Brome
Deaths
Thomas CampionRichard Carew of Anthony; Richard Barnfield

1621

George Sandys' verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Englished, books 1-5, completed on the voyage to Virginia and in the colony itself (1621-26)
Mary Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, the first romance by an Englishwoman; and "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus," the first sonnet sequence by an Englishwoman
Births
Andrew MarvellHenry Vaughan and Thomas Vaughan (twins)
Deaths
Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke, of smallpox

1622

 Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion, II
 George Wither's Fair-virtue

1623

 William Drummond's Flowres of Sion
 Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell publish the first folio of his works
Births
Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (ca.); Samuel Crossman (?)

1625

CHARLES I (-1649)
third edition of Francis Bacon's Essays
Deaths
John FletcherOrlando Gibbons; Sir Arthur Gorges; James I of England; Thomas Lodge

1626

Deaths
Francis Bacon; Nicholas Breton (ca.); Sir John Davies; John Dowland (ca.); Sir Robert Sidney

1627

Deaths
Sir John Beaumont; Thomas Middleton; Sir John Suckling

1628

 George Wither's Britain's Remembrancer, about the 1625 London plague
Anne Dudley marries Simon Bradstreet and sails to New England in 1630
Robert Hayman's Quodlibets Lately Come over from New Britaniola, Old Newfound-land, the first extant English poetry written in Canada
Births
John Bunyan (baptized)
Deaths
Fulke Greville, baron Brooke; Samuel Rowlands

1629

Deaths
Robert Hayman

1630

 Michael Drayton's The Muses Elizium
 John Milton writes a sonnet on Shakespeare, published in the 1632 folio
Births
Charles Cotton
Deaths
Thomas Bateson; Stephen Gosson
Floruit
John Penkethman

1631

Births
John Dryden; John Phillips; Urian Oakes (US); Michael Wigglesworth (US)

1632

 Walter Porter's Madrigales and ayres
 Francis QuarlesDivine Fancies
Births
Katherine Philips; Nathaniel Crouch (?)

1633

 Certaine Learned and Elegant Works by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, including Caelica
 John Donne's Poems posthumously published
 Phineas Fletcher's The Purple Island; or, The Isle of Man
 George Herbert's The Temple
Deaths
George Herbert, age 40; Anthony Munday
Touchstone poems
John Donne's "The Flea" (probably composed ca. 1600) by S. T. Coleridge's "On Donne's Poem 'To a Flea'" (1811)

1634

 John Milton's "Comus" performed in Ludlow

1635

 Francis QuarlesEmblemes
 George Wither's Emblems, Ancient and Moderne
Births
Sir George Etherege (?); Thomas Sprat; Thomas Flatman
Deaths
Richard Corbet (Corbett); Thomas Randolph

1637

 John Milton's Lycidas in memory of Edward King
Births
Wentworth Dillon; Thomas Ken
Deaths
Ben Jonson

1638

 Sir William Davenant made unofficial British Poet Laureate
 Francis QuarlesHieroglyphikes of the Life of Man
 Thomas Randolph's Poems with the Muses looking-glasse
 Sir John Suckling's Aglaura (revised)
Sir John Suckling's "Baleade upon a Wedding"
William Habington's posthumous Poems
Deaths
Sir Robert Aytoun (?); John Hoskyns; Shackerley Marmion; John Wilbye; John Webster (ca.)

1639

Births
Sir Charles Sedley (baptized)

1640

 Thomas Carew's Workes
 Ben Jonson's Timber, criticism on poets and poetry; and his translation of Horace's Ars Poetica
About this time, John Milton drafts a tragedy named variously "Paradise Lost" and "Adam Unparadised"
 The Bay Psalm Book, a verse translation by Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Weld (reputed to be the first book printed in North America)
Births
Aphra Behn (?); Thomas Shadwell (?)

1642

first version of Sir John Denham's Cooper's Hill and The Sophy
Births
Benjamin Tompson (US)

1643

Deaths
Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland; William Warner

1644

Births
Edward Taylor (?; US)
Deaths
Francis Quarles; George Sandys

1645

 John Milton's Poems, including "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso"
Edmund Waller's Poems

1646

 Richard Crashaw's Steps to the Temple
 Sir John Sucking's Fragmenta Aurea
 Henry Vaughan's Poems

1647

 John Cleveland's The Character of a London-Diurnall: with Several Select Poems
 Richard Corbett's Certain Elegant Poems
 Abraham Cowley's The Mistresse
Deaths
Francis Meres

1648

 Robert Herrick's Hesperides, about 1400 poems
Joseph Beaumont's Psyche, in 30,000 lines
Births
Elkanah Settle
Touchstone poems
Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes" by Owen Seaman's "To Julia in Shooting Togs and a Herrickose Vein" (1896), E. V. Knox's "Upon Julia's Clothes" (1911), Tom Clark's "Julia's Under-garments Viewed as a Vision of H2O" (1987), and Helen Bevington's "Herrick's Julia" (2007) 

1649

NO KING; GOVERNMENT BY COUNCIL (-1653)
 Richard Lovelace's Lucasta, including "To Althea, from Prison"
Deaths
Charles IWilliam Drummond of Hawthornden; Aurelian Townshend (ca.)

1650

 Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans
 Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse: the first English woman to publish a volume of original poems
Andrew Marvell's "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" (June)
Touchstone poems
Henry Vaughan's "The World" by Genevieve Taggard's "Remembering Vaughan in New England" (composed 1938)

1651

Births
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (ca.) (Mexico; Academy of American Poets, US)
Deaths
Lady Mary Sidney Wroth (or 1653)

1652

Edward Benlowe's Theophilia, or Love's Sacrifice
 Richard Crashaw's Carmen Deo Nostro
 John Milton becomes permanently blind
Births
Nahum Tate (ca.)
Touchstone poems
John Milton's "When I Consider how my Light is Spent" (ca. 1652-55) by Phyllis McGinley's "View from a Suburban Window" (1960)

1653

OLIVER CROMWELL, LORD PROTECTOR (-1658)
Margaret Cavendish's Poems and Fancies
 John Milton does verse translations of Psalmes 1-8
Births
Thomas D'Urfey (?); John Oldham
Deaths
John Taylor the "water poet"

1654

Births
Sir Richard Blackmore

1655

John Cotgrave's The English Treasury of Literature and Language and Wits Interpreter: The English Parnassus
John Bunyan's Ebal and Gerizzim (ca.)

1656

 Abraham Cowley's Poems
 Richard Crashaw's Carmen Del Nostro
John Phillips' Sportive Wit, lampoons that were publicly burned

1657

 Henry King's Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonnets
John Ogilby's translation of The Fables of Aesop

1658

RICHARD CROMWELL, LORD PROTECTOR (-1659)
 John Milton writes "Methought I saw my Late Espoused Wife" for his late wife Katherine Woodcock
 John Milton begins dictating Paradise Lost while blind
Births
John Dennis

1659

 Richard Lovelace's Last Remains
Births
Henry Purcell

1660

CHARLES II (-1685)
 John Dryden's Astraea Redux, celebrating the restoration of the monarchy
John Ogilby's translation of Homer's Iliad
 John Milton briefly jailed in the fall, after copies of his books were burned by the public executioner (Aug. 27), but was pardoned in December
Births
Daniel Defoe (?); Anne Killigrew (?); John Danforth (US)

1661

Alexander Brome's Songs
Owen Felltham's "Lusoria"
John Bunyan's Profitable Meditations
Births
Anne Finch, countess of Winchilsea

1662

 Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Book I
Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom and God's Controversy with New England
Births
John Smith

1663

 Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Book II
 Abraham Cowley's Verses lately written upon Several Occasions
John Bunyan's Prison Meditations
 John Milton finishes Paradise Lost
Births
William King
Cotton Mather (US)

1664

NEWTON FORMULATES THE LAW OF GRAVITY 
Charles Cotton's Scarronnides, books 1 and 4
Katherine Philips' Poems (unauthorized edition)
Deaths
Katherine Philips, of smallpox

1665

Edward Herbert, lord Herbert of Cherbury's Occasional Verses

1666

 John Milton completes Paradise Regain'd
Births
Sarah Kemble Knight (US)
Deaths
James Shirley; Thomas Vaughan
Augustans 1667-1780

1667

 Katherine PhilipsPoems (authorized edition)
 John Dryden's Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, MDCLXVI
 John Milton's Paradise Lost, published in ten books
Births
Alicia D'Anvers, née Clarke; John Pomfret; John Reynolds; John Richardson; Jonathan Swift; Edward Ward

1668

Births
Alicia D'Anvers (née Clarke)
Deaths
Sir William DavenantOwen Felltham; Abraham Chear

1669

Deaths
Sir John DenhamHenry King; Richard Mather (US)

1670

Michael Wigglesworth's Meat Out of the Eater
Births
William Congreve; Sarah Fyge; Bernard Mandeville (baptized)

1671

Births
Colley Cibber; Sarah Dixon; Lewis Morris II (US)

1672

Poems about poems
 imitation: Sir Charles Sedley's "Love still has something of the sea" by Richard Howard's "Agreement with Sir Charles Sedley

1673

 John Milton's Poems on Several Occasions, revised edn.
Births
John Oldmixon; Ambrose Philips
Deaths
Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle; Benjamin Colman (US)

1674

 John Milton's Paradise Lost (2nd edn.), published in 12 books
Thomas Rymer's translation of René Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie
Thomas Flatman's Poems and Songs
Births
Ambrose Philips; Nicholas Rowe; Isaac Watts; William Byrd II (US)
Deaths
Edward Benlowes; Robert HerrickJohn Milton (Nov. 9-10); Thomas Traherne

1675

 John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's A Satire against Mankind
Charles Cotton's Burlesque Upon Burlesque, or, The Scoffer Scoft
Births
William Somervile; Henry Dixon

1676

Benjamin Tompson's "New England's Crisis" and "On a Fortification at Boston begun by Women"
Deaths
John Ogilby; Edward Benlowes

1678

 Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Book III
 Anne Bradstreet's Poems, second edition, with additional lyrical poems, especially the marital love poems
 Henry Vaughan's Thalia Rediviva
 John Oldham writes "A letter from the country"
Births
John Winstanley (?); Mary Monck (?)
Deaths
Andrew Marvell, of medical treatment
Touchstone poems
Anne Bradstreet's "In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659" by John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, lines 121-168 (1956)

1679

 John Oldham's Satire against Virtue
Wentworth Dillon's translation, Horace's Art of Poetry
Births
Thomas Parnell (Ireland); Roger Wolcott (US)

1680

 Samuel Butler's Hudibras, Part III
Wentworth Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon, publishes a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica
 John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's Poems on several Occasions
 Ovid's Epistles, translated by John Dryden and Shiers
Deaths
Samuel ButlerJohn Wilmot, earl of Rochester
Touchstone poems
Aphra Behn's "The Disappointment" by John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's "The Imperfect Enjoyment" (1680)
John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's "A Ramble in Saint James's Park" by Gavin Ewart's "On Being Criticized for Categorizing Rochester's 'A Ramble in St James's Park' as Light Verse" (1991)
Poems about poems
 major influence: John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's "The Imperfect Enjoyment", about Aphra Behn's "The Disappointment"

1681

 John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel
 Andrew Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems, posthumously published, including "To his Coy Mistress"
Charles Cotton's The Wonders of the Peake
 John Oldham's Some New Pieces
Deaths
Urian Oakes (US)
Touchstone poems
Andrew Marvell's "The Garden" by Phyllis Webb's "Marvell's Garden" (1956)
Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress" by D. J. Enright's "Fine and Private Place" (1962), Peter De Vries's "To his Importunate Mistress: Andrew Marvell Updated" (1986), Jo Shapcott's "Vegetable Love" (1992), and Annie's Finch's "Coy Mistress" (1997) 

1682

 John Dryden's Religio LaiciMac Flecknoe, and "Absalom and Achitophel," II (of which all but 200 lines are by Nahum Tate)
Cotton Mather's poem to Urian Oakes
Edward Taylor's God's Determinations Touching his Elect (?)
Births
Richardson Pack

1683

 John Oldham's Poems and Translations
Births
Edward Young (baptized)
Deaths
John Oldham, of smallpox

1684

Wentworth Dillon's Essay on Translated Verse (a poem)
 Poems upon Several Occasions, with the poems of Aphra Behn
Cotton Mather's "Elegy" on Nathanael Collins
Births
Allan Ramsay (Scotland)
Deaths
Samuel Crossman

1685

JAMES II (-1688)
 Aphra Behn's Miscellany, being a collection of poems by several hands
 Edmund Waller's Divine Poems
 John Dryden's Sylvae
Births
George Berkeley; William Diaper; John Gay; William Harrison; Aaron Hill; Thomas TickellMary Barber (ca.)
Deaths
Wentworth Dillon; Anne Killigrew, from smallpox

1686

 Anne Killigrew's Poems, to which John Dryden contributed an ode in memory of Anne Killigrew
John Bunyan's A Book for Boys and Girls
Sarah Fyge's The Female Advocate

1687

 John Dryden's Song for St. Cecilia's Day and The Hind and the Panther
 Matthew Prior's and Charles Montagu's Story of the Country-Mouse and the City-Mouse, a burlesque of Dryden's The Hind and the Panther
Deaths
Charles Cotton; Edmund Waller

1688

 John Dryden's Britannia Rediviva
Thomas Shadwell made British Poet Laureate
Births
Laurence Eusden; Alexander Pope; Thomas Warton (?); Leonard Welsted; Mary Collier (?); Samuel Croxall (1688-89)
Deaths
John Bunyan; Thomas Flatman

1689

WILLIAM III (-1702) AND MARY II (-1694)
Charles Cotton's Poems on Several Occasions
 Andrew Marvell's Poems on Affairs of State published posthumously
Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, libretto by Nahum Tate
Michael Wigglesworth's Riddles Unriddled; or, Christian Paradoxes
Births
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, née Pierrepont
Deaths
Aphra Behn

1690

Sir William Temple's essay "Of Poetry"
Henry Purcell's Dioclesian

1691

Alicia D'Anvers' Academia, or The Humours of the University of Oxford
Charles Cotton's The Valiant Knights
Henry Purcell's King Arthur
Deaths
Sir George Etherege; Samuel Wesley

1692

Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen
 Nahum Tate made British Poet Laureate on Dec. 8 (after Thomas Shadwell's death)
Births
John Byrom; Andrew Brice
Deaths
Thomas Shadwell

1693

Births
Hildebrand Jacob

1694

Births
James Bramston (?); Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield; Elizabeth Tollet

1695

Henry Purcell's The Indian Queen
Sir Richard Blackmore's Prince Arthur
 John Milton's Paradise Lost republished, the first poem in England to receive scholarly annotations like a classical text
Births
Thomas Foxton
Deaths
Henry Purcell; Henry VaughanSor Juana Inés de la Cruz (ca.) (Mexico; Academy of American Poets, US)

1696

John Oldmixon's Poems
Births
Matthew Green; William Oldys

1697

 John Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or, the Power of Musique; and his translation of The Works of Virgil
Births
Thomas Edwards; Richard Savage (?); Hetty Wright

1698

 Aphra Behn's Poetical Remains
Births
Henry Baker; Edward Chicken; Edward Littleton (baptized); John Ellis

1699

Thomas Traherne's A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God
John Pomfret's Miscellany Poems on Several Decisions
Benjamin Tompson's "To Lord Bellamont"
Births
Robert Blair; Leonard Howard (?); Christopher Pitt; Alexander Ross (Scotland); Thomas Edwards; John Dyer (Wales); Richard Lewis (?; US)
Deaths
Joseph Beaumont

1700

 John Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modern and The Secular Masque
Births
John Dyer (Wales); James Thomson (Scotland)
Deaths
John Dryden (May 1)

1701

 Daniel Defoe's A True-born Englishman
 John DennisThe Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry
 John PhilipsThe Splendid Shilling
Cotton Mather's Consolations
Births
David Mallet (1701-02)

1702

ANNE (-1714)
 Sir Charles Sedley's Miscellaneous Works, published posthumously
Henry Brooke's "The New Metamorphosis"
Births
Philip Doddridge; Kenrick Prescot; Francis Williams (Jamaica)
Deaths
John Pomfret

1703

 Lady Mary Chudleigh's Poems upon Several Occasions
 Sarah Fyge's Poems on Several Occasions
Lawrence Spooner's A Looking-Glass for Smokers
John Oldmixon's Amores Britannici: Epistles Historical and Gallant
Henry Brooke's "A Discours upon Je'sting"
Births
Henry Brooke (?); John Wesley
Floruit
Lawrence Spooner

1704

 John DennisThe Grounds of Criticism in Poetry
Joseph Addison's The Campaign, celebrating the Battle of Blenheim
Sir Richard Blackmore's Eliza
Poems by Sarah Kemble Knight (US) in her Journal of Madam Knight
Births
Moses Browne; William Hamilton of Bangour (Scotland); Soame Jenyns; Robert Dodsley; Jean Adams (Scotland)

1705

 John PhilipsBlenheim
Bernard Mandeville's The Grumbling Hive
Births
Stephen Duck; Archibald Home (US); Nathaniel Cotton
Deaths
Michael Wigglesworth (US)

1706

 Isaac WattsHorae Lyricae
Thomas Tickell's Oxford
Daniel Defoe's Britannia 
John Philips' Cerealia
Births
Isaac Hawkins Browne; William Dunkin
Joseph Green (US)
Deaths
Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset; John Phillips (ca.)

1707

 Isaac WattsHymns and Spiritual Songs
Benjamin Colman's "A Poem on Elijah's Translation"

1708

 John PhilipsCyder
William King's The Art of Cookery and The Art of Love
Benjamin Tompson's "The Grammarian's Funeral" 
Ebenezer Cook's The Sot-Weed Factor (US)
Births
John Collier; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams; George Webb (US); Jane Colman Turell (US)
Floruit
John Wright (-1727)

1709

First copyright law in England.
 Alexander Pope's Pastorals
 Matthew Prior's Poems on Several Occasions
 Jonathan Swift's "Description of a City Shower" and "Description of the Morning"
Ambrose Philips' "Winter Piece"
Births
John Armstrong; John Banks; John Dalton; Sneyd Davies; Samuel Johnson; Robert Nugent, earl Nugent

1710

Births
George Alexander Stevens; Paul Whitehead; Martha Wadsworth Brewster (US); 

1711

 Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism
Sir Richard Blackstone's The Nature of Man
Births
John Gambold; Jupiter Hammon (US); Henry Taylor
Deaths
Thomas Ken

1712

Sir Richard Blackmore's Creation: a philosophical poem
 Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock published in Lintot's Miscellanies, and enlarged in 1714
Thomas Tickell's The Prospect of Peace
William Diaper's Nereides, or, Sea-EcloguesCallipaedia, and Dryades
Grace Smith's The Dying Mother's Legacy (US)
Births
Richard Glover; Josiah Relph
Deaths
William King
Floruit
William Ronksley

1713

 Anne Finch, countess of Winchelsea's Miscellany Poems
Edward Young's A Poem on the Last Day
 John Gay's Rural Sports
 Henry Carey's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
Alison Cockburn (Scotland), née Rutherford (?); Thomas Gilbert; George Smith
Deaths
William Harrison; Thomas Sprat

1714

GEORGE I (-1727)
 John Gay's The Shepherd's WeekThe Fan, and Letter to a Lady
The Scriblerus Club met January-July, a group including John GayThomas ParnellAlexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift
 Alexander Pope's Windsor Forest
Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees (part II in 1729)
John Danforth's poem on Maria Mather
Deaths
Benjamin Tompson (US)

1715

 Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, Book I, followed by Books II in 1716, III in 1717, IV in 1718, and V-VI in 1720.
Nicholas Rowe made British Poet Laureate
 Isaac WattsDivine Songs for the Use of Children, including "Against Idleness and Mischief"
Births
John Brown; Richard Jago; Richard Graves; William Whitehead
Touchstone poems
Isaac Watt's "Against Idleness and Mischief" by Lewis Carroll's "How Doth the Little Crocodile" (1866)

1716

 John Gay's Trivia or the Art of Walking the Streets of London and Court Poems
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Town Eclogues
Births
Thomas Gray; Donncha Rua Mac Conmara (ca; Canada)

1717

 Alexander Pope's Collected Works, including Eloisa to Abelard
 Henry Carey's Sally in our Alley
Thomas Tickell's From a Lady in England to a Gentleman at Avignon
Aaron Hill's The Northern Star
Births
Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford
Deaths
William Diaper; David Garrick; John Smith

1718

Laurence Eusden made British Poet Laureate
Allan Ramsay's Christ's Kirk on the Green (1716-18) and Scots Songs
 John Gay's libretto for Händel's Acis and Galatea
Deaths
Thomas Parnell; Nicholas Rowe

1719

Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy (-1720)
 Isaac WattsPsalms of David
William Byrd II's Tunbridgalia
Births
James Cawthorn; James Eyre Weeks (?)

1720

 John Gay's Poems on Several Occasions and Epistle to Burlington
John Ellis' The South Sea Dream
 Henry Carey's Poems on Several Occasions
Births
Francis Fawkes (baptized); Gilbert White; Thomas Mozeen (ca.); Charles Woodmason (?; US)
Deaths
Anne Finch, countess of Winchilsea

1721

 Jonathan Swift's Letter of Advice to a Young Poet
 John Gay's Panegyrical Epistle to Mr Thomas Snow
Joseph Addison's Works, in 4 volumes
Births
Mark AkensideWilliam Collins; James Dance; Tobias Smollett; William Wilkie (Scotland)

1722

 Thomas Parnell's Poems on Several Occasions, including A Night-Piece on Death
Thomas Tickell's Kensington Garden
Allan Ramsay's Fables and Tales and A Tale of Three Bonnets

1723

Sir Richard Blackmore's Alfred
David Mallet's "William and Margaret"
Allan Ramsay's Fair Assembly and the 4 volume Tea-Table Miscellany: a Collection of Scots Songs(1723, 1726-27, 1737)
Births
William Livingston (US)
Deaths
Thomas D'Urfey; Sarah Fyge

1724

Elizabeth Tollet's Poems on Several Occasions
Daniel Defoe's A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain
Births
Christopher Anstey; Frances Brooke (baptized); James Grainger (Scotland)
Deaths
Elkanah Settle

1725

 Orpheus Caledonius: or a Collection of the Best Scotch Songs, compiled by William Thomson
 Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey, Books I-III (with William Broome and Elijah Fenton), books IV-V to follow in 1726
 Edward Young's Love of Fame, the Universal Passion (1725, 1728)
Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd
Leonard Welsted's Oikographia
Roger Wolcott's Poetical Meditations
Births
John Newton; William Mason
Deaths
Alicia D'Anvers; Nathaniel Crouch (?)

1726

 Henry Carey's Namby Pamby, including fragments of many still-popular nursery rhymes, such as "London Bridge is broken down"
 James Thomson's Winter
Richard Savage's Miscellaneous Poems and Translations
Floruit
Samuel Bowders (-1771)

1727

GEORGE II (-1760)
 John Gay's Fables, I, to be followed by II in 1738, but completed only in 1750.
 Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, a parody of Longinus's treatise on the sublime
 James Thomson's Summer
William Oldys' A Collection of Epigrams
Henry Baker's The Universe
Births
William Smith (US)
Deaths
Sarah Kemble Knight (US)
Floruit
Francis Hawling

1728

 John Gay's Beggar's Opera
 Alexander Pope's "The Dunciad, Books I-III, followed by Book IV (the New Dunciad) in 1742, and completed in 1743
 James Thomson's Spring
Richard Savage's The Bastard
Births
Deborah How Cottnam ("Portia"; US / Canada); Lady Dorothea Du Bois (Ireland);  Mercy Otis Warren (US); Thomas Warton the younger
Deaths
Richardson Pack; Cotton Mather (US)

1729

 Alexander Pope's The Dunciad Variorum
Edward Chicken's The Collier's Wedding
Henry Carey's Poems on Several Occasions
Richard Savage's The Wanderer: A Vision
James Thomson's Britannia
Robert Dodsley's Servitude
Births
John Cunningham (?); George Keate; Thomas Percy
Deaths
Sir Richard Blackmore; William Congreve; Edward Taylor

1730

Colley Cibber made British Poet Laureate (December 4)
Stephen Duck's Poems
Aaron Hill's The Progress of Wit
 James Thomson's The Seasons, including Autumn
Allan Ramsay's A Collection of Thirty Fables
"The Braes of Yarrow" by William Hamilton of Bangour
Edward Young's Tura Epistles to Mr. Pope: Concerning the Authors of the Age
Births
John Scott; Nathaniel Weekes (Barbados); Oliver Goldsmith (?; Ireland);
Deaths
Laurence Eusden; Alexander Pennecuik; John Danforth (US)

1731

 Alexander Pope's Of Taste and four Moral Essays (1731-35)
Samuel Wesley's Maggots
George Webb's Batchelors Hall
Births
Jacob Bailey (Canada); Samuel Bishop; William Cowper; Erasmus Darwin; John Freeth; Francis Grose(baptized)
Deaths
Daniel Defoe; Edward Ward

1732

Richard Lewis' Carmen Seculare
Births
John Carr; William Falconer; Thomas Morris; Charles Churchill; William Woty
Deaths
John Gay; Samuel Jones; George Webb (US)
Touchstone poems
Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room" by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "The Dean's Provocation for Writing the Dressing-Room" (1734)

1733

 Alexander Pope's Imitations of Horace (1733-38)
Paul Whitehead's The State Dunces
Mercy Wheeler's An Address to Young People
Joseph Green's "The Poet's Lamentation for the Loss of his Cat, which he used to call his muse"
Lewis Morris II's "The Mock Monarchy, or Kingdom of Apes"
Births
Isaac Bickerstaff; Robert Lloyd; Benjamin Youngs Prime (US)
Deaths
Bernard Mandeville; Edward Littleton
Floruit
George Farewell

1734

 Mary Barber's Poems on Several Occasions
 Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man (1734-35)
Jean Adams' "There's nae Luck about the house" (about this time)
Robert Dodsley's An Epistle to Mr. Pope, Occasion'd by his Essay on Man
William Dunkin's The Poet's Prayer
Births
John Maclaurin, Lord Dreghorn; Evan Lloyd (Wales)
Deaths
John Dennis
Richard Lewis (US)
Floruit
Robert Tatersal
Poems about poems
 parody: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "The Dean's Provocation for Writing the Dressing-Room", about Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room" (1732)

1735

 Alexander Pope's Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (January)
William Somervile's The Chace
 James Thomson's Liberty, parts I-III ("Italy," "Greece," and "Rome"), followed in 1736 by parts IV-V ("Britain" and "The Prospect")
Richard Savage's The Progress of a Divine
Henry Brooke's Universal Beauty
Jane Colman Turell's poems in her Memoirs (US)
Births
James Beattie; John Langhorne; William Julius Mickle; James Woodhouse (baptized)
Deaths
Henry Brooke (US); Jane Colman Turell (US)

1736

Isaac Hawkins Browne's A Pipe of Tobacco (parodies)
John Armstrong's Economy of Love, an "explicit sex manual" (James Sambrook)
Births
Charles Jenner; James Macpherson (Scotland)

1737

 William Shenstone's Poems upon Various Occasions, including "The School-Mistress"
 Jonathan Swift's Poems on Several Occasions
 John Wesley's Psalms and Poems
Richard Glover's Leonides
Matthew Green's The Spleen
Births
Joseph Mather; Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (?; US); Francis Hopkinson (US); Jonathan Odell (Canada)
Deaths
Matthew Green

1738

 Samuel Johnson's London (May 13)
 Jonathan Swift's The Beasts' Confession (written 1732)
John Banks' Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose
Births
Mary Darwall; Annis Bourdinot Stockton (US); Edward Thompson (?); Roger Viets (Canada); John Wolcot ('Peter Pindar')
Floruit
E. Dower

1739

 Jonathan Swift's Verses on the Death of Dr Swift
 John Wesley and Charles Wesley's Hymns and Sacred Poems
Richard Glover's London: or, The Progress of Commerce
Mary Collier's The Woman's Labour
Births
John Maylem (?; US)
Deaths
Hildebrand Jacob; Samuel Wesley

1740

John Dyer's The Ruins of Rome
 James Thomson's Alfred, including "Ode in Honour of Great Britain," that is, "Rule Britannia"
James Dance's Cricket
Christopher Pitt's translation of Virgil's Aeneid
Sarah Dixon's Poems
Births
Samuel Henley; Milcah Martha Moore (US); Thomas Moss (?); George Ogilvie (?; US); Joseph Stansbury (US / Canada); Augustus Montagu Toplady
Deaths
Thomas Tickell; Thomas Foxton

1741

About this time Thomas Seaton established the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge University for the best poem in English on a religious theme
William Whitehead's The Danger of Writing Verse
Births
Mary Alcock (?)

1742

 William CollinsPersian Eclogues
 Edward Young's The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-46)
William Somervile's Field Sports
Thomas Gray's "Ode on the Spring," "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," and "Ode to Adversity" composed
Births
Anne Hunter (Scotland); Thomas Penrose; Anna Seward; William Combe ("Doctor Syntax"); Nathaniel Evans (US)
Deaths
John Oldmixon; William Somervile
Floruit
Nicholas James

1743

 Robert Blair's The Grave
 Alexander Pope's The New Dunciad
James Bramston's The Crooked Sixpence
Births
Anna Laetitia Barbauld; Hannah Cowley; Thomas Jefferson (US); John Huddlestone Wynne
Deaths
James Bramston; Henry Carey; Josiah Relph; Richard Savage

1744

 Mark Akenside's The Pleasures of Imagination
 Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, with "Baa, baa, black sheep"
 Joseph Warton's The Enthusiast
 John Wesley and Charles Wesley's A Collection of Psalms and Hymns
Paul Whitehead's The Gymnasiad or Boxing Match
Revision of The Seasons by James Thomson
John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health
Archibald Home's posthumous Poems
Mather Byles' Poems on Several Occasions
Deaths
Alexander Pope; Archibald Home (US)

1745

 Mark Akenside's Odes on Several Subjects
John Brown's An Essay on Satire
Andrew Brice's The Play-house-church, known for its neologisms or "Briticisms"

Births
William Crowe; Charles Dibdin; William Hayley; Thomas Holcroft; Hannah More; Charles Morris; Henry James Pye
Deaths
Jonathan Richardson; Jonathan Swift; Thomas Warton the elder

1746

 William CollinsOdes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (dated 1747)
John Warton's Odes on Various Subjects
Tobias Smollett's Advice
John Collier's A View of the Lancashire Dialect
Births
Michael Bruce; William Jones
Deaths
Robert Blair; Edward Chicken; Mary Leapor, from measles; William Byrd II (US); Lewis Morris II (US)
Floruit
John Dobson

1747

 Thomas Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College published (May 30), and "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat" composed
 Thomas Warton Jr's The Pleasures of Melancholy
Tobias Smollett's Reproof
James Cawthorn's Abelard to Eloisa
William Livingston's Philosophic Solitude; or, the Choice of a Rural Life
Births
Susanna Blamire (Scotland); John O'Keeffe; John Aikin
Deaths
Leonard Welsted; Benjamin Colman (US)
Floruit
Robert Andrews

1748

 Robert Dodsley's edition of A Collection of Poems, 1848-58
 Mary Leapor's Poems upon Several Occasions (1748-51), posthumously published
 James Thomson's The Castle of Indolence
 Poems on Several Occasions by William Hamilton of Bangour (1748-49)
Ambrose Philips' Pastorals
Births
Henry Alline (Canada); Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (US); Hugh Henry Brackenridge (US); John Oakman (?)
Deaths
Christopher Pitt; James ThomsonIsaac Watts

1749

Births
James Graeme; Samuel Jackson Pratt; Charlotte Smith
Deaths
Ambrose Philips ("Namby-Pamby")

1750

 James Thomson's posthumous Poems on Several Occasions
James Kirkpatrick's The Sea-Piece
Births
Lady Anne Barnard, née Lindsay (Scotland); Robert Fergusson (Scotland); John Taylor; John Trumbull (US); Catherine Ann Dorset (?)
Deaths
Aaron Hill; John Winstanley; Hetty Wright

1751

Births
Henrietta Battier (?); Thomas Cary (Canada); Judith Sargent Murray (US)
Deaths
John Banks; Philip Doddridge
Floruit
John Marchant
Touchstone poems
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", by John Duncombe's "An Evening Contemplation in a College" (1753) and Thomas Hood's "The Beadle's Annual Address" (1839)

1752

 Christopher Smart's Poems on Several Occasions
Moses Browne's The Works and Rest of Creation
George Berkeley's A Miscellany
Births
Thomas ChattertonPhilip Morin Freneau (US); Edmund Gardner (?); Joseph Ritson; Samuel Croxall; Ann Eliza Bleecker (US); Timothy Dwight (US); David Humphreys (US)

1753

 John Wesley and Charles Wesley's Hymns and Spiritual Songs
 Christopher Smart's Hilliad
William Smith's Indian Songs of Peace
Births
John Frederick Bryant; George Ellis; William RoscoePhillis Wheatley (US) about this time; Sophia Burrell; Ann Yearsley; Richard Snowden (US)
Deaths
George Berkeley
Poems about poems
 parody: John Duncombe's "An Evening Contemplation in a College", about Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751) 
 imitation: John Duncombe's "An Evening Contemplation in a College", about Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751)

1754

 Thomas Gray's The Progress of Poesy
John Gambold's A Collection of Hymns
George Alexander Stevens' The Birth-Day of Folly
James Dance's Poems
Births
John Codrington Bampfylde; Joel Barlow (US); George Crabbe; Thomas Maurice; John Williams; Jane Cave (ca.)
Deaths
Elizabeth Tollet; William Hamilton, of Bangour; James Eyre Weeks; Thomas Mathison

1755

Philip Doddridge's Hymns
Awards
John Dalton's Descriptive Poem
Births
George Dyer; George Galloway; Robert Merry ("Della Crusca"); Dorothy Kilner

1756

Joseph Warton's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope
Births
Edward Rushton
Deaths
Stephen Duck, by suicide

1757

Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
John Dyer's The Fleece
 Odes by Mr. Gray, including "The Bard"
William Whitehead made British Poet Laureate after Thomas Gray refuses it
William Wilkie's Epigoniad
Martha Wadsworth Brewster's Poems (New London, Connecticut)
Charles Woodmason's "Indico"
Births
William Blake; William Sotheby; Andrew Macdonald (?)
Deaths
Colley Cibber; Thomas Edwards; Martha Wadsworth Brewster (ca.); John Dyer;

1758

 Mark Akenside's Ode to the Country Gentlemen of England
 Christopher Smart writes Jubilate Agno (about 1758-63), only published in 1939
John Taylor's poem on marriage, "Paradise Regain'd"
William Whitehead's Verses to the People of England
Horace Walpole's Fugitive Pieces
John Maylem's The Conquest of Louisburg and Gallic Perfidy
Births
Joseph Fawcett (?); William Parsons (?); Mary Robinson (ca.)

1759

ENGLISH UNDER WOLFE WIN QUEBEC
 Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (criticism)
George Alexander Stevens' Collection of New Comic Songs
Births
Robert Burns; Sarah Wentworth Morton (US)
Deaths
William Collins; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
Touchstone poems
Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno" (ca. 1759-63) by Gavin Ewart's "Jubilate Matteo" (1982) and Wendy Cope's "My Lover" (1986)

1760

GEORGE II (-1820) 
 James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands
 The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-book, with "Little Boy Blue"
Jupiter Hammon's "An Evening Thought," the first published poem by an African American (1761), a slave owned by a man in Long Island, America
James Beattie's Original Poems
George Keate's Ancient and Modern Rome
William Woty's The Shrubs of Parnassus
Mary Darwall's Original Poems (as Mary Whateley)
Births
Richard Polwhele
Deaths
Isaac Hawkins Browne; Henry Dixon

1761

 Charles Churchill's The Rosciad and The Apology
Soames Jenyns' Miscellaneous Pieces
Francis Fawkes' Original Poems and Translations
William Woty's Campanalogia: A Poem in Praise of Ringing
Deaths
James Cawthorn; William Oldys

1762

 Charles Churchill's "The Ghost, Books I-III, followed by Book IV in 1763
William Falconer's The Shipwreck, revised in 1764 and 1769
 James Macpherson's Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem
William Whitehead's A Charge to the Poets
Mary Collier's Poems on Several Occasions
Isaac Bickerstaff's song "The Miller of Dee" is his libretto for Love in a Village
Robert Lloyd's Poems
Births
Joanna Baillie; James Bisset (?); William Lisle Bowles; Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges; George Colman the younger; Thomas Russell; Susanna Rowson (US)
Deaths
Mary Collier; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, of breast cancer

1763

Hugh Blair's A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian
 James Macpherson's Temora
 Christopher Smart's Song to David
Charles Hanbury Williams' A Collection of Poems
William Woty's The Blossoms of Helicon
George Keate's The Alps
Charles Churchill's The Author
Births
John Hurdis; James Hurdis; Samuel Rogers
Deaths
John Byrom; John Dalton; William Shenstone

1764

James Grainger's The Sugar Cane
George Keate's The Ruins of Netley Abbey
William Shenstone's Works in Verse and Prose
Lady Dorothea Du Bois' Poems
 Oliver Goldsmith's The Traveller
James Woodhouse's Poems
Benjamin Youngs Prime's The Patriotic Muse
Births
Elizabeth Cobbold; John Thelwall; Joseph Brown Ladd (US); Mather Byles; Mary Lamb
Deaths
Charles ChurchillRobert Dodsley; Robert Lloyd

1765

Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare's Plays
 James Macpherson's Works of Ossian
 Mother Goose's Melody, including "Hush-a-by Baby" and "Ding Dong Bell"
 Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in 3 volumes
 Christopher Smart's translation of The Psalms of David; and Smart's Hymns
Alison Cockburn's "Flowers of the Forest"
George Cockings' War
Births
Manoah Bodman (US); William Taylor
Deaths
Jean Adams; William Dunkin; David Mallet; Edward Young; Sarah Dixon (US)
Floruit
Nathaniel Weekes (Barbados)

1766

Isaac D'Israeli's The Literary Character
Christopher Anstey's The New Bath Guide
Evan Lloyd's The Powers of the Pen
John Cunningham's Poems
Oliver Goldsmith's novel The Vicor of Wakefield, with the poems "Edwin and Angelina," "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog," and "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly"
Births
Laurence Hynes Halloran (US); Isaac D'Israeli (US)
Deaths
Robert Andrews; John Brown; Thomas Gilbert
Floruit
Frederick Forrest; Charles Newton
Touchstone poems
Oliver Goldsmith's "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly" by Phoebe Cary's "When Lovely Woman" (1854)

1767

 John Wesley and Charles Wesley's Hymns for the Use of Families
Edward Thompson's A Sailor's Letters 
Richard Jago's Edge Hill or the Rural Prospect
John Singleton's A Description of the West Indies
Births
John Quincy Adams (US), 6th President of the United States
Deaths
Michael Bruce; Leonard Howard; James Grainger (Scotland); Roger Wolcott; Nathaniel Evans

1768

 Thomas Gray's Poems, including "The Fatal Sisters" and "The Descent of Odin"
 Lady Mary Montagu's Poetical Works
George Keate's Ferney: an epistle to Monsr. de Voltaire
Alexander Ross' The Fortunate Shepherdess
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson's The Dream of the Patriotic Philosophical Farmer
Milcah Martha Moore's "The Female Patriots"
Annis Boudinot Stockton's "To the Visitant, from a Circle of Ladies"
John Freeth wrote popular occasional songs to be sung at his coffee house (the Leicester Arm), Birmingham
Isaac Bickerstaff's song "Dear heart, what a terrible life I have led" in The Padlock
Births
William Shepherd; Sarah Catherine Martin
Deaths
Thomas Mozeen

1769

DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA
Thomas Moss' Poems, with "Beggar's Petition"
Births
Ann Batten Cristall; John Hookham FrereAmelia Opie
Deaths
Sneyd Davies
Floruit
John Gerrard

1770

 Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village
George Smith's Six Pastorals
Michael Bruce's Poems
Births
George Canning; Joseph Cottle; James Hogg; William Wordsworth
Deaths
Mark AkensideThomas Chatterton, by accidental overdose of arsenic and opium; William Falconer; James Kirkpatrick; Francis Williams (ca.; Jamaica)

1771

 James Beattie's The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius, Book I, followed in 1774 by Book II
Lady Anne Barnarb's "Auld Robin Gray"
Hugh Henry Brackenridge's and Philip Freneau's "A Poem on the Rising Glory of America"
Births
Thomas John Dibdin; James Montgomery (Scotland); Sir Walter ScottSydney Smith; Dorothy Wordsworth
Deaths
Samuel Bowden; John Gambold; Thomas GrayChristopher Smart; Tobias Smollett

1772

William Jones' Poems...from the Asiatick Languages
John Trumbull's The Progress of Dulness (1772-73)
William Mason's The English Garden, in 4 volumes 1772-81
Charles Jenner's Town Eclogues
Nathaniel Evans' Poems
Births
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oct. 21)
Deaths
James Graeme; William Wilkie

1773

 Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Poems
 Phillis Wheatley's Poems, the first book of poetry by an Afro-American slave, including "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
Robert Fergusson's Poems and Auld Reekie
John Byrom's Miscellaneous Poems
William Mason's Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers 
John Collier's Human Passions Delineated
Births
Robert Treat Paine (US); David Hitchcock (US)
Deaths
Andrew Brice; John Cunningham; Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield

1774

 History of English Poetry by Thomas Warton, the younger, in 3 vols., 1774-1781
 Oliver Goldsmith's Retaliation; a poem
James Langhorne's County Justice
Deaths
Henry Baker; James Dance; Lady Dorothea Du Bois; Robert Fergusson; Oliver Goldsmith; Charles Jenner; Paul Whitehead

1775

Philip Freneau's "The Political Litany"
John Trumbull's M'Fingal
Births
Charles LambWalter Savage Landor; Matthew Gregory Lewis (Monk Lewis); John Leyden; Joseph Blanco White; Mary Balfour; Elizabeth Turner (?); Richard Scrafton Sharpe (ca.)

1776

AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (JULY 4)
"The Ballad of Nathan Hale" (anon.)
George Ogilvie's Carolina; or, The Planter
Augustus Montague Toplady's "Rock of Ages"
Richard Graves' Euphrosyne
Jonathan Richardson's Morning Thoughts
Births
Adelaide O'Keeffe
Deaths
Evan Lloyd; George Smith; Charles Woodmason (?)

1777

 Thomas Chatterton's Poems, supposed to have been Written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley, edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt
William Combe's The Diaboliad
 Collected Poems by Thomas Warton the younger
 Jamaica (anon.)
Births
Thomas Campbell (Scotland)
Deaths
Francis Fawkes

1778

Timothy Dwight's "Columbia"
Francis Hopkinson's "The Battle of the Kegs"
Births
Sir Humphry Davy; William Hazlitt; John Kirke Paulding (US); Lady Morgan, née Sydney Owenson (?); Anna Maria Porter

1779

 Samuel Johnson's The Works of the English Poets (1779-81), 52 critical biographies
 Olney Hymns by William Cowper and John Newton
Births
Washington Allston (US); Francis Scott Key (US); Clement Clarke Moore (US); Thomas Moore
Deaths
John Armstrong; David Garrick; John Langhorne; Thomas Penrose; Kenrick Prescot
Floruit
J. Wilde
Touchstone poems
John Newton's "Amazing Grace" by Neil Curry's "Voyages. II of Mr John Newton" (1988)
Romantics 1780-1830

1780

 George Crabbe's The Candidate
David Humphreys' A Poem, Addressed to the Armies of the United States of America
Anna Seward's "Elegy on Captain Cook"
Jonathan Odell's The American Times
Births
George Croly
Deaths
Joseph Green

1781

 George Crabbe's The Library
William Hayley's Triumphs of Temper
Thomas Penrose's Poems
Births
Ebenezer Elliott; Lucy Aikin
Deaths
Richard Jago

1782

 William Cowper's Poems
 Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians for 1782 by John Wolcot ('Peter Pindar')
Henry Alline's Hymns and Spiritual Songs (vol. II, 1786)
Births
Ann Taylor

1783

PEACE OF VERSAILLES: ENGLAND RECOGNIZES USA
 William Blake's Poetical Sketches
Jane Cave's Poems on Various Subjects
 George Crabbe's The Village
 Orlando Furioso, translated by John Hoole
 Poems, on subjects arising in England at the West Indies, by the Rector of St. John's at Nevis
 Poems, on subjects arising in England at the West Indies, by the Rector of St. John's at Nevis
Births
Reginald Heber; Washington Irving (US); Jane Taylor
Deaths
Henry Brooke; John Scott; Ann Eliza Bleecker (US)

1784

Sir William Jones' Odes to Hindu Deities (-1788)
Hannah More's The Bas Bleu or Conversation
Henry James Pye's Shooting and Aerophorion
Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets
Births
Leigh Hunt; Bernard Barton; Samuel Woodworth (US)
Deaths
Henry Alline (Canada); Samuel Johnson; Alexander Ross; George Alexander Stevens; Phillis Wheatley

1785

 William Cowper's The Task in 6 Books
 Thomas Warton the younger made British Poet Laureate
Ann Yearsley's Poems, On Several Occasions
John Wolcot's Lousiad ('Peter Pindar')
Timothy Dwight's The Conquest of Canaan
Jacob Bailey's "The Adventures of Jack Ramble, the Methodist Preacher"
Births
Lady Caroline Lamb; Thomas Love PeacockJohn Pierpont (US)
Deaths
Richard Glover; Henry Taylor; William Whitehead
Floruit
William Parsons

1786

 Robert BurnsPoems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (2nd edition 1787); and "To a Haggis"
 Philip Morin Freneau's Poems
Joseph Brown Ladd's The Poems of Arouet
 The Anarchiad (-1787)
Hannah Cowley's The Scottish Village or Pitcairn Green
Thomas Morris' Songs
Births
Barron Field (Australia)
Deaths
John Collier; Edward Thompson; Joseph Brown Ladd (US)
Floruit
Anne Hecht (Canada)

1787

Ann Yearsley's Poems, on Various Subjects
Joseph Mather's song "Watkinson and his Thirteens"
 Scots Musical Museum, edited by Robert Burns (-1803)
Joel Barlow's The Vision of Columbus
Henry James Pye's Poems
Edward Rushton's The West Indian Eclogues
Births
Richard Henry Dana (US); Margaret Davidson (US); Mary Russell Mitford; Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall; Brit.)
Deaths
Moses Browne; Soame Jenyns
Floruit
L. Ker

1788

John Wilcot's Poetical Works ('Peter Pindar')
William Crowe's Lewesdon Hill
Hannah More's Slavery
Samuel Jackson Pratt's Sympathy
James Hurdis' The Village Curate
Philip Morin Freneau's "The Indian Burial Ground"
Roger Viets's Anapolis Royal
Deaths
William Julius Mickle; Robert Nugent, lord Nugent; Thomas Russell; Charles Wesley; Nathaniel Cotton; John Huddlestone Wynne

1789

GEORGE WASHINGTON BECOMES PRESIDENT OF USA
 William Blake's Songs of Innocence and The Book of Thel
Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants, republished in 1791 as The Botanic Garden, part II
Thomas Jefferson's "Thoughts on English Prosody" (essay)
William Lisle Bowles' Fourteen Sonnets
John Williams' Poems, 2 volumes ("Anthony Pasquin")
Thomas Russell's Sonnets
Thomas Cary's Abram's Plains
Births
Charlotte Elliott; William Knox (Scotland); Thomas Pringle (South Africa); Richard Henry Wilde (US); Hannah Gould (US)
Deaths
Frances Brooke; Frances Greville

1790

 William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Henry James Pye made British Poet Laureate
Literary Fund Society established by David Williams (by 1818 the Royal Literary Fund) to aid indigent authors
Thomas Morris' The Busy Bee
Sarah Wentworth Morton's Ouabi; or the Virtues of Nature
John Freeth's songs in The Political Songster
Joanna Baillie's Poems
Mercy Otis Warren's Poems
Births
Fitz-Greene Halleck (US)
Deaths
Andrew Macdonald; Thomas Warton the younger, by a stroke

1791

 Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
 William Blake's The French Revolution
 Robert BurnsTam o'Shanter
Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden, part I ("The Economy of Vegetation")
 Mother Goose's Melodies (originally published about 1781)
Mary Robinson's Poems (-1794)
William Cowper's translation of Homer's Iliad
Henrietta Battier's The Protected Fugitives
Births
John Howard Payne (US); Lydia Huntley Sigourney (US); Charles Wolfe (Ireland)
Deaths
John Frederick Bryant; John Ellis; Francis GroseJohn Wesley; William Woty; Benjamin Youngs Prime (US); John Singleton (US); Francis Hopkinson (US)
Floruit
John Learmont

1792

 William Blake's Song of Liberty
Samuel Rogers' The Pleasures of Memory

1793

 William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion and America, A Prophecy
 Robert BurnsPoems
 William Wordsworth's An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches
Elihu Hubbard Smith's American Poems (first native anthology)
Sophia Burrell's Poems in 2 vols. 
Joel Barlow's The Hasty-Pudding
Ann Eliza Bleecker's Posthumous Works
Births
John ClareFelicia Dorothea HemansHenry Francis Lyte; John Neal (US); Standish O'Grady (Canada) about this year
Deaths
Gilbert White; John Oakman
Floruit
John Parrish

1794

 William Blake's Songs of Experience, with "The Tyger," the "most anthologized text" in English [Robert N. Essick], Europe, A Prophecy, and The First Book of Urizen
Mary Darwall's Poems
Timothy Dwight's Greenfield Hill
Births
Maria Gowen Brooks (?; US); William Cullen Bryant (US); Oliver Goldsmith (Canada); John Hamilton Reynolds; Carlos Wilcox (US)
Deaths
Susanna Blamire; Alison Cockburn
Touchstone poems
William Blake's "The Tyger" by Basil Bunting's "13. Fearful Symmetry" (1965) and A. K. Ramanujan's "Zoo Gardens Revisited" (1986)

1795

 William Blake's The Book of LosThe Book of AhaniaThe Song of Los, and The Songs of Innocence and Experience
 Philip Morin Freneau's Poems
 Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems, edited by Joseph Ritson
Ann Batten Cristall's Poetical Sketches
Joseph Cottle's Poems
Robert Treat Paine's The Invention of Letters
Richard Snowden's The Columbiad; or, a Poem on the American War
Births
Thomas Carlyle; George Darley; Joseph Rodman Drake (US); John Keats; James Gates Percival; Janet Thomson (Scotland); Daniel Bryan (US)
Deaths
Samuel Bishop; John MacLaurin, lord Dreghorn
Floruit
James Kennedy

1796

Joel Barlow's The Hasty Pudding
 S. T. Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects
Thomas Morris' Quashy or the coal-black Maid
Samuel Bishop's Poetical Works
Anna Seward's Llangollen Vale
Births
John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (US); Hartley Coleridge; Eliza Dunlop (Australia)
Deaths
Robert Burns, at 37 from rheumatic heart disease; Thomas Cole; John Maclaurin, lord Dreghorn; James Macpherson, buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey; John Codrington Bampfylde
Touchstone poems
Robert Burns composed "Comin thro' the Rye", parodied by James Clerk Maxwell's "In Memory of Edward Wilson" (1882)

1797

 William Blake illustrates Edward Young's Night Thoughts
 S. T. Coleridge composes "Kubla Khan" in an opium-induced dream and writes down only a fragment of it on waking; and an enlarged Poems
 Robert Southey's Poems
 Gebir by Walter Savage Landor
 My Nightgown and Slippers by George Colman the younger
 The Anti-Jacobin (-1798), with verse parodier by George Canning
J. Mackay's Quebec Hill
Births
Thomas Haynes Bayley; George Moses Horton (US), about this time; William Motherwell (Scotland); James W. Eastburn (US)
Deaths
George Keate; William Mason; Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford
Touchstone poems
Robert Burns's "For a' That and a' That" by Shirley Brooks's "For a' that and a' that" (1868)

1798

Prime Minister George Canning and J. H. Frere parody Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants in their "The Loves of the Triangles"
first edition of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (with Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner), revised in 1800 and 1802
 Blank Verse by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, including Lamb's "The Old-Familiar Faces"
Robert Treat Paine's The Ruling Passion
Awards
Sarah Wentworth Morton's Beacon Hill
Births
Macdonald Clarke (US); Samuel Henry Dickson (US); David Macbeth Moir (Scotland)
Deaths
Mary Alcock; Edmund Gardner; Robert Merry
Touchstone poems
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (composed this year) by Stevie Smith's "Thoughts about the Person from Porlock" (1962)

1799

 Thomas Campbell's The Pleasures of Hope
Mary Alcock's Poems
William Julius Mickle's Poetical Works
Anna Seward's Original Sonnets
Robert Burns' The Jolly Beggars
Thomas Campbell's The Pleasures of Hope
Births
A. Bronson Alcott (US); Thomas HoodMary Howitt; John Dunmore Lang (Australia)
Touchstone poems
Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Complaints" by Lewis Carroll's "You are Old, Father William" (1866)

Present-day English 1800-present

1800

the life and works of Robert Burns published
 Walter Savage Landor's Poems from the Arabic and Persian
James Hurdis' The Favourite Village
Mary Robinson's Lyrical Tales
Births
Thomas Babington Macaulay; Maria Jane Jewsbury; Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (US)
Touchstone poems
William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" by Hartley Coleridge's "He lived amidst th' untrodden ways" (1869), Phoebe Cary's "Jacob" (1854), and W. D. Snodgrass's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways -- de/composed from Wordsworth" (2001)

1801

THOMAS JEFFERSON, PRESIDENT OF USA
 Thomas Moore's Poetical Works by the Late Thomas Little
 Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer
Hugh Henry Brackenridge's "Scots Poems"
John Thelwall's Poems Chiefly Written in Retirement
Births
William Barnes; Thomas Cole (US); John Henry Newman; Caroline Clive; William Hosack (Scotland)
Deaths
James Hurdis; Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson; Annis Boudinot Stockton; George Ogilvie

1802

 Ancient English Metrical Romances, edited by Joseph Ritson
 S. T. Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode"
 Walter Savage Landor's Poetry by the Author of Gebir
 Amelia Opie's Poems
 Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-03), an anthology of ballads, in two volumes
 Broad Grins by George Colman the younger
Anne Hunter's Poems
Adam Kidd's The Huron Chief
Births
Lydia Maria Child (US); Sara Coleridge (daughter of S.T.C.); Letitia Elizabeth Landon ("L.E.L."); George Pope Morris (US); Edward Coote Pinkney (US); Winthrop Mackworth Praed; Isaac Williams; Henry Horne (Australia)
Deaths
Erasmus Darwin; Sophia Burrell; George Cockings (US); Mather Byles 

1803

Charles Dibdin's Professional Life, 4 vols. with 600 sing lyrics
Erasmus Darwin's The Temple of Nature, or, The Origin of Society
Births
Thomas Lovell BeddoesRalph Waldo Emerson (US); Robert Stephen Hawker; William E. Hickson; James Clarence Mangan (Ireland); Susanna Moodie (Canada); Griselda Tonge (Canada); Sarah Helen Whitman (US)
Deaths
James Beattie; Joseph Ritson; William Smith

1804

 William Blake's Jerusalem, completed in 1820 and his Milton, completed in 1808 ( printed in 1810-11), including "And did those feet in ancient time"
 Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor's Original Poems for Infant Minds
 William Wordsworth's "Daffodils"
James Woodhouse's Love Letters to my Wife in Verse (written 1789)
David Humphreys' Poem on the Industry of the United States of America
Susanna Rowson's Miscellaneous Poems
Thomas Moore's "The Canadian Boat Song"
Births
Nathaniel Hawthorne (US); Joseph Howe (Canada); Francis Sylvester Mahony, aka Father Prout; Charles Whitehead
Deaths
Joseph Fawcett; Richard Graves; Joseph Mather

1805

H. F. Cary's translation of Dante's Inferno
 The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog
Sir Roger Newdigate founds the Newdigate Prize for English Poetry at Oxford
 Sir Walter Scott's "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"
 Robert Southey's Madoc
 William Wordsworth finishes a first version of "The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet's Mind in 13 Books
Births
Sarah Fuller Flower, née Adams (Representative Poetry Online)
Deaths
Christopher Anstey (with a monument in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey); Sophia Burrell

1806

 Lord Byron's Fugitive Pieces
 Walter Savage Landor's Simonidea
 Thomas Moore's Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems
 Sir Walter Scott's Ballads and Lyrical Pieces
 Jane Taylor's and Ann Taylor's Rhymes for the Nursery, including "Twinkle, twinkle, little star"
James Montgomery's The Wanderer of Switzerland
Edward Rushton's Will Clewline
David Hitchcock's Poetical Works
Births
Elizabeth Barrett, later Browning; William Gilmore Simms (US); Nathaniel Parker Willis (US); Elizabeth Oakes Smith (US); Sarah Mapps Douglass ("Ella") (US); Maria W. Chapman (US)
Deaths
Deborah How Cottnam ("Portia"; US / Canada); Jupiter Hammon (before this year); Thomas Morris (?);Charlotte Smith; Ann Yearsley
Touchstone poems
Ann and Jane Taylor's "The Star" by Lewis Carroll's "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat" (1866)

1807

Joel Barlow's The Columbiad
 Lord Byron's Hours of Idleness and Poems on Various Occasions
 George Crabbe's Poems and "The Parish Register"
 Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies
 William Wordsworth's Poems in Two Volumes, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
 William Roscoe's The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, a children's classic
Charlotte Smith's Beachy Head
James Hogg's The Mountain Bard
Births
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (India); Henry Wadsworth LongfellowJohn Greenleaf Whittier (US); Thomas Miller; Eliza Earle (US); Elizabeth Margarat Chandler (US)
Deaths
John Carr; John Newton
Touchstone poems
William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper" by Lorna Goodison's "To Mr. William Wordsworth, Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland" (1999)
William Wordsworth's "Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland" by James Kenneth Stephen's "A Sonnet" (1891)

1808

 Sir Walter Scott's Marmion, A Tale of Flodden Field
Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies (-1834)
Felicia Dorothea Hemans' Poems
William Cullen Bryant's The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times
Births
Lucretia Maria Davidson; Evan MacColl (Canada); Mary E. Hewitt (US)
Deaths
Jacob Bailey (Canada); Isaac Bickerstaffe (after); John Freeth; Thomas Moss
Donncha Rua Mac Conmara (Canada)
Touchstone poems
William Blake's "And did those feet in ancient time" by David Wojahn's "Till we have built Jerusalem (Guyana, 1976)" (1997) and David Herbert Lawrence's "Dark Satanic Mills" (1932)

1809

 Lord Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"; Byron spent the next two years abroad, notably in Greece
T. Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Friend 1809-10
 Charles Lamb's and Mary Lamb's Poetry for Children
Thomas Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming
Philip Freneau's Poems Written and Published during the American Revolution
Births
John Barr (New Zealand); David Bates (US); Thomas Holley Chivers (US); Edward FitzGerald; Kasiprasad Ghose (India); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (US); Abraham Lincoln (US); Monckton Milnes; Edgar Allan Poe (US); Alfred Lord Tennyson; Park Benjamin (US); Heinrich Hoffman; Frances Anne Butler Kemble (US)
Deaths
Hannah Cowley; Thomas Holcroft; Anna Seward; Joseph Stansbury (Canada)

1810

 William Blake's engravings for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
 Gammer Gurton's Garland or the Nursery Parnassus, including "Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep"
 George Crabbe's The Borough in 24 epistles, including one on "Peter Grimes", a poem based on Aldeburgh
 Sir Walter Scott's "The Lady of the Lake
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire and Zastrozzi
Robert Southey's The Curse of Kehama
Walter Scott edits Anna Seward's poetical works
Jane Taylor's Hymns for Infant Minds
Births
Margaret Fuller (US); William Miller (Scotland); Edmund Hamilton Sears (US); Martin Farquhar Tupper

1811

 Sir Walter Scott's The Vision of Don Roderick
Oxford University expells Percy Bysshe Shelley
Anna Maria Porter's Ballad Romances
Joseph Mather's Songs
Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Epistle to Walter Scott
Births
Arthur Hallam; William Makepeace Thackeray; Jane Euphemia Browne (Aunt Effie); Francis Macnamara ('Frank the Poet') (Australia); Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (US)
Deaths
John Leyden; Robert Treat Paine (US); Thomas Percy; Roger Viets (Canada)
Poems about poems
 parody: S. T. Coleridge's "On Donne's Poem `To a Flea'", about John Donne's "The Flea" (1633; probably composed ca. 1600)

1812

 Lord Byron's Childe Harold, Parts I-II, and The Curse of Minerva
H. F. Cary's translation of Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso
 Robert Southey's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Omniana (prose)
Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
William Combe's comic The Tour of Doctor Syntax
Matthew Gregory (Monk) Lewis' Poems
Awards
James Montgomery's The World before the Flood
Births
Robert BrowningCharles Dickens; Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman (US); Edward LearW. J. Linton(US)
Deaths
Joel Barlow

1813

James Kirke Paulding's The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle
 Lord Byron's The Bride of Abydos and The Giaour
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Remorse
 Sir Walter Scott's Rokeby and The Bride of Triermain
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab
 Robert Southey made British Poet Laureate
James Hogg's The Queen's Wake (-1814)
Elizabeth Cobbold's Cliff Valentines (-1814)
Thomas Whitaker first edits Piers Plowman (C-text)
Thomas John Dibdin's Metrical History
Daniel Bryan's The Mountain Muse
Births
William Edmondstone Aytoun (Scotland); Charles Timothy Brooks (US); Christopher Pearse Cranch (US); Epes Sargent (US); Jones Very (US); Charles Harpur (Australia)
Deaths
Henrietta Battier; Jane Cave; Henry James Pye

1814

 Lord Byron's The Corsair"Lara, and Ode to Napoleon
Augusta Gordon bore her half-brother Lord Byron's daughter
 Francis Scott Key on Sept. 14 writes "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the British attack on Baltimore, Maryland
 Robert Southey's Roderick, the Last of the Goths
 William Wordsworth's The Excursion
Births
Sarah Tittle Bolton, née Barrett; Charlotte Eliza Dixon (fl.-1830); James Joseph Sylvester; Aubrey Thomas De Vere; Sarah Louisa Forten ("Ada") (US)
Deaths
Charles Dibdin; Samuel Jackson Pratt; Edward Rushton; Mercy Otis Warren (US)

1815

 Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies, including "The Destruction of Sennacherib"; also his Parisina andThe Siege of Corinth
Marriage of Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke
 Philip Morin Freneau's Poems on American Affairs
 Leigh Hunt was jailed (1815-17) for criticizing the Prince Regent in The Examiner
 Sir Walter Scott's The Lord of the Isles
 William Wordsworth's Poems
The Burns Mausoleum is built in St. Michael's Churchyard, Dumfries
Lydia Sigourney's Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse
James Kirke Paulding's The United States and England
Deaths
George Ellis; Samuel Henley

1816

 Lord Byron's The Prisoner of Chillon and other PoemsChilde Harold, Part III; he leaves England permanently for Geneva
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christabel and Other Poems, including "Kubla Khan"
 Leigh Hunt publishes an essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats in The Examiner, and The Story of Rimini
 John Keats is certified as an apothecary and publishes "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
 Percy Bysshe Shelley marries Mary Woolstonecraft Godwin
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor and Other Poems; he writes "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" and "Mont Blanc"
 Robert Southey's A Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo
John Hamilton Reynolds' The Naiad
Charles Wolfe composes "The Burial of Sir John Moore" (published 1817)
James Hogg's book of parodies, The Poetic Mirror
Births
Philip James Bailey; Charlotte BrontëShirley Brooks; Frances Brown (Browne); Josiah D. Canning (US); Philip Pendleton Cooke (US); Charles Heavysege (Canada); Douglas Huyghue ("Eugene"; Canada)
Deaths
Hugh Henry Brackenridge (US)

1817

 Lord Byron's Manfred and The Lament of Tasso
 S. T. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, Vol. I
 John KeatsPoems
John Gibson Lockhart in the October Blackwood's Magazine vilifies the "Cockney School of Poetry," said to include Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, John Keats and others
 Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh
 Sir Walter Scott's Harold the Dauntless
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's Laon and Cythna
George Croly's Paris in 1815
William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis"
Births
William Kirby (Canada); Cornelius Mathews (US); John McPherson (Canada); Henry David Thoreau (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Ann Batten Cristall (this year or after); Catherine Ann Dorset (?); Timothy Dwight

1818

 Lord Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Book IV, and Beppo
John Wilson Croker's anonymous review attacks John KeatsEndymion in the Quarterly Review
William Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets
 Leigh Hunt's Foliage
 John KeatsEndymion published; he falls in love with Fanny Brawne (1800-65) and writes his great odes this year and the next
 Thomas Love Peacock's Rhododaphne
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Revolt of Islam, originally Laon and Cythna (1817); he leaves England.
Isaac D'Israeli's The Literary Character (-1828)
James Kirke Paulding's The Backwoodsman
Births
Cecil Frances Alexander, née Humphreys; Emily Brontë; William Ellery Channing (US); Eliza Cook; George Copway (Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh; Canada); Elizabeth F. Ellet (US); James Edward Fitzgerald (New Zealand); Alexander McLachlan (Canada); John Mason Neale
Deaths
David Humphreys; Matthew Gregory Lewis; Thomas Morris (?); Jonathan Odell (Canada); John Williams
Touchstone poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" by Richard Watson Gilder's "Shelley's 'Ozymandias'" (1908) and Adrian Henri's "From an Antique Land" (1994)

1819

 Lord Byron's Mazeppa and "Don Juan, I and II
 John Keats falls sick and his writing ceases after "To Autumn" in September
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci and Rosalind and Helen; he writes "Ode to the West Wind" on October 1819 in a wood by the Arno River near Florence
 William Wordsworth's Peter Bell and The Waggoner
George Crabbe's Tales of the Hall
Samuel Rogers' Human Life
Barron Field's First Fruits of Australian Poetry
John Leyden's Poetical Works
John Hamilton Reynolds' Peter Bell
Lady Caroline Lamb's parody of Byron's Don JuanA New Canto
Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake, Poems
John Neal's Otho
Richard Henry Wilde's "Lament of the Captive"
Births
A. H. Clough; Thomas Dunn English (US); Mary Ann Evans (pseud. "George Eliot"); Josiah Gilbert Holland (US); Julia Ward Howe (US); Charles Kingsley; James Russell Lowell (US); Herman Melville (US); Joseph Medlicott Scriven; William Wetmore Story (US); Walt Whitman (US); Mary Balfour; Caroline Carleton (Australia)
Deaths
John Wolcot ('Peter Pindar'); James W. Eastburn (US)
Touchstone poems
William Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" by Hartley Coleridge's "Peter Bell"
Poems about poems
 parody: Hartley Coleridge's "Peter Bell" about William Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" (1819)

1820

GEORGE III (-1830)
 Elizabeth Barrett's The Battle of Marathon
 John Clare's Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery and The Village Minstrel
Introduction of the limerick in The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women
 John KeatsLamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, and Other Poems
 Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry, which sparked Shelley to write his Defence of Poetry
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems, and his essay on a philosophical view of reform (published in 1920)
 William Wordsworth's The River Duddon and Vaudracour and Julia
formation of the Apostles, a Cambridge intellectual society
James W. Eastburn's Yamoden, A Tale of the Wars of King Philip
Maria Gowen Brooks' Judith, Esther, and Other Poems
Bernard Barton's Poems
Births
Anne Brontë; Henry Howard Brownell (US); Alice Patty Lee Cary (US); John Harris (Cornwall); John Henry Hopkins, Jr. (US); Jean Ingelow; William J. Macquorn Rankine (Scotland); Menella Bute Smedley; Ann Plato (?; US); Margaret Junkin Preston (US)
Deaths
Joseph Rodman Drake (US); William Hayley; James Woodhouse; Judith Sargent Murray (US)
Touchstone poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" by Louis Ginsberg's "Special Delivery Letter to Shelley" (1937) 
John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" by Edna St. Vincent Millay's "VI Over the Hollow Land" (1939) and Tom Clark's "Fate Taint" (1994)
John Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" by Edwin Muir's "The Enchanted Knight" (1937), Charles Reznikoff's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (1989), and Mimi Khalvati's "La Belle Dame" (1991)
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, act II, scene v, by Phoebe Cary's "The Annoyer" (1854)

1821

William Cullen Bryant's Poems
 John Clare's The Village Minstrel
John Hamilton Reynolds' The Garden of Florence
 Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Epipsychidion and Adonais (on the death of John Keats) and writes his Defence of Poetry
 Robert Southey's A Vision of Judgement
Byron's SardanapalusThe Two Foscari, and Cain
Joanna Baillie's Metrical Legends
James Gates Percival's Poems
Lady Caroline Lamb's Gordon: A Tale
James Hillhouse's The Judgment, a Vision
Births
Charles Baudelaire (France; Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Isabella Banks, née Varley;Frederick Locker Lampson; Maria White Lowell (US); Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (US)
Deaths
Anne Hunter; John Keats (Feb., in Rome), of tuberculosis

1822

 Lord Byron's Werner and his review of Robert Southey's "The Vision of Judgement" in The Liberal
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Hellas"
James Hogg's Poetical Works, 4 vols. 
James Gates Percival's Prometheus
William Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sketches
Births
Matthew Arnold; Thomas Buchanan Read (US); Charles Sangster (Canada); James Monroe Whitfield (US); Elizabeth Anna Hart
Deaths
Percy Bysshe Shelley, in August, by drowning; John Aikin

1823

 Lord Byron's Don Juan, VI-XIV, and Vision of Judgement
 "An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" (attributed Major Henry Livingston, Jr.)
 John H. Payne's "Home Sweet Home" written, the theme song of Sir Henry Rowley Bishop's operaClari
Sarah J. Hale's The Genius of Oblivion
Births
George Henry Boker (US); William Johnson Cory; Margaret Miller Davidson (US); James Mathewes Legaré; Coventry PatmoreWilliam Brighty RandsAnna Letitia Waring; Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (US); Julia A. Carney; Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (Grace Greenwood) (US)
Deaths
Thomas Cary (Canada); William Combe ('Doctor Syntax'); Charles Wolfe

1824

 Lord Byron's Don Juan, XV-XVI, and The Deformed Transformed
 Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Triumph of Life"
Wilham Knox's The Songs of Israel, including "Mortality"
Letitia Landon's The Improvisatrice
George Longmore's The Charivari
Births
William Allingham (Ireland); Sabine Baring-GouldPhoebe Cary (US); Sydney Thompson Dobell; Charles Godfrey Leland (US); George MacDonald (Scotland); George Boyer Vashon (US); Lucy Larcom (US); Adeline D. T. Whitney (US)
Deaths
Lord Byron, by fever in Greece; Elizabeth Cobbold; Thomas Maurice; Jane Taylor; Susanna Rowson (US)

1825

Thomas Hood's Odes and Addresses
Robert Southey's A Tale of Paraguay
Joseph Blanco White's sonnet "Night and Death," described by S. T. Coleridge as "the finest" in English
John Brainard's Occasional Pieces of Poetry
Maria Gowen Brooks' Zophiël, Canto 1
Edward Coote Pinkney's Poems
Letitia Landon's The Troubadour
 The Rising Village by Oliver Goldsmith's namesake and grandnephew, "the first Canadian-born published poet" (quotation by John A. Dussinger)
Births
Peter John Allan (Canada); John Askham; Caroline Cheseborough (US); Henrietta Anne Huxley;Thomas Henry Huxley; Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Canada); Albert Midlane; Adelaide Anne Procter; Bayard Taylor (US); Frances Ellen Watkins (US)
Deaths
Lady Anne Barnard; Anna Laetitia Barbauld; Mary Darwall; Lucretia Maria Davidson; William Knox (Scotland); Richard Snowden (US); Pamelia Vining Yule (Canada)

1826

 Elizabeth Barrett's An Essay on Mind and Other Poems
Thomas Hood's Whims and Oddities (-1827)
Samuel Woodworth's "The Old Oaken Bucket"
Births
Dinah Maria Mulock CraikStephen Foster (US); Robert Lowry (US); William Charles Hodgson (New Zealand)
Deaths
Reginald Heber; John Taylor; Thomas Jefferson (US); Sarah Catherine Martin
Touchstone poems
Felicia Dorothea Hemans's "Casabianca" by Elizabeth Bishop's "Casabianca" (1946)
Thomas Hood's "I Remember, I Remember" by Phoebe Cary's "I Remember, I Remember" (1854)

1827

 John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar
 Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane and Other Poems
Reginald Heber's Hymns, including "Brightest and best of the sons of morning," "Holy, holy, holy," and "God that madest earth and heaven"
James Montgomery's The Pelican Island
Lydia Sigourney's Poems
Richard Henry Dana, Sr.'s The Buccaneer
Letitia Landon's The Golden Violet
Births
Rose Terry Cooke (US); Francis Miles Finch (US); James McIntyre, poet of the mammoth cheese (Canada); John Hollin Ridge (US); John Townsend Trowbridge (US); Septimus Winner; Ethelinda Eliot Beers (Ethel Lynn) (US)
Deaths
William BlakeGeorge Canning; Carlos Wilcox
Touchstone poems
William Wordsworth's "To a Skylark" by Gilbert Keith Chesterton's "The Skylark Replies to Wordsworth"

1828

 Felicia Dorothea HemansRecords of Women, with Other Poems
John Gibson Lockhart's Life of Robert Burns
Births
George Meredith; Arthur Joseph Munby; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Henry Timrod (US); Rosa Vertner Johnson Jeffrey (US)
Deaths
John Gardiner Calkins Brainard; Lady Caroline Lamb; Edward Coote Pinkney; William Parsons

1829

 Thomas Hood's The Dream of Eugene Aram
 Edgar Allan Poe's Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems
Samuel Kettell's Specimens of American Poetry
"The Canadian Boat Song" appears anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine
Letitia Landon's The Venetian Bracelet
George Moses Horton's Hope of Liberty
Births
Rosanna Eleanor (Mullins) Leprohon (Canada); Elizabeth Siddall; D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
Deaths
William Crowe; Sir Humphry Davy; Milcah Martha Moore

1830

WILLIAM IV (-1837)
 Ebenezer Elliott's Corn Law Rhymes
 Sarah Josepha Hale's Poems for our Children, including "Mary's Lamb"
 Alfred Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, including "The Kraken"
Charles Lamb's Album Verses
Births
Charlotte Alington Barnard; Thomas Edward BrownEmily Dickinson (US); Paul Hamilton Hayne (US); Helen Hunt Jackson (US); William McGonagall (ca; Scotland); Christina Rossetti; Alexander Smith (?); James M. Whitfield (US); Charlotte Eliza Dixon; Horatio Nelson Huggins (Trinidad); Robert Tennant; L. Virginia French (US)
Deaths
William Hazlitt
Touchstone poems
George Gordon, lord Byron's "So We'll Go No More a Roving" by William Ernest Henley's "We'll Go No More A-Roving" (1875) and Gavin Ewart's "So We'll Go No More A-roving" (1989)

1831

 Walter Savage Landor's Gebir, Count Julian
 Edgar Allan Poe's Poems
James Hogg's Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd
Ebenezer Elliott's Corn Law Rhymes (-1834)
John Greenleaf Whittier's Legends of New England
Births
Charles Stuart CalverleyIsa Craig (Scotland); Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton; James Clerk MaxwellDavid Mills (Canada); Charles R. Thatcher (Australia); Anna White (US)
Deaths
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (India); Laurence Hynes Halloran; William Roscoe; John Trumbull (US); William Jones

1832

 Alfred Tennyson's Poems (dated 1833), including "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Lotos-Eaters"
James Hogg's A Queer Book
Barry Cornwall's English Songs
William Motherwell's Poems
John Quincy Adams' Dermot MacMorrogh
John Greenleaf Whittier's Moll Pitcher
Births
Elizabeth Akers Allen (US); Sir Edwin Arnold; Benjamin Paul Blood (US); Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)Joseph SkipseyHenry Clay Work (US)
Deaths
James Bisset; George Crabbe; Philip Morin Freneau; James Plumptre; Anna Maria Porter; Sir Walter Scott
Victorians 1833-1903

1833

 Robert Browning's Pauline
 Hartley Coleridge's Poems, Songs and Sonnets
J. S. Mill's "Thoughts on Poetry and its Variants"
Henry Francis Lyte's Poems
Thomas John Dibdin's Last Lays of the Last of the Three Dibdins
Park Benjamin's The Harbinger
Maria Gowen Brooks' Zophiël
Richard Henry Dana, Sr., Poems
Births
Richard Watson Dixon; Adam Lindsay Gordon (Australia); Edmund Clarence Stedman (US)
Deaths
Arthur Hallam, in whose memory Alfred Lord Tennyson will write In Memoriam; Hannah More; John O'Keeffe; William Sotheby; Maria Jane Jewsbury

1834

 Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies
 Thomas Pringle's African Sketches
Sara Coleridge's Pretty Lessons in Verse for Small Children
Amelia Opie's Lays for the Dead
Felicia Dorothea Hemans' Scenes and Hymns of Life
Births
George Arnold (US); William Morris; Roden Berkely Wriothesley Noel; James Thomson (Scotland); Annie Fields (US)
Deaths
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (July 25); Charles LambThomas Pringle; John Thelwall; Elizabeth Margarat Chandler (US)

1835

 Robert Browning's Paracelsus
 John Clare's The Rural Muse
 William Wordsworth's Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems
Joseph Rodman Drake's The Culprit Fay
George Darley's Nepenthe
Lydia Sigourney's Zinzendorff
Births
Alfred Austin; Isodore Gordon Ascher (Canada); Augusta Cooper Bristol (US); Phillips Brooks (US); Samuel Langhorne Clemens, i.e., Mark Twain (US); Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (India); Adah Isaacs Menken (US); John James Platt (US); Celia Thaxter (US); James Byrne Leicester Warren, baron de Tabley; Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey); James Brunton Stephens (Australia); Harriet Prescott Spofford (US); Louise Chandler Moulton (US); Lillie Devereux Blake (US)
Deaths
Felicia Dorothea Hemans; James Hogg; William Motherwell

1836

 Lyra Apostolica, religious poems by several authors, including John Newman
John Greenleaf Whittier's Mogg Megone
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Poems
Births
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (US); Harriet Maxwell Converse (US); W. S. Gilbert; Bret Harte (US); Charles Mair (Canada); Sarah Morgan Piatt (US); Annie Louisa Walker (Canada); Susan Nugent Wood (Australia) 
Deaths
George Colman the younger; Dorothy Kilner

1837

VICTORIA I (1819-1901)
 Richard H. Barham's Ingoldsby Legends (-1847)
The Civil List Act provides for pensions for needy authors in England.
 John Clare is institutionalized as insane.
 Eliza Cook's "The Old Arm Chair"
George Moses Horton's Hope of Liberty -- Poems by a Slave (2nd edn.; first published as early as 1829)
Thomas Love Peacock's The Paper Money Lyrics
Richard Henry Wilde's Hesperia
Births
William Dean Howells (US); Agnes Maule Machar ("Fidelis"; Canada); Joaquin Miller (US); Algernon Charles SwinburneJulia Augusta Webster; Forceythe Willson (US)
Deaths
Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges

1838

 Elizabeth Barrett's The Seraphim
 Leigh Hunt publishes "Abou Ben Adhem" and "Rondeau" ("Jenny Kissed Me")
 William Wordsworth's Sonnets
John Greenleaf Whittier's Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question
James Hillhouse's Sachem's-Wood
Isaac Williams' The Cathedral
Births
Henry Adams (US); Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael (US); John Hay (US); William Reed Huntington (US); Charles Mair (Canada); Abram Joseph Ryan (US); Margaret E. Sangster; Alice Cunningham Fletcher (US)
Deaths
Margaret Miller Davidson; Letitia Elizabeth Landon, likely by suicide; Charles Morris; Richard Polwhele
Touchstone poems
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" by Phoebe Cary's "A Psalm of Life: What the Heart of the Young Woman Said to the Old Maid" (1854), Franklin Pierce Adams's "A Psalm of Freudian Life" (1924), and Adrian Mitchell's "Nostalgia---Now Threepence Off" (1997)

1839

Charlotte Elliott's Hymns for a Week 
 Henry Wadworth Longfellow's Voices of the Night
Jones Very's Essays and Poems
Births
Walter Pater; James Ryder Randall (US); John Todhunter; Henry Kendall (Australia)
Deaths
Thomas Haynes Bayley; Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Poems about poems
 parody: Thomas Hood's "The Beadle's Annual Address", about Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751)

1840

 Robert Browning's Sordello
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Defence of Poetry, posthumously published
John Quincy Adams' "The Wants of Man"
Caroline Clive's IX Poems by V
Births
Wilfred Scawen Blunt; Henry Austin DobsonThomas HardyWilliam Cosmo Monkhouse; M. Ethelind Sawtell (Canada); John Addington Symonds; Constance Fenimore Woolson (US)

1841

 Robert Browning's Pippa Passes
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ballads and other Poems, including "The Wreck of the Hesperus"
James Russell Lowell's A Year's Life
Lydia Sigourney's Poems and Pocahontas
Standish O'Grady's The Emigrant
Births
Mathilde Blind; Robert Williams Buchanan; Charles Edward Carryl (US); Chief K'hhalserten Sepass (Canada); Ina Coolbrith (US); Juliana Horatia Ewing; Joaquin Miller (US); Edward Rowland Sill (US)
Deaths
Thomas John Dibdin; George Dyer; Standish O'Grady; Joseph Blanco White; Theodore Hook; Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (US)
Touchstone poems
Sarah Fuller Adams's "Nearer, my God, to Thee" by Hugh MacDiarmid's "Nearer, my God, to Thee" (1994)

1842

William Cullen Bryant's The Fountain
 Robert Browning's Dramatic Lyrics, including "My Last Duchess" and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Poems on Slavery
 Thomas Babington Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, including "Horatius"
 Alfred Tennyson's Poems, including "Locksley Hall," "Morte d'Arthur," and "Ulysses"
 William Wordsworth's Poems Chiefly of Early and Late Years
Susanna Blamire's Works
 Henry Wadworth Longfellow's Poems on Slavery
Births
Ambrose Bierce (US); Ina Donna Coolbrith (US); William John Courthorpe; Sidney Lanier (US); John Arthur Phillips (Canada); Henry Duff Traill; James Anderson (Canada); Charles Henry Ross (ca.); James Ferguson; Helen Burrell D'Apery (US)
Deaths
Thomas Arnold; Macdonald Clarke; Samuel Woodworth
Touchstone poems
Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" by Jon Stallworthy's "From the Life [My Last Mistress]" and Richard Howard's "Nikolaus Mardruz to his Master Ferdinand, Count of Tyrol, 1565" (1995)

1843

 Thomas Hood's "The Song of the Shirt" (Punch)
 William Wordsworth is made British Poet Laureate
William Ellery Channing's Poems
James Gates Percival's The Dream of a Day
Elizabeth Oakes Smith's The Sinless Child
John Greenleaf Whittier's Lays of my Home
Births
Charles Montagu Doughty; Violet Fane aka Mary Montgomerie Lamb; Michael McTurk (Guyana); Thomas Bracken (Ireland); Joseph Furphy ('Tom Collins') (Australia)
Deaths
Washington Allston; Francis Scott KeyRobert Southey

1844

Isabella Banks' Ivy Leaves, including "Neglected Wife"
William Barnes' Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect
 Elizabeth Barrett's Poems
Thomas Hood's Whimsicalities
Nathaniel Thomas Haynes' Songs
Frances Kemble's Poems
Christopher Pearse Cranch's Poems
James Russell Lowell's Poems
Epes Sargent's The Light of the Lighthouse
Births
Robert Bridges; George Washington Cable (US); Ada Cambridge, later Cross; Richard Watson Gilder (US); Gerard Manley HopkinsAndrew Lang (Scotland); Caroline Lindsay; Ernest MyersJohn Boyle O'Reilly (US); Arthur William Edgar O'ShaughnessyArabella Eugenia Smith (US), about this time Paul Verlaine (France; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (US)
Deaths
Thomas Campbell; Margaret Davidson
Touchstone poems
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Day is Done" by Phoebe Cary's "The Day is Done" (1854)

1845

 Robert Browning's Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, including "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"
 George Moses Horton's Poetical Works
 Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven and Other Poems, including "The Raven"
 Henry Wadworth Longfellow's The Belfry of Bruges
Lydia Sigourney's Poetry for Seamen
William Gilmore Simms' Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies
 Henry Wadworth Longfellow's Poems
Births
Louisa Sarah Bevington (US); William Carleton (US); John Banister Tabb (US); Thomas E. Spencer (Australia); Henrietta R. Eliot (US)
Deaths
R. H. Barham; Maria Gowen Brooks (US); Thomas Hood; John McPherson; Sydney Smith
Touchstone poems
Robert Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" by W. J. Linton's "How they Brought the News to a Gent" (1892), Owen Seaman's "'The Guineas': Or, How they brought the Good News from Newmarket to Girton" (1908), and Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman's "How I Brought the Good News from Aix to Ghent, or Vice Versa" (1933)

1846

 Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning are married in Sept. and elope to Italy, where they settle in Casa Guidi in Florence
 Robert Browning's Bells and Pomegranates
 Charlotte BrontëEmily Brontë, and Anne Brontë's Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, edited by Charlotte Brontë
 Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, revised in 1861 and 1863
William Barnes' Poems, Partly of Rural Life
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Forest Leaves
Lydia Sigourney's The Voice of Flowers
John Greenleaf Whittier's Voices of Freedom
Births
Alexander MacGregor Rose (Scotland-Canada); George Thomas Lanigan ; Marcus Clarke (Australia); Mary Hannay Foott (Australia); Rose Elizabeth Cleveland (US)
Deaths
George Darley; Barron Field (Australia); John Hookham Frere; Sarah Wentworth Morton (US); Elizabeth Turner; Eliza Earle (US)

1847

 Ralph Waldo Emerson's Poems
 Walter Savage Landor's The Hellenics
 Henry Francis Lyte composes "Abide with Me"
 Alfred Tennyson's The Princess, including "Tears, idle Tears," which he adds to up to 1850
Caroline Clive's The Queen's Ball
 Henry Wadworth Longfellow's Evangeline
Epes Sargent's Songs of the Sea
Lydia Sigourney's The Weeping Willow
Births
Alice Meynell, née Thompson; Alfred Scott Gatty
Deaths
Mary Lamb; Henry Francis Lyte; George William Gillespie (Canada); William Shepherd; Richard Henry Wilde

1848

James Russell Lowell's A Fable for CriticsPoems: Second SeriesBigelow Papers; and The Vision of Sir Launfal
pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in London, lasting until about 1880, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Elizabeth Siddall, and others
Lydia Sigourney's Waterdrops
Charles Timothy Brooks' Aquidneck
John Quincy Adams' Poems of Religion and Society
Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka: A Prose Poem
Births
Romesh Chunder Dutt (India); Anne Glenny Wilson née Adams (New Zealand); Lilla Cabot Perry (US)
Deaths
John Quincy Adams; Emily Brontë; Thomas Cole; Sarah Fuller Flower, née Adams; Isaac D'Israeli; Ann Batten Cristall
Touchstone poems
Cecil Frances Alexander's "Maker of Heaven and Earth" by Amelia Blossom Pegram's "Burials" (1995)

1849

 Matthew Arnold's The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Seaside and the Fireside
 Poems by Washington Allston
 Poems by Alice and Phoebe Cary
Births
Edmund Gosse; William Ernest Henley; Sarah Orne Jewett (US); Emma Lazarus (US); James Whitcomb Riley (US); Henrietta Cordelia Ray (US); Grace Denio Litchfield (US)
Deaths
Bernard Barton; Thomas Lovell BeddoesAnne BrontëHartley ColeridgeEbenezer Elliott;Edgar Allan Poe; James Clarence Mangan, of malnutrition; David Hitchcock (US)
Touchstone poems
David Bates's "Speak Gently" by Lewis Carroll's "Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy" (1866) and T. D. Sullivan's "Speak Gently" (1887) 

1850

 Thomas Lowell BeddoesDeath's Jest-book, published posthumously
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems with "Sonnets from the Portuguese," including How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
 Robert Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day
 Stephen Foster's "De Camptown Races"
 Leigh Hunt's Autobiography
 D. G. Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel, published in The Gem
 Alfred Tennyson publishes In Memoriam and is made British Poet Laureate.
 William Wordsworth's The Prelude, published posthumously in 14 Books.
William Barnes' Hwomely Rhymes
John Greenleaf Whittier's Songs of Labor
Births
Isabella Valency Crawford (Canada); Eugene Field (US); William Larminie (US); Robert Louis Stevenson; Rose Hartwick Thorpe (US); Albery A. Whitmann (US); Ella Wheeler Wilcox (US); Laura E. Richards; Florence Earle Coates (US)
Deaths
Manoah Bodman; William Lisle Bowles; Philip Pendleton Cooke; Margaret Fuller (US); William Wordsworth; Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (US)
Touchstone poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" by Wilfred Owen's "How do I Love Thee?" (1983) and Rafael Campo's "IX. Sonnet for the Portuguese" (1996)

1851

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows
 Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home"
 George Meredith's Poems, including "Love in the Valley"
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Golden Legend
Births
James Lister Cuthbertson (Australia); Arthur Clement Hilton; John Wilson Bengough; Rose Hawthorne Lathrop ("Mother Alphonsa") (US); Arthur Patchett Martin (Australia); Albery Allson Whitman (US)
Deaths
Joanna Baillie; David Macbeth Moir; M. Ethelind Sawtell (Canada)

1852

 Matthew Arnold's Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems
Edmund Hamilton Sears' "It Came upon a Midnight Clear"
Alice Cary's Lyra
David Macbeth Moir's Poetical Works
Awards
Lydia Sigourney's Olive Leaves
Births
Francis Coutts; Emma Maria Caillard; Edwin Markham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Henry Van Dyke (US); Alfred T. Chandler ('Spinifex') (Australia); Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (US)
Deaths
Sara Coleridge (daughter of S.T.C.); Thomas Moore; John Howard PayneThomas Moore; John Hamilton Reynolds; Richard Scrafton Sharpe

1853

 Matthew Arnold's Poems, including "Sohrab and Rustum" and "The Scholar-Gipsy"
Martha Browne's [Mattie Griffith's] Poems
Charles Timothy Brooks' Songs of Field and Flood
William Gilmore Simms' Poems
James Whitfield's America
John Greenleaf Whittier's The Chapel of the Hermits
Births
Ernest Fenollosa (US); Thomas Nelson Page (US); Lillian H. Shuey (US)
Deaths
Joseph Cottle; Maria White Lowell; Amelia Opie

1854

 Julia Ward Howe's Passion Flowers
 Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House, Part I (Part II in 1856, Part III in 1860; and Part IV in 1863)
 Alfred Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," published in The Examiner on Dec. 9
Phoebe Cary's Poems and Parodies
Frances Harper's Poems
Lydia Sigourney's The Western Home
Births
James A. Bland (US); George Frederick Cameron (Canada); William Henry Drummond (Canada);Oscar Wilde; George Frederick Cameron (Canada); Edith M. Thomas (US); Fanny Parnell (US)
Deaths
James Montgomery (Scotland)
Touchstone poems
Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Rudyard Kipling's "The Last of the Light Brigade" (1890)
Poems about poems
 parody: Phoebe Cary's "When Lovely Woman" (Poems and Parodies 1854) about Oliver Goldsmith's "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly" (1766)
 parody: Phoebe Cary's "The Day is Done" (Poems and Parodies 1854) about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Day is Done" (1844)
 parody: Phoebe Cary's "Jacob" (Poems and Parodies 1854) about William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" (1800)
 parody: Phoebe Cary's "A Psalm of Life: What the Heart of the Young Woman Said to the Old Maid" about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" (1838)
 parody: Phoebe Cary's "The Annoyer" about Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, act II, scene v (1820)
 parody: Phoebe Cary's "I Remember, I Remember" about Thomas Hood's "I Remember, I Remember" (1826)

1855

 Matthew Arnold's Poems, Second Series
 Robert Browning's Men and Women, including "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
 Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"
 Caroline Hayward (Canada) active about this time
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Maud and Other Poems
 Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, regularly amplified (2nd edn., 1856; final author's edition, 1891-92)
Alice Cary's The Maiden of Tiascala
Maria White Lowell's Poems
Lydia Sigourney's Sayings of the Little Ones and Poems for their Mothers
Births
Jones Bannerman (Canada); Henry Cuyler Bunner (US); Frances Gertrude E. H. Bustill (US); Armistead Churchill Gordon (US); Thomas ThornelyWoodrow Wilson (US); Alexander Young (Scotland)
Deaths
Charlotte Brontë; Mary Russell Mitford; Samuel Rogers; Dorothy Wordsworth; Adelaide O'Keeffe
Touchstone poems
Robert Browning's "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" by Carl Sandburg's "Manitoba Childe Roland" (1918), Stevie Smith's "Childe Rolandine" (1957) and "A Soldier Dear to Us" (1975), and Jon Stallworthy's "The Thread" (1995)
Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" by Shirley Brooks's "Waggawocky" (1872)

1856

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (post-dated 1857), a verse novel in 11,000 lines about a woman writer
 Sydney Dobell's England in Time of War
 Coventry Patmore's The Espousals
John Greenleaf Whittier's The Panorama
Charles Sangster's The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay
Births
Toru Dutt (India); Alfred Denis Godley; Lizette Woodworth Reese (US)
Deaths
James Gates Percival

1857

 Frederick Locker Lampson's London Lyrics (12 re-editions to 1893)
Julia Ward Howe's Words for the Hour
Births
Jane Barlow (Ireland); Hubert N. W. Church (Australia); Edward Cordle (Barbados); John Davidson(Scotland); Margaret Deland (US); Benjamin Franklin King (US); Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald(Canada)
Touchstone poems
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Brahma" by Andrew Lang's "Brahma" (1905)

1858

 William BarnesHwomely Rhymes: A second collection of poems of rural life in the Dorset Dialect
 William Johnson Cory's Ionica
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish
 William MorrisThe Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems
 Adelaide Anne Procter's Legends and Lyrics (1858-61), including "A Lost Chord"
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "The Chambered Nautilus" and "The Deacon's Masterpiece"
Walter Savage Landor's Dry Sticks
D'Arcy McGee's Canadian Ballads and Occasional Verses
Births
Edith NesbitDollie Radford; Sir William Watson; Victor Daley (Australia); Milicent W. Shinn (US)
Deaths
Thomas Holley Chivers

1859

CHARLES DARWIN'S ORIGIN OF SPECIES 
 Daniel Decatur Emmett's "Dixie's Land"
 Edward FitzGerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, revised up to 1879
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, including "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere"
Births
Katharine Lee Bates (US); Kenneth Grahame; William Herbert Carruth (US); Perceval Gibbon(South Africa); Susan Francis Harrison ("Seranus"; Canada); A. E. Housman; Egbert Martin ('Leo') (Guyana); Ernest Rhys; Ruth Huntington Sessions (US); James Kenneth StephenFrancis Thompson; Lucy E. Tilley (US)
Deaths
Leigh Hunt; Washington Irving; James Mathews Legaré; Thomas Babington Macaulay, buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, early in 1860; Lady Morgan, née Sydney Owenson
Touchstone poems
Edward FitzGerald's "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" by Gelett Burgess's "The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne" (1904), Wendy Cope's "From Strugnell's Rubáiyát" (1986), Edwin Morgan's "Variations on Omar Khayyám" (1988), and Frank Kuppner's "In a Persian Garden" (1994)

1860

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT OF USA
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems before Congress
 Coventry Patmore's Faithful for Ever
Rose Terry Cooke's Poems
Joseph Rodman Drake's and Fitz-Greene Halleck's "The Croakers" (collected edition)
Henry Timrod's Poems
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman's Poems
John Greenleaf Whittier's Home Ballads
William Kirby's "U.E."
Charles Sangster's Hesperus
Alexander McLachlan's The Emigrant
Births
William Wilfred Campbell (?) (Canada); Helena Jane Coleman (Canada); Hamlin Garland (US); Harriet Monroe (US); Charles G. D. Roberts (Canada); Clinton Scollard (US); Harry Dacre; Charlotte Perkins Gilman (US); James S. Martinez (ca.; Belize); William Satchell (New Zealand); Jack Moses (Australia); Mary L. Ritter (US) 
Deaths
George Croly; James Kirke Paulding

1861

CONFEDERATE STATES TAKE FORT SUMTER ON APRIL 12: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Last Poems, posthumously published
 Julia Ward Howe composes "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
Francis Turner Palgrave's The Golden Treasury, a poetic anthology revised in 1897 and since then by others
 Annie Louisa Walker's Leaves from the Backwoods
"Go Down Moses" in National Anti-Slavery Standard
Births
Bliss Carman (Canada); Mary Elizabeth ColeridgeWalter Alexander Raleigh; Louise Imogen Guiney (US); Maurice Henry Hewlett; Katharine Hinkson, aka Katharine Tynan (Ireland); Pauline Johnson, aka Tekahionwake (Canada); Archibald Lampman (Canada); Amy LevyFrederick George Scott (Canada) Rabindranath Tagore (India); Henry Cust; Minnie Hallowell Bowen (Canada); J. A. Philp (Australia); Sophie Jewett (US)

1862

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's posthumous Last Poems, edited by Robert Browning
 Charles Calverley's Verses and Translations
 A. H. Clough's Last Poems, posthumously published
 George Meredith's Modern Love and Poems of the Roadside
 Coventry Patmore's Victories of Love
 Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems
in February Dante Gabriel Rossetti places a sheaf of poems (a few years later retrieved) in the coffin of his wife Elizabeth Siddall
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Songs in many keys
Emily Dickinson's "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" published
Lydia Sigourney's The Man of Uz
Births
John Kendrick Bangs (US); Arthur Christopher Benson; Jean Blewett (Canada); John Jay Chapman (US); Edith Emma Cooper (half of "Michael Field"); Sir Henry John Newbolt; George Santayana (US);Duncan Campbell Scott (Canada); Edith Wharton (US); Jack Judge; W. T. Goodge (Australia); Ella Higginson (US); John Bernard O'Hara (Australia)
Deaths
Elizabeth Siddall, of opium overdose; Henry David Thoreau, of tuberculosis; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)

1863

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, including "Paul Revere's Ride"
William Barnes' Third Collection of Poems in Dorset Dialect
Walter Savage Landor's Heroic Idyls
Births
Reuben Butchart (Canada); C. P. Cavafy (Egypt; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elaine Goodale Eastman (US); George Essex Evans (Australia); Mary Gilmore (Australia); Winifred Howells (US); Mary Austin Low (Canada); Robert Fuller Murray; Stuart Merrill (US); Edward Abbott Parry;George SantayanaErnest Lawrence Thayer (US)

1864

 Robert Browning's Dramatis Personae, including "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Caliban upon Setebos"
 Robert Lowry's "Beautiful River"
 William Brighty RandsLilliput Levee, for children
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Enoch Arden
John Greenfield Whittier's In War-Time
Births
Miguel de Unamuno (Spain; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Hovey (US); Marie Joussage (Canada); Andrew Barton ("Banjo") Paterson (Australia); Jessie Mackay (New Zealand); Harry Morant ('The Breaker') (Australia); Julie M. Lippmann (US); Charles Souter ('Dr. Nil') (Australia); Virna Woods (US)
Deaths
John ClareStephen Foster; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Walter Savage Landor; George Pope Morris;Adelaide Anne Procter; Lucy Aikin; Park Benjamin (US)

1865

LINCOLN ASSASSINATED; CIVIL WAR ENDS; SLAVERY ABOLISHED DEC. 18
Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism, 1st series, including "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"
Robert Williams Buchanan's "The Session of the Poets," an attack on Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in Spectator
 George Moses Horton's Naked Genius
 John Newman's The Dream of Gerontius
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon
 Walt Whitman's "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd," on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; and Drum-Taps
 Henry Clay Work's "Marching through Georgia"
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Births
Laurence Alma-Tadema (ca.); Arthur A. D. Bayldon (Australia); Grace Blackburn (Canada); Madison Cawein (US); Adela Florence Nicolson Cory (pseud. "Lawrence Hope"); Thomas William Hodgson Crosland; Edward Dyson (Australia); William Gay (Australia); Rudyard Kipling (UK); William Butler Yeats
Deaths
George Arnold; William Edmondstone Aytoun; Abraham Lincoln (US); Lydia Huntley Sigourney (US); Isaac Williams; M. J. Chapman (Barbados); Hannah Gould (US)

1866

Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael's Poems
 Christina Rossetti's The Prince's Progress
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, 1st series, including "Dolores"
 John Greenleaf Whittier's Snow-Bound
Alice Cary's Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns
Sir John Frederick William Herschel's translation of Homer's Iliad into hexameter verse
Herman Melville's Battle-pieces
Emily Dickinson's "A narrow fellow in the grass" published
Births
Barcroft Boake (Australia); Katharine Harris Bradley (half of "Michael Field"); Gelett Burgess (US);Edmund Vance Cooke (US); Sophia Almon Hensley (US); E. W. Hornung (Australia); Bernard O'Dowd (Australia)
Deaths
Richard Le Gallienne; Francis Sylvester Mahony; Thomas Love PeacockAnn Taylor; Daniel Bryan (US); Robert Nugent Dunbar (UK); Dora Read Goodale (US)
Touchstone poems
Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Dolores" by Arthur Clement Hilton's "Octopus" (1872), Owen Seaman's "A Song of Renunciation (After A. C. S.)" (1896), and Gilbert Keith Chesterton's "Dolores Replies to Swinburne" in "Answers to the Poets" (Collected Poems 1932)
Poems about poems
 parody: Lewis Carroll's "You are Old, Father William" about Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Complaints" (1799)
 parody: Lewis Carroll's "Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy" about David Bates's "Speak Gently" (1849)
 parody: Lewis Carroll's "How Doth the Little Crocodile" about Isaac Watt's "Against Idleness and Mischief" (1715)
 parody: Lewis Carroll's "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat" about Ann and Jane Taylor's "The Star" (1806)

1867

DOMINION OF CANADA ESTABLISHED ON JULY 1
 Matthew Arnold's New Poems, including "Dover Beach"
 Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark
 Ralph Waldo Emerson's May-Day
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Song of Italy
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy
Emma Lazarus' Poems and Translations
Richard Henry Wilde's Hesperia
John Greenleaf Whittier's The Tent on the Beach
W. W. Skeat published the A-text of Piers Plowman (and the B- and C- texts in 1869 and 1873)
Births
Elizabeth Clayton Cardozo (US); Frances Densmore (US); Ernest Christopher Dowson; Lionel Pigot Johnson; Henry Lawson (Australia); Tom MacInnes (Canada); Roderic Quinn (Australia); George William Russell ("Æ"; Ireland); David McKee Wright (New Zealand)
Deaths
Charles Baudelaire (France; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Fitz-Greene Halleck (US); John Hollin Ridge; Alexander Smith; Henry Timrod; Nathaniel Parker Willis; Forceythe Willson
Touchstone poems
Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" by Anthony Hecht's "The Dover Bitch" (1967), Kenneth Patchen's "The Queer Client and the Forest-Inn" (1968), Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "The Sea is Calm Tonight" (1993), and Tom Clark's "Dover Beach" (1987)
Augusta Webster's "If?" by Arabella Eugenia Smith's "If I Should Die To-night" (1873) and Benjamin Franklin King's "If I Should Die" (by 1894)

1868

 Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, in 12 Books and over 21,000 lines (1868-69)
Frederick James Furnivall founds the Chaucer Society
 William MorrisThe Earthly Paradise, I, completed in 1870
Phoebe Cary's Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love
Adah Isaacs Menken's Infelicia
Julia Ward Howe's Later Lyrics
William Barnes' Poems of Rural Life in Common English
Charles Mair's Dreamland
Births
Mary Austin (US); W.E.B. Du Bois (US); Mary Fullerton (Australia); Mary Hunter Austin (US); Edgar Lee Masters (?) (US)
Deaths
Charles Harpur (Australia); Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Canada); Adah Isaacs Menken (US)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Shirley Brooks's "For a' that and a' that" about Robert Burns's "For a' That and a' That" (1797)

1869

W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Holy Grail and Other Poems, with "The Coming of Arthur," "The Holy Grail," "Pelleas and Ettarre," and "The Passing of Arthur"
Frances Harper's Moses
Lucy Larcom's Poems
John Greenleaf Whittier's Among the Hills
Births
Laurence Binyon; E. J. Brady (Australia); Olivia Bush, née Ward, later Banks (US); Arthur Sheerly Cripps (Rhodesia); Stephen Leacock; Charlotte Mary Mew; William Vaughn Moody (US); Will H. Ogilvie (Australia); Edwin Arlington Robinson (US); George Sterling (US); Clara Ann Thompson; Arnold Wall (New Zealand)
Deaths
Charlotte Alington Barnard; George Copway (Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh; Canada)
Touchstone poems
Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Higher Pantheism" by Algernon Charles Swinburne's "The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell" (1880)
Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Higher Pantheism" by Algernon Charles Swinburne's "The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell" (1880)
Poems about poems
 parody: Hartley Coleridge's "He lived amidst th' untrodden ways" about William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" (1800) 

1870

Adam Lindsay Gordon's Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems, including "Jenny" and a fragment of "The House of Life"
mathematician James Joseph Sylvester publishes his The Laws of Verse
Helen Hunt Jackson's Verses
James Russell Lowell's The Cathedral
John Greenleaf Whittier's Ballads of New England
Births
Hilaire Belloc (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Christopher John Brennan (Australia); Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas; Eva Selena Gore-Booth (Ireland); Thomas Sturge Moore; Lena Guilbert Ford; Thomas MacDermot ('Tom Redcam') (Jamaica); Blanche (B. E.) Baughan (New Zealand)
Deaths
David BatesCharles Dickens; Adam Lindsay Gordon (Australia); William Gilmore Simms; James M. Whitfield; William E. Hickson
Floruit
Christine Rutledge 

1871

 Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, including "Jabberwocky"
 Edward Lear's Nonsense Songs, including "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat"
Thomas Maitland (i.e., Robert Williams Buchanan) attacks Dante Gabriel Rossetti in "The Fleshly School of Poetry" in Contemporary Review (Oct.); and Rossetti replies in "The Stealthy School of Criticism" in Athenaeum (Dec.)
Joaquin Miller's Songs of the Sierras
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Last Tournament"
 Walt Whitman's Passage to India
John Greenleaf Whittier's Miriam
Frances Harper's Poems
Emma Lazarus' Admetus
Births
Edwin Ford Aper (US); John Le Gay Brereton (Australia); Stephen Crane (US); Arthur Guiterman (US); William Henry Davies; Ralph Edwin Hodgson; James Weldon Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Francis Joseph Sherman (Canada); John Millington Synge (Ireland); Joseph Tishler ('Bellrive'; Australia); Paul Valéry (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Alice Patty Lee Cary and Phoebe Cary (US); Charlotte Elliott; John Frederick William Herschel; Thomas Buchanan Read; James Monroe Whitfield

1872

 Edward Lear's More Nonsense, Rhymes
 William MorrisLove is Enough
 Christina Rossetti's Sing-Song, a Nursery Rhyme Book
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette"
Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Three Books of Songs and Christus
Ella Wheeler Wilcox's Drops of Water
Births
Paul Laurence Dunbar (US); Dr. John McCrae (Canada); John Shaw Nielson (Australia); Leonora Speyer (US); Jesse Edgar Middleton; Jean Blewett (Canada); Hiram Alfred Cody (Canada); Arthur H. Adams (New Zealand); Alice Katherine Fallows (US)
Deaths
Henry Howard Brownell; Samuel Henry Dickson; Helena Mabel Forrest (Australia); William J. Macquorn Rankine (Scotland); William Miller (Scotland)
Touchstone poems
Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Arthur Clement Hilton's "The Vulture and the Husbandman" (1872) 
Poems about poems
 parody: Arthur Clement Hilton's "Octopus" about Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Dolores" (1866)
 parody: Shirley Brooks's "Waggawocky" about Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" (1855)
 parody: Arthur Clement Hilton's "The Vulture and the Husbandman" (1872) about Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter"

1873

 William Morris's Love is Enough
Lucy Larcom's Childhood Songs
Henry Timrod's Poems
Births
Gilbert E. Brooke (Singapore); George Herbert Clarke (Canada); Walter De La Mare; Ellen Glasgow (US); William Christopher Handy (US); George Cabot Lodge (US); Maude Caldwell Perry (US); Alexander L. Posey (US); Lola Ridge (US)
Deaths
Caroline Clive; Kasiprasad Ghose (India); Janet Hamilton; Joseph Howe; Janet Thomson; Frederick Goddard Tuckerman; Caroline Cheseborough (US)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Arabella Eugenia Smith's "If I Should Die To-night" about Augusta Webster's "If?" (1867)

1874

 J. Thomson's "The City of Dreadful Night," published in National Reformer, and later in 1880
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Hanging of the Crane
Joseph Howe's Poems and Essays
Births
Maurice Baring; Mary Ursula Bethell (New Zealand); Gordon Bottomley; Lillie A. Brooks (Canada); A. H. Reginald BullerGilbert Keith Chesterton; Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (US); Robert Frost(US); J. W. Gordon ('Jim Grahame') (Australia); Stanley de Vere Alexander JuliusAmy Lowell(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canada); Josephine Peabody (US); Robert William Service (Canada); Gertrude Stein (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Trumbull Stickney (US); Winifred Tennant (Australia)
Deaths
Shirley Brooks; Sydney Thompson Dobell; Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall); Thomas Miller; Caroline Carleton (Australia)

1875

 Robert Browning's Aristophane's Apology
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Masque of Pandora
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Songs of Many Seasons
John Greenleaf Whittier's Hazel Blossoms
Births
William Talbot Allison (Canada); Edmund Clerihew Bentley; Anna Hempstead Branch (US); Alice Dunbar-Nelson (US; wife of Paul L. Dunbar); Rainer Maria Rilke (Prague; Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Robert Stephen HawkerCharles Kingsley; Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman (US)
Poems about poems
 imitation: William Ernest Henley's "We'll Go No More A-Roving" about George Gordon, lord Byron's "So We'll Go No More a Roving" (1830)

1876

 Robert Browning's Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper
 Dr. Brewster Higley's "Home on the Range"
 William MorrisThe Story of Sigurd the Volsung, and the Fall of the Niblungs
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Selected Poems
Emma Lazarus' The Spagnoletto
Herman Melville's Clarel
Ella Wheeler Wilcox's Poems of Passions
Births
Sherwood Anderson (US); Gertrude Bartlett; Sarah N. Cleghorn (US); C. J. Dennis (Australia); William Ellery Leonard (US); Hugh McCrae (Australia)
Deaths
Charles Heavysege; John Neal; Edmund Hamilton Sears

1877

 Coventry Patmore's The Unknown Eros and Other Odes
 Edward Lear's Laughable Lyrics
Sidney Lanier's Poems
Births
Rose Fyleman; Marsden Hartley (US)
Deaths
Toru Dutt (India), of pulmonary tuberculosis; Menella Bute Smedley; Elizabeth F. Ellet (US)
Touchstone poems
Gerard Manley Hopkins's "God's Grandeur" (composing date) by Maxime Kumin's "Almost Spring, Driving Home, Reciting Hopkins" (1996)

1878

 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, 2nd series
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Keramos
John Greenleaf Whittier's The Vision of Echard
Births
Walter Conrad Arensberg (US); Frank Oliver Call (Canada); George M. Cohan (US); Adelaide Crapsey (US); Wilfrid Wilson Gibson; Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty (Ireland); Don Marquis (US);John MasefieldCarl August Sandburg (US); Edward Thomas
Deaths
William Cullen Bryant; John Dunmore Lang (Australia); Bayard Taylor; George Boyer Vashon; Sarah Helen Whitman
Floruit
Elizabeth T. Corbett

1879

THOMAS EDISON PATENTS THE ELECTRIC LIGHTBULB
 Robert Browning's Dramatic Idyls, including "Ivàn Ivànovitch"
Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ballads and Other Poems
Births
Joseph Campbell (Ireland); P. J. Hartigan ('John O'Brien') (Australia); Joe Hill (US); Vachel Lindsay(US); Dorothy Frances McCrae (Australia); Harold Edward MonroWallace Stevens (US)
Deaths
Frances Brown (Browne); James Branch Cabell (US); Richard Henry Dana; Sarah Josepha Hale;Rosanna Eleanor (Mullins) LeprohonJames Clerk Maxwell; William Howitt; Robert Tennant; Ethelinda Eliot Beers (Ethel Lynn) (US)
Touchstone poems
W. S. Gilbert's "When a felon's not engaged in his employment" (The Pirates of Penzance, 1879) by Wendy Cope's "A Policeman's Lot" (1986) 

1880

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ultima Thule
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's The Heptalogia
Seven Balliol College Oxford members led by H. C. Beeching and J. W. Mackail publish The Masque of B-ll--l, which is immediately suppressed by authorities
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Iron Gate
Sidney Lanier's The Science of English Verse
Charles G. D. Roberts' Orion
Births
Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm-Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) (Academy of American Poets Web site; Italy); Joseph Warren Beach (US); Alfred Cruickshank (ca.; Trinidad); Angelina Weld Grimké (US); Radclyffe Hall; Wilson MacDonald (Canada); Alfred Noyes (UK; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); George Henry Powell
Deaths
Lydia Maria Child; Eliza Dunlop; Mary Ann Evans (pseud. "George Eliot"); George Moses Horton; Epes Sargent; Jones Very; Francis Macnamara ('Frank the Poet') (Australia); Susan Nugent Wood (Australia)
Floruit
Juana Manwell
Poems about poems
 translation: Emily Henrietta Hickey's translation (Verse-tales, Lyrics and Translations 1880) of "The Battle of Maldon" (1000)
 imitation: Algernon Charles Swinburne's "The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell" about Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Higher Pantheism" (1869)

1881

Frederick James Furnivall founds the Browning Society
 Christina Rossetti's A Pageant, and other Poems
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets, with "The House of Life" complete, and Poems
 Oscar Wilde's Poems
Births
Franklin Pierce Adams (US); Lascelles Abercrombie; Clive Bell; Witter Bynner (US); Padraic Colum (Ireland); Abbie Huston Evans (US); Eleanor Farjeon; Edgar Guest (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elizabeth Madox Roberts (US); Furnley Maurice (Frank Wilmot; Australia); John G. Neihardt (US)
Deaths
Thomas CarlyleEdgar Albert Guest; Josiah Gilbert Holland; Sidney Lanier; Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy; Marcus Clarke (Australia); L. Virginia French (US)
Floruit
Sydney Dayre

1882

F. J. Child's edition of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in 5 vols. (1882-98): multiple versions of 305 ballads
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's In the Harbor
Emma Lazarus' Songs of a Semite
Births
Martin Donisthorpe Armstrong; John Drinkwater; James Joyce (Ireland); Mina Loy; A. A. Milne; E.J. Pratt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Spencer (US); James Stephens (Ireland); Louise Morey Bowman (Canada); Thomas S. Jones, Jr.; Enid Derham (Australia)
Deaths
Ralph Waldo Emerson (US); Henry Wadsworth LongfellowWilliam Brighty RandsDante Gabriel RossettiJames Thomson; Henry Kendall (Australia); Brian Vrepont (Benjamin Arthur Truebridge) (Australia); Charles R. Thatcher (Australia); Sarah Mapps Douglass ("Ella") (US); Fanny Parnell (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: James Clerk Maxwell's "In Memory of Edward Wilson" about Robert Burns's "Comin thro' the Rye" (composed 1796)

1883

 Robert Browning's Jocoseria
 Emma Lazarus writes "The New Colossus" in aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund (for the New York "Statue of Liberty")
 George Meredith's Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Century of Roundels
 Ella (Wheeler) Wilcox's Poems of Passion
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Michael Angelo
James Whitecomb Riley's The Old Swimmin'-hole
Births
William Baylebridge (Australia); Charles Badger Clark Jr. (US); Max Eastman (US); Arthur Davison Ficke (US); Thomas Ernest HulmeGeoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy; Alfred Kreymborg (US);Marjorie Pickthall (Canada); William Carlos Williams (US)
Deaths
Charles Timothy Brooks; Edward FitzGerald; George Moses Horton (US); William Hosack (Scotland); Sarah Louisa Forten ("Ada") (US)

1884

 Isabella Valency Crawford's Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems
 Amy Levy's A Minor Poet and Other Verse
Percy Montrose's "Oh My Darling Clementine"
 Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Sidney Lanier's Complete Poems
Lucy Larcom's Collected Poems
Henry Timrod's Katie
Births
Donald Evans (US); James Elroy Flecker; Arthur Giovannitti (US); Edith Alice Mary Harper, aka Anna Wickham; Wilbert Snow (US); John Collings Squire; Sara Teasdale (US); W. J. Turner (Australia); Francis Brett Young
Deaths
Charles Stuart Calverley; John Harris; Henry Clay Work; Henry Horne (Australia)

1885

 Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Marino Faliero
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Tiresias and Other Poems, and "Balin and Balan"
Births
Charles Richard Allen (New Zealand); Kingsley Fairbridge (Rhodesia); David Herbert Lawrence;Ezra Pound (US); Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie (US); Andrew John Young (Scotland); Gerald Gould; Florence K. Frank; Vance Palmer (Australia); Dorothea Mackellar (Australia)
Deaths
George Frederick Cameron (Canada); Helen Hunt Jackson; Monckton Milnes; Susanna Moodie; Charles Whitehead; Juliana Horatia Ewing; Maria W. Chapman (US)

1886

Frederick James Furnivall founds the Shelley Society
 Rudyard Kipling's Departmental Ditties
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After"
Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus" is placed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York
Helen Hunt Jackson's Sonnets and Lyrics
John Greenleaf Whittier's St. Gregory's Guest
Charles G.D. Roberts' In Divers Tones
Births
Zoë Rumbold Akins (US); William Rose Benêt (US); Daniel Aloysius Casey (Canada); Frances Cornford; Hilda Doolittle (H.D.; US); John Gould Fletcher (US); John Henry Gray; Hazel Hall (US); Roy Helton (US); Georgia Douglas Johnson (US); Joyce Kilmer (US); Ma Rainey (US); Walter Adolpe Roberts (Jamaica); Siegfried Sassoon; John Hall Wheelock (US); Charles Williams
Deaths
William BarnesEmily Dickinson; Paul Hamilton Hayne; John Pierpont; Abram Joseph Ryan; George Thomas Lanigan; Joseph Medlicott Scriven

1887

 Robert Browning's Parleyings with Certain People
 George Meredith's Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Before the Curlew
Emma Lazarus' By the Waters of Babylon
Terry Rose Cooke's Complete Poems
George Frederick Cameron's Lyrics on Freedom, Love and Death
Archibald Lampman's Among the Millet
Births
Leonard Bacon (US); Mary Josephine Benson (Canada); Rupert Brooke; Shelton Brooks; Elizabeth Daryush, daughter of Robert Bridges; Marcus Garvey (Aug; Jamaica); Skipwith Cannell (US); Sir Julian Sorell Huxley; Orrick Johns (US); John Robinson Jeffers (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Meade Minnigerode; Marianne Craig Moore (US); Edwin Muir (Scotland); Charlie Patton (US); John Reed (US); Edith Louisa Sitwell; Sir Sacheverell Sitwell
Deaths
Dinah Maria Mulock CraikIsabella Valency CrawfordEmma Lazarus (US); Edward Rowland Sill; Egbert Martin ('Leo') (Guyana)
Poems about poems
 parody: T.D. Sullivan's "Speak Gently" (Green Leaves. A Volume of Irish Verses 1887)about Lewis Carroll's "Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy" (1866)

1888

 Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism, second series
 Ernest Henley's A Book of Verses
 George Meredith's A Reading of Earth
 Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat"
Winthrop Mackworth Praed's Political and Occasional Poems, ed. Sir George Young
Thomas Nelson Page and Armistead Churchill Gordon's Befo' de War
 Walt Whitman's November Boughs
Births
Irving Berlin (US); T. S. Eliot (US to 1927; then British); Julian Grenfell; Fenton Johnson (US); Aline Kilmer (US); Haniel Long (US); Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand); Eugene O'Neill (US);Fernando Pessoa (Portugal; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Crowe Ransom(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alan Seeger (US)
Deaths
A. Bronson Alcott; Matthew ArnoldMary HowittEdward Lear; John Crowe Ransom; Elizabeth Anna Hart

1889

 Robert Browning's Asolando
 Eugene Field's A Little Book of Western Verse, including "Little Boy Blue" and "Wynken, Blynken and Nod"
 Amy Levy's A London Plane Tree
 Walter Pater's Appreciations: With an Essay on Style
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, 3rd series
 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Demeter and Other Poems; he writes "Crossing the Bar" in Oct. as he crossed the Solent
 W. B. YeatsThe Wanderings of Oisin
Emma Lazarus' Poems
Births
Conrad Aiken (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova (Ukraine; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Hervey Allen (US); J. R. Hervey (New Zealand); Blanche Lamontagne Beauregard; Harley Matthews (Australia); Dion Titherage; Arthur David Waley; Dorothy Wellesley
Deaths
William Allingham (Ireland); Robert BrowningEliza CookGerard Manley Hopkins, of typhoid;Amy Levy, by suicide; Cornelius Mathews; Martin Farquhar Tupper; John Barr (New Zealand); Winifred Howells (US)

1890

 Emily Dickinson's Poems published posthumously by editors Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson
 Walter Pater's Appreciations with an Essay on Style
Robert Louis Stevenson's Ballads
James Whitcomb Riley's Rhymes of Childhood
John Greenleaf Whittier's At Sundown
Births
Zora Cross (Australia); Ivor Gurney; A. P. Herbert; Elspeth Honeyman Clarke (Canada); H.P. Lovecraft (US); Claude McKay (US); Boris Pasternak (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jean Rhys (Dominica); Isaac Rosenberg; Joe Wallace (Canada)
Deaths
George Henry Boker (US); J. H. NewmanJohn Boyle O'Reilly (US); Lucy E. Tilley (US)
Poems about poems
 major influence: Rudyard Kipling's "The Last of the Light Brigade" about Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854)

1891

 John Davidson's In a Music Hall
 William Morris's Poems by the Way
The Rhymers Club gathered at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, London, 1891-93, including John DavidsonErnest DowsonW. B. Yeats, and others
 James Kenneth Stephens's Lapsus Calami and Quo Musa Tendis
 Emily Dickinson's Poems, Second Series, published by editors Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson
Helen Hunt Jackson's Poems
Herman Melville's Timoleon
 Walt Whitman's Good Bye My Fancy
Births
Lereine Ballantyne; John Peale Bishop (US); Edwin Gerard ('Trooper Gerardy') (Australia); Lesbia Harford (Australia); Francis Ledwidge (Ireland) Osip Mandelstam (Russia; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Cole Porter (US)
Deaths
Peter Hopegood (Australia); John Henry Hopkins, Jr.; James Russell Lowell (US); Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton; Douglas Huyghue (Canada); Herman Melville (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: James Kenneth Stephen's "A Sonnet" about William Wordsworth's "Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland" (1807)

1892

 Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads, including "Gunga Din"
 
Alfred Tennyson's The Death of Oenone
Lucy Larcom's At the Beautiful Gate and Other Songs of Faith
Births
Richard Aldington; Djuna Barnes (US); John Peale Bishop (US); Maxwell Bodenheim (US); Mary Phelps Crosby (US); Leon Gellert (Australia); Kenneth Leslie (Canada); Archibald MacLeish (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Hugh MacDiarmidEdna St. Vincent Millay (US); Victoria Mary ("Vita") Sackville-West; J. R. R. Tolkien; César Vallejo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Barcroft Boake, by suicide (Australia); Josiah D. Canning; Robert P. Coffin (US); Rose Terry Cooke (US); William Johnson Cory; Christopher Pearse Cranch; Alfred Lord Tennyson; James Whitfield (US); Walt WhitmanJohn Greenleaf Whittier
Poems about poems
 parody: W. J. Linton's "How they Brought the News to a Gent" (Heliconundrums 1892) about Robert Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" (1842)

1893

SUFFRAGE REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND
 Thomas Edward Brown's Old John, and Other Poems
 John Davidson's Fleet Street Eclogues
 Francis Thompson's Poems, including "The Hound of Heaven"
Paul Laurence Dunbar's Oak and Ivy
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's In This our World
James Whitcomb Riley's Poems Here at Home
Bliss Carman's Low Tide on Grand Pré
Charles G.D. Roberts' Songs on the Common Day
Duncan Campbell Scott's The Magic House
Births
Gerald William Bullett; Arthur Stanley Bourinot (Canada); Richard Church; Frank A. Collymore (Barbados); Donald Davidson (US); Samuel Greenberg (US); Jorge Guillén (Spain; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Noel Hodgson; Thomas MacGreevy (Ireland); Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols; Wilfred OwenDorothy Parker (US); Frank Prewett (Canada); Sir Herbert Edward Read; Ivor Armstrong Richards; Sylvia Townsend Warner
Deaths
Sarah Tittle Bolton; Phillips Brooks; Frances Anne Butler Kemble (US); Charles Sangster; John Addington Symonds; Lucy Larcom (US); Elizabeth Oakes Smith (US)

1894

 Robert Browning's Asolando
 John Davidson's "Thirty Bob a Week" 
 Verse by Ben King (2nd edn., 1898)
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's Astrophel and Other Poems
 The Yellow Book, published 1894-97
 W. B. YeatsThe Land of Heart's Desire
Frances Harper's The Martyr of Alabama
George Santayana's Sonnets and Other Verses
Births
Edward Estlin Cummings (US); H.L. Davis (US); Eileen Duggan (New Zealand); Rolfe Humphries (US); H. Phelps Putnam (US); Charles Reznikoff (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); W. W. E. Ross (Canada); Bessie Smith; Genevieve Taggard (US); Jean Toomer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mark Van Doren (US)
Deaths
John Askham; Mary E. Hewitt (US); William Charles Hodgson (New Zealand); Heinrich Hoffman;Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (US); Rosa Vertner Johnson Jeffrey (US); Eugene Jolas (US); Benjamin Franklin KingRobert Fuller Murray, of consumption; Roden Berkely Wriothesley Noel; Walter PaterChristina Rossetti, of cancer; Robert Louis Stevenson, of a brain haemorrhage, in Samoa;Celia Thaxter (US); Julia Augusta Webster; Constance Fenimore Woolson
Touchstone poems
John Davidson's "A Ballad of a Nun" by Owen Seaman's "A Ballad of a Bun" (1896)
Poems about poems
 parody: Benjamin Franklin King's "If I Should Die" about Augusta Webster's "If?" (1867)

1895

 Katharine Lee Bates"America the Beautiful"
 Gelett Burgess"The Purple Cow"
 James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphant Annie"
Stephen Crane's The Black Riders
Paul Laurence Dunbar's Majors and Minors
James Russell Lowell's Last Poems
Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey's Songs from Vagabondia
Births
Capel Boake (Australia); Lilian Bowes-Lyon; Alter Brody (US); Babette Deutsch (US); Paul Éluard(France; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Abraham Lincoln Gillespie (US); Robert Graves(Britain; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Oscar Hammerstein II (US); Edward Philip Harrington (Australia); Lorena Hart (US); Robert Hillyer (US); Alberta Hunter (US); David Michael Jones (Wales); Charles Hamilton Sorley; Edmund Wilson (US)
Deaths
Cecil Frances Alexander, née Humphreys; Louisa Sarah Bevington; Eugene FieldThomas Henry HuxleyFrederick Locker-Lampson; William Wetmore Story; James Byrne Leicester Warren, baron de Tabley; Horatio Nelson Huggins (Trinidad)

1896

Alfred Austin made British Poet Laureate
 Ernest Christopher Dowson's Verses, including "Non Sum Qualis Eram"
 A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad
 William Morris publishes the Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer's works
Andrew Barton (`Banjo') Paterson's The Man from Snowy River
Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Torrent and the Night Before
 Emily Dickinson's Poems, Third Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson
Paul Laurence Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life
Births
Edmund Charles Blunden; Horace Bray (Canada); Austin Clarke (Ireland); Ida Cox (US); Nancy Cunard (US); Walter D'arcy Cresswell (New Zealand); John Dos Passos (US); Thomas Hornsby Ferril (US); Ira Gershwin (US); Ramon Guthrie (US); E.Y. Harburg (US); Frederick Robert Higgins (Ireland); Eugenio Montale (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Isidor Schneider (US)
Deaths
Mathilde Blind; Henry Cuyler Bunner; Thomas Edward Brown; Alexander McLachlan; William Morris;Coventry PatmorePaul Verlaine, at 52 (Jan. 8); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Edward Fitzgerald (New Zealand)
Poems about poems
 parody: Owen Seaman's "A Song of Renunciation (After A. C. S.)" about Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Dolores" (1866)
 parody: Owen Seaman's "A Ballad of a Bun" about John Davidson's "A Ballad of a Nun"

1897

 Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Children of the Night
 William Henry Drummond's The Habitant
Births
Louise Bogan (US); Kenneth Burke (US); Emanuel Carnevali (US); William Faulkner (US); Blind Lemon Jefferson (US); Walter Lowenfels (US); David McCord (US); John Wheelwright (US)
Deaths
Isabella Banks; William Gay (Australia); Jean Ingelow; W. J. Linton (US); Margaret Junkin Preston (US); Charles Henry Ross (ca.); James Joseph Sylvester; Pamelia Vining Yule (Canada)

1898

 Thomas Hardy's Wessex Poems
 Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Julia Ward Howe's From Sunset Ridge
Wilfred Campbell's The Dreaded Voyage
Births
Stephen Vincent Benét (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Harindranath Chattopadhyana (India); Govinda Krishna Chettur (India); Philip Albert Child; Malcolm Cowley (US); Harry Crosby (US); Horace Gregory (US); Luis Palés Matos (Puerto Rico; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edgell Rickword; William Soutar (Scotland); Melvin B. Tolson (US)
Deaths
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (Jan. 14); Evan MacCollAlexander MacGregor Rose(Scotland-Canada); Thomas Bracken (Ireland); Jane Euphemia Browne (Aunt Effie)

1899

 Stephen Crane's War is Kind
 Ernest Dowson's Decorations: in Verse and Prose
 W. B. YeatsThe Wind among the Reeds
Henry Timrod's Complete Poems
Births
Léonie Fuller Adams (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Noël Coward; Hart Crane(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Thomas A. Dorsey (US); Hildegarde Flauner (US); Ernest Miller Hemingway (US); Raymond Knister (Canada); Janet Lewis (US); Federico Garcia Lorca(Spain; Academy of American Poets Web site); Joseph Moncure March (US); Vladimir Nabokov (US); Lynn Riggs (US); F. R. Scott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Allen Tate (US); Constance Woodrow (Canada)
Deaths
Archibald LampmanRobert LowryAllen Tate (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)

1900

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA PROCLAIMED JULY 9
 Ernest Henley's For England's Sake
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch edits The Oxford Book of English Verse.
 W. B. YeatsThe Shadowy Waters
 An American Anthology, 1787-1900: Selections Illustrating the Editor’s Critical Review of American Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman (reissued until 1909)
Clarendon Press brings out Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's edition, The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1918, which is reissued up to 1939
Births
Basil Bunting (UK; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edward Dahlberg (US); Robert Desnos (France; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard A. W. Hughes (Wales); Ernest G. Moll (Australia); Giorgos Seferis (Greece; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Yvor Winters(Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Stephen Crane, of tuberculosis; Richard Watson Dixon; Ernest Christopher Dowson; Richard Hovey; William Larminie; Melvin Tolson; Henry Duff Traill; Oscar Wilde
Floruit
Alice Mary Buckton (South Africa);

1901

QUEEN VICTORIA DIES, JANUARY 22, and EDWARD VII (-1910) SUCCEEDS TO THE BRITISH THRONE
 Thomas Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present
 George Meredith's A Reading of Life
George Santayana's Hermit of Carmel
Births
Adrian Hanbury Bell; Sterling A. Brown (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ignatius Roy D. Campbell (South Africa); Robert Francis (US); Lindley Williams Hubbell (US); Laura Riding Jackson(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tom Inglis Moore (Australia); Salvatore Quasimodo(Italy; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Slessor (Australia)
Deaths
Robert Williams Buchanan; Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael; William Ellery Channing; William Cosmo Monkhouse; Albery Allson Whitman
Floruit
Thomas Craig (South Africa);

1902

THE BOAR WAR ENDS (JUNE 1)
 Thomas Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present
Walter De la Mare's Songs of Childhood
 John Edward Masefield's Salt-Water Ballads, including "Sea-Fever" ("I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky")
on June 2, Clara Butt sings a special version of "Land of Hope and Glory," the final chorus from the "Coronation Ode" composed by Edward Elgar with lyrics by Arthur Christopher Benson
 W. B. YeatsCathleen Ni Houlihan
George Cabot Lodge's Poems 1899-1902
 Trumbull Stickney's Dramatic Verses
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Captain Craig
Births
Arna Bontemps (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kay Boyle (US); Kenneth Fearing (US); R. D. Fitzgerald (Australia); Nazim Hikmet (Greece; Academy of American Poets Web site); Langston Hughes (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Philip Manderson Sherlock (Feb. 25; Jamaica);Ogden Nash (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Michael William Edward Roberts; A. J. Smith (Canada); Stevie Smith; Eve Trlem (US)
Deaths
Philip James Bailey; Aubrey Thomas De Vere; Thomas Dunn English; Lionel Pigot Johnson, of a head injury sustained in falling off a bar-stool; Bret Harte; William McGonagall (ca; Scotland); Albery A. Whitman; Septimus Winner; Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (US); D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson; James Brunton Stephens (Australia); Harry Morant ('The Breaker') (Australia); Arthur Patchett Martin (Australia) 
Georgians 1903-1920

1903

ORVILLE AND WILBUR WRIGHT MAKE THE FIRST AIR FLIGHT
 Thomas Traherne's Poetical Works, published for the first time by Bertram Dobell
 W. B. YeatsIn the Seven Woods
A small plaque is set on the Statue of Liberty and holds Emma Lazarus' poem, "The New Colossus" (1883)
Births
Countee Cullen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edwin Denby (US); R.G. Everson (Canada); Dudley Fitts (US); Brewster Ghiselin (US); Lorine Niedecker (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Charles Franklyn Plomer (South Africa); Carl Rakoski (US); A. L. Rowse (Cornwall)
Deaths
Isa Craig (Scotland); William Ernest Henley, of tuberculosis and a fall; Charles Godfrey Leland; David Mills (Canada); Edward Cordle (Barbados); Harriet Maxwell Converse (US); Virna Woods (US)

1904

 Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, I, followed by II (1906) and III (1908)
 Christina Rossetti's Poetical Works, edited by W. M. Rossetti
 Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Channel Passage, and Other Poems
 W. B. YeatsThe King's Threshold and The Hour-Glass
Joel Chandler Harris' Tar-baby and other Rhymes of Uncle Remus
Births
Harold Acton; Audrey Alexandra Brown (Canada); Earle Birney (Canada); R.P. Blackmur (US); Arthur R. D. Fairburn (New Zealand); Cecil Day-Lewis; Richard Eberhart (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mary Elizabeth Frye (US); John Holmes (US); J. A. R. Mackellar (Australia); Pablo Neruda(Chile; Academy of American Poets Web site); Louis Zukovsky (US)
Deaths
Sir Edwin Arnold; Adela Florence Nicolson Cory (pseud. "Lawrence Hope"), of suicide; Daniel Decatur EmmettTrumbull Stickney, of a brain tumor (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: Gelett Burgess's "The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne" about Edward FitzGerald's "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" (1859) 

1905

ALBERT EINSTEIN PROPOSES HIS SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
George Meredith receives the Order of Merit
Edmund Clerihew Bentley's Biography for Beginners and the invention of the clerihew
 Ernest Dowson's Poems, edited by Arthur Symons
 Duncan Campbell Scott's "The Forsaken"
 Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, published posthumously
 Trumbull Stickney's Poems, edited by William Vaughn Moody, George Cabot Lodge, and John Ellerton Lodge
Births
Alfred G. Bailey (Canada); Howard Baker (US); Brian Coffey (Ireland); Idris Davies (Wales); Frank Marshall Davis (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dorothy Fields (US); Geoffrey Grigson; Patrick Kavanagh (Ireland); Stanley Kunitz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Una Marson (Jamaica); R.A.K. Mason (New Zealand); Phyllis McGinley; Peter Quennel; Kenneth Rexroth (US); Rex Warner (Ireland); Robert Penn Warren (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Byron Vazakas (US)
Deaths
Victor Daley (Australia); Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey); Violet Fane; John Hay; George MacDonald (Scotland)
Poems about poems
 parody: Andrew Lang's "Brahma" about Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Brahma

1906

C. M. Doughty's The Dawn in Britain
 Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, II
Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein
Thomas Nelson Page's The Coast of Bohemia
Births
Samuel Beckett; John Betjeman, later Sir; Helen Bevington; Stanley Burnshaw (US); Bruce Charles (Canada); Waring Cuney (US); William Empson, later Sir; Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson) (New Zealand); Joseph Kalar (US); Richard Lattimore (US); Anne Lindbergh (US); James Picot (Australia); Vernon Watkins (Wales)
Deaths
Ronald Bottrall; Martha Browne; Paul Laurence Dunbar at 33 (Feb 9); William Kirby (Canada); James McIntyre; Adeline D. T. Whitney (US)

1907

James Joyce's Chamber Music
 Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer's Prejudice Unveiled
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Rudyard Kipling
 Robert Service's The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, also titled Songs of a Sourdough, including "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children
Births
W. H. Auden (Academy of American Poets Web site; UK); Christopher CaudwellA. D. Hope(Australia); Helene Johnson (US); Lincoln Kirstein (US); John Lehmann; Louis MacNeice (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jack Sorensen (Australia); John Thompson (Australia)
Deaths
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (US); Mary ColeridgeWilliam Henry Drummond; Francis Miles Finch; John Arthur PhillipsFrancis ThompsonAnnie Louisa Walker

1908

 John Davidson's Mammon and his Message
 Barbara Frietchie, a film directed by J. Stuart Blackton (redone in 1915 and 1924) and based on the story told by John Greenleaf Whittier in the poem of the same name.
 Edith Nesbit's Ballads & Lyrics of Socialism
 Ezra Pound's A Lume Spento
 T. E. Hulme begins his Wednesday night meetings of the Poetry Club in London
Births
Julian Bell; Constance Carrier (US); Alton Delmore (US); Dennis Devlin (Ireland); Paul Engle (US); Harry Hooton (Australia); Josephine Jacobsen (Canada; Academy of American Poets Web site); Ronald McCuaig (Australia); George Oppen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kathleen Jessie Raine; Theodore Roethke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Wright (US)
Deaths
Julia A. Carney; Ernest Fenollosa; George Cabot Lodge; Louise Chandler Moulton (US); Alexander L. Posey; James Ryder Randall; Edmund Clarence Stedman
Poems about poems
 parody: Owen Seaman's "'The Guineas': Or, How they brought the Good News from Newmarket to Girton" about Robert Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" (1842) 
 imitation: Richard Watson Gilder's "Shelley's 'Ozymandias'" (Poems 1908) about Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" (1818)

1909

Andrew Cecil Bradley's Oxford Lectures on Poetry
Founding of the Poetry Recital Society (now the Poetry Society)
 Thomas Hardy's Time's Laughingstocks
 George Meredith's Last Poems
 Ezra Pound's Personae
 Robert Service's Ballads of a Cheechako
 John Millington Synge's Poems and Translations
 John Davidson's Fleet Street and other Poems
Robert Service's Ballads of a Cheechako
Births
Helen Adam (US); James Agee (US); Mary Barnard (US); Charles Brasch (New Zealand); Robert Garioch (Scotland); John Glassco (Canada); A.M. Klein (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Dorothy Livesay (Canada); Johnny Mercer (US); Elder Olson (US); Elizabeth Riddell (Australia); Edwin Rolfe (US); Stephen Spender (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bukka White (US)
Deaths
John Davidson, by suicide; Romesh Chunder Dutt (India); George Essex Evans (Australia); Richard Watson Gilder; William Reed Huntington; Sarah Orne Jewett; George Cabot Lodge; George Meredith; Stephen Spender (Feb. 28); Algernon Charles Swinburne, of pneumonia; John Millington Synge;John Banister Tabb (US); Albert Midlane; W. T. Goodge (Australia); Sophie Jewett (US)
Floruit
Edith L. M. King (South Africa)

1910

GEORGE V (-1936)
 John Masefield's Ballads and Poems
 W. B. YeatsPoems: Second Series
John A. Lomax edits Cowboy Songs and other Frontier Ballads
 Thomas Hardy receives the Order of Merit
Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Town Down the River
"Memphis Blues" composed
Births
George Faludy (Canada); Robert Fitzgerald (US); Miguel Hernández (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Frank Loesser (US); Norman Alexander MacCaig (Scotland); Rosalie Moore (US);Charles Olson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); R. D. Murphy (Australia); Winfield Townley Scott (US)
Deaths
Augusta Cooper Bristol; Gilbert E. Brooke (Singapore); James Ferguson (ca.); James Lister Cuthbertson; Julia Ward Howe (US); William Vaughn Moody (US); Arthur Joseph Munby; Thomas E. Spencer (Australia); Mark Twain, from angina pectoris; Anna Letitia Waring; Anna White (US)
Touchstone poems
Rudyard Kipling's "If--" (Rewards and Fairies 1910) by Gavin Ewart's "'If'" (1991)

1911

Britain establishes six copyright libraries (to which copies of all books published in the country must be sent): Bodleian Library (Oxford); British Library (London); National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh); National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Trinity College (Dublin); and University Library (Cambridge)
 Rupert Brooke's Poems
 Ezra Pound's Canzoni
A. E. Housman becomes Chair of Latin, Trinity College, Cambridge
Awards
 James Whitcomb Riley wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Births
Ben Belitt (US); Elizabeth Bishop (US); J. V. Cunningham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Allen Curnow (New Zealand); Rose Drachler (US); Faiz Ahmed Faiz (India; Academy of American Poets Web site); Robert W. V. Gittings; Paul Goodman (US); William Hart-Smith (Australia); Robert Johnson (US); Sorley Maclean, aka Somhairle Macgill-Eain (Gailic); Josephine Miles (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Czeslaw Milosz (Lithuania; Academy of American Poets Web site); Alastair Morrison ('Afferbeck Lauder'; Australia); Ian Mudie (Australia); Kenneth Patchen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mervyn Laurence Peake; Hyam Plutzik (US); Anne Porter (US); Hal Porter (Australia); Vivian Lancaster Virtue (Nov. 13; Jamaica); Tennessee Williams (US)
Deaths
Elizabeth Akers Allen; James A. BlandSir Alfred Comyn Lyall (India); W. S. Gilbert; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (US); Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: E. V. Knox's "Upon Julia's Clothes" (The Brazen Lyre 1911) about Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes"

1912

THE TITANIC SANK ON APRIL 14 ON HER MAIDEN VOYAGE TO NEW YORK
 Pauline Johnson's Flint and Feather
Sir Edward Marsh's anthology Georgian Poetry 1911-12
 H. E. Monro edits The Poetry Review, journal of the Poetry Recital Society
Harriet Munroe founds Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in Chicago
 Ezra Pound's Ripostes
 Robert Service's Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
W. H. Alexander and William Lawson edit Representative Poetry, published by the University of Toronto Press in its first year, for English courses at the University of Toronto and selling for one dollar
Claude McKay's Songs of Jamaica
Births
Kenneth Allott; John Cage (US); Clement Byrne Christesen (Australia); Lawrence George Durrell; William Everson (US); Roy Fuller; John Garrigue (US); Denis Glover (New Zealand); Woody Guthrie (US); Christopher Vernon Hassall; Lightnin' Hopkins (US); Irving Layton (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Donald McDonald (New Zealand); Charles Henry Madge; Frank Prince (South Africa); Anne Ridler; Roland Robinson (Australia); May Sarton
Deaths
Joseph Furphy ('Tom Collins') (Australia); Andrew Lang (Scotland); Caroline Lindsay; Margaret E. Sangster
Floruit
Francis Ernley Walrond (South Africa)

1913

Richard Aldington and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) marry
 Robert Bridges made British Poet Laureate
 Robert Frost's A Boy's Will
 D. H. Lawrence's Love Poems
 Vachel Lindsay's General Booth Enters Heaven and Other Poems
 Harold Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London
 Rabindranath Tagore receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
William Carlos Williams' The Tempers
Births
Virginia Hamilton Adair (US); George Barker (US); John Blight (Australia); Aimée Césaire (Martinique; Academy of American Poets Web site); Charles Henri Ford (US); Robert Hayden (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Flexmore Hudson (Australia); Reginald Charles (Rex) Ingamells (Australia); Anne Marriott (Canada); Kenneth Mackenzie (Australia); John Frederick Nims (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Muriel Rukeyser (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Schubert (US); Delmore Schwartz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Karl Shapiro(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Douglas Stewart (Australia); May Swenson (US); R. S. Thomas (Wales)
Deaths
Alfred Austin; Lillie Devereux Blake (US); Edith Emma Cooper; Pauline Johnson, aka Tekahionwake(Canada); George Johnston (Canada); Joaquin Miller

1914

WAR WORLD I BEGINS (JULY-SEPT.)
 Robert Frost's North of Boston
 Thomas Hardy's Satires of Circumstance
 Des Imagistes: An Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound
 Joyce Kilmer's Trees and Other Poems, including "Trees"
 Carl Sandburg publishes "Chicago" in the magazine Poetry
 W. B. YeatsResponsibilities
 Vachel Lindsay's The Congo and other Poems
Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons
W. C. Handy composes "St. Louis Blues"
Births
John Berryman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Clifford Dyment (Wales); David Ignatow(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Randall Jarrell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Weldon Kees (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laurie Lee; Douglas Lepan (Canada);Octavio Paz (Mexico); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Henry Reed; Charles Hubert Sisson; Dylan ThomasWilliam Stafford; John Couper (Australia); Arthur J. Seymour (Guyana); M. K. Joseph (New Zealand)
Deaths
Isodore Gordon Ascher; Ambrose Bierce (?); Katharine Harris Bradley; Madison Cawein; Adelaide Crapsey, of tuberculosis; Henrietta Anne Huxley
Touchstone poems
Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" by Ogden Nash's "Song of the Open Road" (1951) and David Hoover's "Trees" (2004) 

1915

Richard Aldington's Images 1910-1915
 Rupert Brooke's 1914 & Other Poems
 Adelaide Crapsey's Verse, and her invention of the quintain, a five-line form
 T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" published in Poetry (Chicago)
 Thomas Hardy publishes "The Convergence of the Twain," on the sinking of the Titanic
 Edgar Lee MastersSpoon River Anthology
 Ezra Pound's Cathay
Edith Sitwell's The Mother and Other Poems
Alfred Kreymborg edits the first issue of Others: A Magazine of New Verse
A.S. Bourinot's Laurentian Lyrics
Births
Mona Brand (Australia); (Rupert) John Cornford; R. A. D. Ford (Canada); Isabella Stewart Gardner (US); Alun Lewis (Wales); Sydney Goodsir Smith (Scotland); Ruth Stone (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Judith Wright (Australia); Patrick Anderson (Canada); David Campbell (Australia); J. S. Manifold (Australia); David Martin (Australia); Phyllis Allfrey (Oct. 24; Dominica); Eric Roach (Tobago)
Dorothy Auchterlonie (Australia); Francis Berry (March 23; UK); Judith Wright (Australia)
Deaths
Rupert Brooke, by blood poisoning; Helen Burrell D'Apery (US); Annie Fields (US); James Elroy Flecker, of tuberculosis; Julian Grenfell, killed at Ypres; Joe Hill (US); Michael McTurk (Guyana); Stuart Merrill; Charles Hamilton Sorley, killed in WW1 in France
Poems about poems
 parody: Ezra Pound's "Ancient Music" about "Cuckoo Song" (1240) 

1916

 Hilda Doolittle's Sea Garden ("H.D.")
 Robert Frost's Mountain Interval, including "Out, Out--"
 D. H. Lawrence's Amores
 Ezra Pound's Lustra
 Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems
 Robert Service's Rhymes of a Red Cross Man
 Charles Hamilton Sorley's Marlborough and Other Poems
 Edgar Guest's A Heap o' Livin', including "Home"
Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Man against the Sky
Births
George Campbell (Panama); Ronald M. Berndt (Australia); John Ciardi (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gavin Buchanan Ewart; David Gascoyne; Thomas McGrath (US); Eve Merriam(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Colin Newsome (Australia); P.K. Page (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Harold Stewart (Australia); Peter Robert Edwin Viereck (Aug. 5; US)
Deaths
William Noel Hodgson; H. H. Munro ("Saki"); Henrietta Cordelia Ray (US); James Whitcomb Riley;Alan Seeger (US), in WW1 in France; Arabella Eugenia SmithJohn Todhunter; John Townsend Trowbridge (US);

1917

UNITED STATES ENTERS WORLD WAR I
Sarah Cleghorn's Portraits and Protest
 T. S. Eliot's Prufrock and Other Observations
 Thomas Hardy's Moments of Vision
 D. H. Lawrence's Look! We have Come Through!
 Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence and Other Poems
 Poetry (Chicago) publishes Ezra Pound's first three cantos
Siegfried Sassoon's The Old Huntsman
 Edward Thomas's Poems
 W. B. YeatsThe Wild Swans at Coole
Vachel Lindsay's The Chinese Nightingale
William Carlos Williams' Al Que Quiere!
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn's Portraits and Protests, including "The Golf Links Lie so Near the Mill"
Births
Gwendolyn Brooks (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Nancy Cato (Australia); Charles Causley; Fred Cogswell (Canada); Robert Conquest; Ruth Gilbert (New Zealand); Ruth Herschberger(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wilbur G. Howcroft (Australia); Robert Lowell; James McAuley (Australia); Bertram Warr (Canada)
Deaths
Henry Cuse; Samuel Greenberg (US); William Hamilton (South Africa), died in Flanders; Thomas Ernest Hulme, killed in WW1; Francis Ledwidge, killed at Flanders in WW1; Dr. John McCrae; John James Platt; Edward Thomas, killed in WW1 at Arras

1918

 Rupert Brooke's Collected Poems
 Gerard Manley HopkinsPoems, edited by Robert Bridges
James Joyce's Exiles
 D. H. Lawrence's New Poems
 Wilfred Owen composes "Dulce et Decorum Est"
Siegfried Sassoon's Counter-Attack
 Edward ThomasLast Poems
Arthur David Waley's A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems
 W. B. YeatsPer Amica Silentia Lunae
Wilson MacDonald's Song of the Prairie
Awards
 Sara Teasdale's Love Songs (1917) wins a special Pulitzer prize
Births
Margaret Avison (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Martin Bell; Louis Dudek (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Elder (New Zealand); W. S. Fairbridge (Australia); William Sydney Graham (Scotland); John Heath-Stubbs; James Kirkup; Al Purdy (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); William Jay Smith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Muriel Spark (Scotland); Amy Witting (Australia)
Deaths
Henry Adams; Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm-Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) (Academy of American Poets Web site; Italy); Jane Barlow; Horace Bray (Canada); Rose Elizabeth Cleveland (US); William John Courthorpe; Mary Hannay Foott (Australia); Lena Guilbert Ford; Alfred Scott Gatty; Joyce Kilmer, at the second battle of the Marne; John McCrae (Canada); Wilfred Owen, killed at the Sambre canal; Isaac Rosenberg, killed in action
Touchstone poems
Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring & Fall" by Martin Bell's "It is the Blight Man was Born for" (1988) and David Ray's "The Ashes" (1999)
Poems about poems
 major influence: Carl Sandburg's "Manitoba Childe Roland" about Robert Browning's "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" (1855)

1919

TREATY OF VERSAILLES ENDS WORLD WAR I (JUNE 28)
 T. S. Eliot's Poems
 Thomas Hardy's Collected Poems
Lieut.-Col. John McCrae's In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, posthumously published
 Ezra Pound's Quia Pauper Amavi
Sigfried Sassoon's War Poems
 D. H. Lawrence's Bay: A Book of Poems
Methodist Book Room in Toronto (1829-) becomes the Ryerson Press
Awards
 Carl Sandburg's Cornhuskers (1918), awarded a special Pulitzer prize
Margaret Widdemer's Old Road to Paradise (1918) wins a special Pulitzer prize
Births
Louise Simone Bennett, aka Louise Bennett-Coverley, aka "Miss Lou" (Jamaica); Ruth Dallas (Ruth Mumford) (Sept. 29; New Zealand); Madeline DeFrees (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Robert Duncan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lil Green (US); William Meredith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jiri Orten (Czechoslovakia); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); May Swenson(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Barbara Ferland (Jamaica); Mary Stanley (New Zealand); Cole Turnley (Australia)
Rosamund Stanhope (March 4; UK)
Deaths
Benjamin Paul Blood; Wilfred Campbell (Canada); Sarah Morgan PiattElla Wheeler Wilcox
Moderns 1920-1960

1920

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE ADOPTED IN THE UNITED STATES
 T. S. Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism and Poems
 Wilfred Owen's Poems, posthumously published
 Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
 Carl Sandburg's Smoke and Steel
 W. B. YeatsMichael Robartes and the Dancer
Vachel Lindsay's The Golden Whales of California
William Carlos Williams' Kora in Hell
Frank Oliver Call's Acanthus and Wild Grape
Births
Charles Bukowski (Germany; Aug. 16; Academy of American Poets Web site); Paul Celan (Romania; Academy of American Poets Web site); Amy Clampitt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alex Comfort; Rosemary Dobson (Australia); Keith Castellain Douglas; Dennis Joseph Enright; Max Fatchen (Australia); John J. M. Figueroa (Aug. 4; Jamaica); Barbara Guest (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gwen Harwood (Australia); Knolly La Fortune (Jan 2; Trinidad); Edwin Morgan (Scotland); Howard Nemerov (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Oodgeroo Noonuccal ('Kath Walker'; Australia); Alexander Scott (Scotland); Colin Thiele (Australia)
Deaths
Charles Edward Carryl (US); Louise Imogen Guiney; William Dean Howells; Dollie Radford; John Reed (US)

1921

Mrs. Dawson-Scott founds PEN, an international Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists
 T. S. Eliot's describes "dissociation of sensibility" as a poetic splitting of emotion from reason
 D. H. Lawrence's Tortoises
 Marianne Moore's Poems
John Collings Squire's Collected Parodies
Hilda Doolittle's Hymen
Edna St. Vincent Millay's Second April
William Carlos Williams' Sour Grapes
Births
George Mackay Brown; Hayden Carruth (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James A. Emanuel (US), Chester Kallman (US); Marie Ponsot (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Raymond Souster (Canada); Mona Van DuynRichard Wilbur (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Max Harris (Australia); T. H. Jones (Australia); Nan McDonald (Australia); Wilson Harris (March 24; Guyana)
Deaths
Francis William BourdillonAustin DobsonErnest Myers; E. W. Hornung (Australia); Harriet Prescott Spofford (US); Lillian H. Shuey (US)

1922

 T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
 Thomas Hardy's Late Lyrics and Earlier
James Weldon Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry
 Claude McKay's Harlem Shadows
 Marjorie Pickthall's The Wood Carver's Wife, including "Marching Men"
 Carl Sandburg's Slabs of the Sunburnt West
Sir William Walton's composition, Façade, a musical setting of 21 poems by Edith Sitwell
 W. B. YeatsLater Poems
Alberta Hunter writes and records "Downhearted Blues"
Awards
 Edwin Arlington Robinson's Collected Poems (1921) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Kingsley Amis (April 16); Elizabeth Brewster (Canada); John Bruce (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Donald Davie (US); Douglas Grant Lochhead (Canada); Michael Arthur Lemière Hendriks (Jamaica); Jack Kerouac (US); Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes; Philip Larkin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Gillespie Magee Jr. (US)Jackson Mac Low (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eli Mandel (Canada); Vernon Scannell; Geoffrey Dutton (Australia); Aldwyn "Lord Kitchener" Roberts (April 18; Trinidad and Tobago); Basil McFarlane (Jamaica); Hone Tuwhare (New Zealand); Keith Sinclair (New Zealand); Kendrick Smithyman (New Zealand)
Deaths
John Kendrick Bangs; Wilfred Scawen Blunt; Henry Lawson (Australia); Alice Meynell, née Thompson; Josephine Peabody; Marjorie PickthallWalter Alexander RaleighHarry Dacre; Thomas Nelson Page (US)
Touchstone poems
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by Wendy Cope's "Waste Land Limericks" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) 

1923

 E. E. CummingsTulips and Chimneys
Walter De La Mare's anthology Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of all Ages
 D. H. Lawrence's Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, including "Snake"
 John Masefield's Collected Poems
 Wallace Steven's Harmonium, including "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
Jean Toomer's Cane
 W. B. YeatsThe Cat and the Moon, including "Leda and the Swan"
Louise Bogan's Body of Death 
Robert Frost's New Hampshire
Bessie Smith records "Down Hearted Blues" (Feb. 16)
William Carlos Williams' Spring and All
Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Harp-weaver
Marianne Moore's Marriage
E.J. Pratt's Newfoundland Verse
Tom MacInnes's Roundabout Rhymes
Awards
 Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Ballad of the Harp-weaverA Few Figs (2nd edn.), and Eight Sonnets, all published in 1922, awarded the Pulitzer Prize this year
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to W. B. Yeats
Births
Dannie Abse; Milton Acorn (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alexander Craig (Australia); Ivor Cutler (UK); James Dickey (Feb. 2; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alan Dugan(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gloria Escoffery (Dec. 22; Jamaica); Mari Evans(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Cola Franzen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anthony Hecht (US); Dorothy Hewett (Australia); Daniel Hoffman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Hugo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Nancy Keesing (Australia);Denise LevertovJohn Logan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eric Rolls (Australia); Bruce St. John (Barbados); James Schuyler (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bruce Simpson ('Lancewood'; Australia); Louis Simpson (March 27; Jamaica; Academy of American Poets Web site); Wislawa Szymborska (Poland; Academy of American Poets Web site)
Deaths
Maurice Henry Hewlett; Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand), of tuberculosis; Francis Coutts; James Anderson (Canada); John Wilson Bengough; Alice Cunningham Fletcher (US)
Touchstone poems
William Carlos Williams's "This is just to say" by Kenneth Koch's "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" (1962)

1924

 John Masefield's Sard Harker
A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, for children
 Marianne Moore's Observations
H.D.'s Heliodora and other Poems
As a result of publishing a number of articles critical of the Spanish government, Miguel de Unamuno was exiled without his family in 1924 to the island of Fuerteventura in the Canaries. He left Fuerteventura for Paris on a private boat, and in 1924 he published De Fuerteventura a París: Diario íntimo de confinamiento y destierro vertido en sonetos (From Fuerteventura to Paris: Intimate Diary of Confinement and Exile Poured Out in Sonnets) 
Hilda Doolittle's Heliodora
Robinson Jeffers' Tamar
"Sweet Georgia Brown" by Kenneth Casay
Awards
 Robert Frost's New Hampshire (1923) awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Vita Sackville-West's The Land, winner of the Hawthornden Prize
Births
Claribel Alegría (Nicaragua); Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Yehuda Amichai (Germany); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elizabeth Bartlett; Patricia Beer; Edgar Bowers (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dennis Brutus (South Africa); Jane Cooper (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lauris Edmond (New Zealand); Nissim Ezekiel (India); David Ferry (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edward Field (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Janet Frame (New Zealand); Michael Hamburger; John Haines (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Zbigniew Herbert (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lisel Mueller (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Rowbotham (Australia); James Berry (Jamaica); Bub Bridger (New Zealand); Louis Johnson (New Zealand)
Poems about poems
 parody: Franklin Pierce Adams's "A Psalm of Freudian Life" about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" (1838)

1925

 T. S. Eliot's Poems 1909-25, including "The Hollow Men"
 Thomas Hardy's Human Shows
 Ezra Pound's A Draft of XVI Cantos
 W. B. YeatsA Vision
 E. E. Cummings& and XLI Poems
Countee Cullen's Color
Hilda Doolittle's Collected Poems
E.J.Pratt's The Witches' Brew
Awards
 Edwin Arlington Robinson's The Man Who Died Twice (1924), awarded the Pulitzer Prize
 E. E. Cummings receives the Dial Award
Births
Philip Booth (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Theodore Enslim (US); Ian Hamilton Finlay (Scotland); Donald Justice (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bob Kaufman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carolyn Kizer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth KochMaxine Kumin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gerald Stern (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Wain (March 14); Francis Webb (Australia); Jack Gilbert(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Vincent Buckley (Australia); Laurence Collinson (Australia); Jill Hellyer (Australia); J. R. Rowland (Australia); Jan Rynveld Carew (Guyana); Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (New Zealand)
Deaths
Arthur Christopher Benson; Alfred Denis Godley; Amy Lowell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US), of stroke; George Washington Cable; Edith M. Thomas (US)

1926

 Langston HughesThe Weary Blues, including "The Weary Blues"
Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
Archibald MacLeish's Streets in the Moon, including "The End of the World"
 Dorothy Parker's Enough Rope
 Ezra Pound's Personae
An artists' working community, Yaddo opens in Saratoga Springs, New York, with poets such as Louise Bogan
William Carlos Williams receives the Dial Award
Hart Crane's White Buildings
T.G. Roberts' The Lost Shipmate
E.J. Pratt's Titans
Awards
Amy Lowell's What's O'Clock (1925) wins the Pulitzer Prize
C. P. Cavafy receives the Order of the Phoenix from the Greek dictator Pangalos
Births
A. R. Ammons (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James K. Baxter (New Zealand); Robert Bly (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Creeley (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marya Fiamengo (Canada); Allen Ginsberg (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Phyllis Gotlieb (Canada); Elizabeth Jennings; Christopher Logue (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Merrill (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Frank O'Hara (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Reaney (Canada); W. D. Snodgrass (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Francis Edward Sparshott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Wagoner(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Philip Appleman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Noel Macainsh (Australia); Peter Cape (New Zealand)
Deaths
Ada Cambridge; Charles Montagu Doughty; Perceval Gibbon (South Africa); Rose Hawthorne Lathrop ("Mother Alphonsa"; US); Eva Selena Gore-Booth; Rainer Maria Rilke (Dec. 29, of leukemia; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Francis Joseph Sherman (Canada); George Sterling (US)
Touchstone poems
W. B. Yeats's "Among School Children" by Richard Howard's "An Old Dancer" (1984)

1927

 Gilbert Keith Chesterton's Collected Poems
 T. S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi"; and he takes out British citizenship
James Weldon Johnson's God's Promises
James Joyce's Pomes Penyeach
J. L. Lowes' The Road to Xanadu, a book on the composition of S. T. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"
 Don Marquisarchie and mehitabel, a collection of vers libre poems typed by a former-poet-turned-cockroach by jumping on the keys of a typewriter
A. A. Milne's Now We are Six
 W. B. YeatsOctober Blast, including "Among School Children"
Carl Sandburg edits The American Song Bag
Ezra Pound receives the Dial Award
Robinson Jeffers' The Women at Point Sur
Langston Hughes' Fine Clothes to the Jew
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Tristram
Awards
Leonora Speyer's Fiddler's Farewell (1926) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
John Ashbery (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Martin Wylde Carter (June 7; Guyana); Henry Coulette (US); David Diop (France; Academy of American Poets Web site); Larry Eigner (US); Wilma Hedley (Australia); Evan Jones (Jamaica); Ellsworth McGranaham 'Shake' Keane (May 30; St. Vincent); Galway Kinnell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); W. S. Merwin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Murphy (Ireland); Grace Perry (Australia); Alan Riddell (Australia); Charles Tomlinson; Phyllis Webb (Canada); Daniel Williams (US; St. Vincent); James Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Emma Marie Caillard; Florence Earle Coates (US); Lesbia Harford (Australia); Agnes Maule Machar ("Fidelis"; Canada); Charles Mair (Canada); John Bernard O'Hara (Australia); Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (US)

1928

 T. S. Eliot's For Lancelot Andrewes and "A Song for Simeon"
 Thomas Hardy's Winter Words
 Carl Sandburg's Good Morning America
Allen Tate's Mr. Pope and Other Poems, including "Ode to the Confederate Dead"
 W. B. YeatsThe Tower
W. H. Auden's Poems
Robert Frost's West-running Brook
Ezra Pound's A Draft of Cantos XVII to XXVII
Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Buck in the Snow
Dorothy Livesay's Green Pitcher
Awards
 Edwin Arlington Robinson's Tristram (1927) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Maya Angelou, aka Marguerite Annie Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bruce Beaver (Australia); Carol Bergé (US); R. F. Brissenden (Australia); Don Coles (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Peter Davison (US); Irving Feldman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Donald Hall (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Thomas Kinsella (Ireland); Philip Levine(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anne Sexton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alan Sillitoe; Iain Crichton Smith (Scotland); James Wright (US); Andrew Salkey (Jan. 30; Panama); Col Wilson ('Blue the Shearer') (Australia)
Deaths
Edmund Gosse; Thomas Hardy, of heart failure; Charlotte Mary Mew, by suicide; David McKee Wright (New Zealand); Elinor Morton Hoyt Wylie; Grace Blackburn (Canada); Ina Coolbrith (US) 
Touchstone poems
W. B. Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" by Mona Van Duyn's "Leda" (1970)
Poems about poems
 major influence: Genevieve Taggard composes "Remembering Vaughan in New England" (Collected Poems, 1938 1938; citation), about Henry Vaughan's "The World" (1650) 

1929

NEW YORK STOCK MARKET CRASH (OCT. 29) DEPRESSES WESTERN ECONOMIES FOR TEN YEARS
 Robert BridgesThe Testament of Beauty
Cecil Day-Lewis' Transitional Poem
 D. H. Lawrence's Pansies, minus fourteen poems omitted for fear of government prosecution
I. A. Richards' Practical Criticism: A Study in Literary Judgement
 W. B. YeatsThe Winding Stair
 Elinor Wylie's Angels and Earthly Creatures
Louise Bogan's Dark Summer
Countee Cullen's The Black Christ
Awards
Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body (1928) wins the Pulitzer Prize
 Edwin Arlington Robinson wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Stephen Vincent Benét wins the Pulitzer Prize for his long narrative poem John Brown's Body
Births
Henry Beissel (Canada); Anne Ellen Beresford; Edward Dorn (US); Ursula A. Fanthorpe; Thom Gunn(UK; Academy of American Poets Web site); John Hollander (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Howard (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); D.G. Jones (Canada); X. J. Kennedy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Patrick Montague; Ned O'Gorman(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Porter (Australia); Adrienne Rich (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Dale Scott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); R. A. Simpson (Australia; Feb. 1)
Deaths
Katharine Lee BatesBliss Carman (Canada); Harry Crosby; Blind Lemon Jefferson (US); Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy; Frederick Edward Weatherly

1930

W. H. Auden's Poems
Samuel Beckett's Whoroscope
Hart Crane's The Bridge
 T. S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday" and "Marina"
William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book of criticism
 D. H. Lawrence's Nettles
 Ezra Pound's A Draft for XXX Cantos
 John Masefield succeeds Robert Bridges as British Poet Laureate
Robert Frost's Collected Poems
Gertrude Stein's Dix Portraits
Awards
Conrad Aitken's Selected Poems (1929) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Langston Hughes' first novel Not Without Laughter wins the Harmon gold medal for literature
Births
Chinua Achebe (Nigeria); Adonis (Syria); (Academy of American Poets; US); (Edward) Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gregory N. Corso (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Roy Fisher; Ted Hughes (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mazisi Kunene (South Africa); Jon Silkin; Gary Snyder (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anthony Thwaite; Derek Walcott (West Indies); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Tada Chimako (Japan); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tony Connor (UK); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bruce Dawe (Australia)
Deaths
Robert Bridges (April 21); D. H. Lawrence (March 2), of tuberculosis; Arthur Conan Doyle; Anne Glenny Wilson née Adams (New Zealand); Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (US)
Poems about poems
 major influence: T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" (1930) about William Shakespeare's "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" (1609)

1931

Sir John Betjeman's Mount Zion
Edmund Blunden publishes Wilfred Owen's poems
 Edna St. Vincent Millay's Fatal Interview
Hugh MacDiarmid's First Hymn to Lenin
Hilda Doolittle's Red Roses for Bronze
Langston Hughes' Dear Lovely Death and The Negro Mother
Ethelwyn Wetherald's Lyrics and Sonnets
Awards
 Robert Frost's Collected Poems (1930) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
P'Bitek (East Africa); Alan Charles Brownjohn; Sonja Dunn (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ruth Fainlight; Etheridge Knight (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Levi; Jay Macpherson(Canada); Adrienne Rich (US); Peter Chad Tigar Tomas Tranströmer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Judith Viorst (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Higham (Australia); Evan Jones (Australia); Philip Martin (Australia)
Deaths
Katharine Hinkson, aka Katharine Tynan (Ireland); Vachel Lindsay, by suicide (drinking a bottle of Lysol); Armistead Churchill Gordon (US); Edward Dyson (Australia)

1932

W. H. Auden's The Orators
Sterling Brown's Southern Road
 T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes and Selected Essays
 Thomas Hardy's Collected Poems
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley's The Captive Shrew and other Poems of a Biologist
F. R. Leavis' New Bearings in English Poetry attacks late Victorian and Georgian poetry and praises Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and other modernists
 W. B. YeatsWords for Music Perhaps
Hugh MacDiarmid's Scots Unbound and Other Poems
 Edna St. Vincent Millay reads her poems on a national radio network
Langston Hughes' The Dream Keeper and Scottsboro Limited
E.J. Pratt's Many Moods and The Fable of the Goats
Awards
George Dillon's The Flowering Stone (1931) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Patrick Cullinan (South Africa); Geoffrey Hill (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jenny Joseph; Douglas Livingstone (South Africa); George Mann MacBeth (Jan. 19); Michael McClure (US); Adrian Mitchell; Christopher Okigbo (Nigeria); Linda Pastan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sylvia Plath (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter William Redgrove; John Updike (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Linda M. Stitt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Antin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William A. Bauer; Iain Lonie (New Zealand); C. K. Stead (New Zealand); Charlee Marshall (Australia)
Deaths
Gamaliel Bradford (US); Christopher John Brennan (Australia); Hubert N. W. Church; Edmund Vance Cooke (US); Hart Crane (US), by suicide; Academy of American Poets Web site; US; Alice Katherine Fallows (US); Kenneth Grahame; Thomas G. Jones, Jr.; Raymond Knister, by drowning (Canada); J. A. R. Mackellar (Australia); Harold Edward Monro; Clinton Scollard
Poems about poems
 parody: Gilbert Keith Chesterton's "Dolores Replies to Swinburne" in "Answers to the Poets" (Collected Poems 1932) about Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Dolores" (1866)
 parody: Gilbert Keith Chesterton's "The Skylark Replies to Wordsworth" about William Wordsworth's "To a Skylark"
 major influence: David Herbert Lawrence composed "Dark Satanic Mills" (Last Poems 1932) about William Blake's "And did those feet in ancient time" (1808)

1933

W. H. Auden's The Dance of Death
Cecil Day-Lewis' The Magnetic Mountain
 T. S. Eliot's The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Gregory Grigson founds New Verse (1933-39)
 A. E. Housman's Leslie Stephen Lecture at Cambridge, "The Name and Nature of Poetry"
 D. H. Lawrence's Last Poems
Stephen Spender's Poems
 W. B. YeatsCollected Poems
Hart Crane's Collected Poems
Ezra Pound's A Draft of XXX Cantos
Leo Kennedy's The Shrouding
Awards
Archibald MacLeish's Conquistador (1932) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Gerald William Barrax (US); Maureen Duffy; Kevin Ireland (New Zealand); John Edward Mackenzie Lucie-Smith (Feb. 27; Jamaica); Alden Nowlan (Canada); Joe Rosenblatt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Anne Stevenson; Robert Sward (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Croyston (Australia); Vivian Smith (Australia)
Deaths
John Le Gay Brereton (Australia); C. P. Cavafy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Jay Chapman; Thomas MacDermot ('Tom Redcam'; Jamaica); Lilla Cabot Perry (US); Sara Teasdale (US);Henry Van Dyke
Poems about poems
 parody: Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman's "How I Brought the Good News from Aix to Ghent, or Vice Versa" (Horse Nonsense 1933) about Robert Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" (1842) 
 major influence: W. H. Auden's "Paysage Moralisé" (Poems 1933; imitation), about Sir Philip Sidney's "You Gote-heard Gods" (1590)

1934

ADOLF HITLER BECOMES DICTATOR IN GERMANY
 The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a film directed by Sidney Franklin, with Norma Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett and Fredric March as Robert Browning; redone in 1957, less successfully
 T. S. Eliot's The Rock
 Dylan ThomasEighteen Poems, including "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"
 William Carlos WilliamsCollected Poems
 W. B. YeatsThe King of the Great Clock Tower
Phyllis McGinley's On the Contrary
 Ezra Pound's Eleven New Cantos: XXXI-XLI and Homage to Sextus Propertius
Awards
Robert Hillyer's Collected Verse (1933) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Laurence Whistler wins the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Births
Fleur Adock (New Zealand); Jack Agüeros (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Amiri Baraka (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ted Berrigan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wendell Berry (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Bland (New Zealand); Leonard Cohen (Canada); Kamala Das (India); Diane Di Prima (US); Henry Dumas (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anselm Hollo (Finland; Academy of American Poets Web site); Abdur-Rahman Slade Hopkinson (Guyana); Barry Humphries (Australia); Everett Le Roi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka; M. Travis Lane (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Hettie Jones (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Audre Lorde; David Malouf (Australia); Walt McDonald (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); N. Scott Momaday (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sonia Sanchez(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wole Soyinka (Nigeria); Mark Strand; Ann Tregenza (Australia); Chris Wallace-Crabbe (Australia)
Deaths
Mary Hunter Austin (US); Jean Blewett (Canada); John Henry Gray; Charlie Patten (US); Dion Titherage

1935

 T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral
William Empson's Some Versions of Pastoral
George Gershwin's musical Porgy and Bess
Louis MacNeice's Poems
 John Masefield's Box of Delights
 Wallace StevensIdeas of Order
 W. B. YeatsA Full Moon in March
W. H. Auden weds Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann, by proxy to free her from Nazi Germany
E.J. Pratt's The Titanic
Francis Sherman's Complete Poems
Awards
Audrey Wurdemann's Bright Ambush (1934) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Births
Kofi Awoonor (Ghana); Michael Benedikt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); E. D. Blodgett (Canada); George Bowering (Canada); Richard Brautigan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Roque Dalton (El Salvador; Academy of American Poets Web site); Clayton Eshleman(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Slinger "The Mighty Sparrow" Francisco (July 9; Grenada); Rodney Hall (Australia); Rore Hapipi (Rowley Habib) (New Zealand); George Jonas (Canada); Robert Kelly (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Joy Kogawa (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);Pat Lowther (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Mary Oliver (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Thomas W. Shapcott (Australia); Carol Shields (Canada); David R. Slavitt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jon Stallworthy; Randolph Stow (Australia); Donald Michael Thomas; Ivan van Sertima (Jan. 26; Guyana); Charles Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jay Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Alice Dunbar-Nelson; Helena Mabel Forrest; Charlotte Perkins Gilman (US); Susan Frances Harrison("Seranus"; Canada); Fernando Pessoa, (Nov. 30), of cirrhosis of the liver (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); J. A. Philp (Australia); Lizette Woodworth Reese; Edwin Arlington Robinson; George William Russell, Æ; Sir William Watson 

1936

EDWARD VIII (-1936); GEORGE VI (-1952)
SPANISH CIVIL WAR (July 17 - )
W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!
 T. S. Eliot's Collected Poems 1909-35, including Burnet Norton
James Laughlin founds New Directions Press (New York), which published many modern poets for the first time
F. R. Leavis's Revaluation rejects Milton, Spenser, and Shelley and praises Donne, Pope, Hopkins, Eliot, and others
 Dorothy Parker's Not So Deep as a Well
Michael Roberts edits The Faber Book of Modern Verse, which praises poets such as W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot and ignores poets like Robert Frost and Thomas Hardy
 Dylan ThomasTwenty-Five Poems, including "And Death Shall have No Dominion"
 W. B. Yeats edits The Oxford Book of Modern Verse
Wallace Stevens' Owl's Clover
A. E. Housman's More Poems
Robert Frost's A Further Range
Marianne Moore's The Pangolin
Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes
Awards
W. H. Auden wins the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Robert Coffin's Strange Holiness (1935) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Eugene O'Neill receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
Births
George Amabile (Canada); Edward Alston Cecil Baugh (Jan. 10; Jamaica); George Bowering (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Pepper Clark (Nigeria); Lucille Clifton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Robert ColomboChristopher Dafoe (Canada); Jayne Cortez (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sandra M. Gilbert (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edith Grossman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elisabeth Harvor (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); June Jordan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Margaret Mahy (New Zealand);Clarence Major (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marge Piercy (US); Judith Rodriguez (Australia); Graeme Kinross Smith (Australia); Norman Talbot (Australia); C. K. Williams (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Christopher Wiseman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Young (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Arthur H. Adams (New Zealand); Gilbert Keith ChestertonGovinda Kristna Chettur(Rupert) John CornfordMiguel de Unamuno (Academy of American Poets Web site, US); Gerald Gould; A. E. Housman, of a heart attack; Rudyard Kipling, (Jan. 18; UK); Federico García Lorca (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Harriet Monroe (US), of a cerebral haemorrhage

1937

Sir John Betjeman's Continual Dew, including "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel"
Iowa Writers' Workshop founded by Paul Engle at the University of Iowa
David Jones' In Parenthesis
 Isaac Rosenberg's Collected Works, posthumously published
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
The United States unofficially appoints Poet Laureates (as Poetry Consultants to the Library of Congress)
Wallace Stevens' The Man with the Blue Guitar
Ezra Pound's The Fifth Decade of Cantos
Phyllis McGinley's One More Manhattan
Thomas H. Johnson publishes Edward Taylor's poems for the first time
Louise Bogan's The Sleeping Fury
Awards
 Robert Frost's A Further Range (1936) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Edwin Markham wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
E.J. Pratt won the first Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Fable of the Goats
W. H. Auden receives the King's Medal for Poetry
Births
Marvin Bell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Meg Campbell (New Zealand); Howard Fergus (Montserrat); John Fuller (US); Don Gutteridge (Canada); Michael Harlow (New Zealand); Claire Harris (June 13; Trinidad); Tony Harrison (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Susan Howe(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marc Matthews (Guyana); Don Maynard (Australia); Mervyn Morris (Jamaica); Vincent O'Sullivan (New Zealand); Alicia OstrikerGlen Sorestad (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Diane WakoskiEleanor Wilner (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Julian Bell, in the Spanish Civil War; Anna Hempstead Branch (US); Christopher Caudwell; Ivor Gurney; H.P. Lovecraft (US); Don Marquis (US); Dorothy Frances McCrae (Australia); Bessie Smith(US); Edith Wharton (US); Constance Woodrow
Poems about poems
 parody: Louis Ginsberg's "Special Delivery Letter to Shelley" (The Everlasting Minute and Other Lyrics 1937) about Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" (1820)
 imitation: Edwin Muir's "The Enchanted Knight" (Journeys and Places 1937) about John Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (1820)

1938

Louis MacNeice's The Earth Compels
 Understanding Poetry, edited by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren (appearing thereafter in revised editions to 1976)
 W. B. YeatsNew Poems, including "Lapis Lazuli"
Ogden Nash's I'm a Stranger Here Myself
F. T. Prince's (Poems)
Langston Hughes' A New Song
Kenneth Leslie's By Stubborn Stars
Awards
Marya Zaturenska's Cold Morning Sky (1937) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Kenneth Leslie won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with By Stubborn Stars
Births
B. A. Breen (Australia); Leroy Clarke (Nov. 7; Trinidad); Robert Cockburn (Canada); Michael Harper(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tony Harrison; David Helwig (Canada); Frances Horovitz; Keroapetse Kgositsile (South Africa); Hugh Lauder (New Zealand); Deena Linett (US); Leslie Allan Murray (Australia; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Newlove (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ishmael Reed (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Simic(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); George Thaniel (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site) 
Deaths
Lascelles Abercrombie; C. J. Dennis (Australia); James Weldon Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Johnson (US); Jack JudgeOsip Mandelstam, Dec. 7 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jessie Mackay (New Zealand); Sir Henry John NewboltCésar Vallejo, April 15 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Touchstone poems
W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" by Irving Feldman's "Just Another Smack" (1983), Alicia Ostriker's "Holocaust" (1998), and George Szirtes's "A Greek Musée" (1988)

1939

AUSTRALIA, GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND NEW ZEALAND DECLARE WAR ON GERMANY (SEPT. 3)
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR ENDS IN VICTORY FOR GENERAL FRANCO
 T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
 Gunga Din, a film directed by George Stevens, based loosely on Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name
 Poetry London, a magazine founded by Dylan Thomas, its editor James Meary Tambimuttu, and others
 Dylan Thomas's The Map of Love
 Christopher Smart's Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam, posthumously edited by W. F. Stead (now titled Jubilate agno), including a celebration of Christopher's cat Jeffry
 W. B. YeatsLast Poems and Two Plays
Edna St. Vincent Millay's Huntsman, What Quarry?
Edward Taylor's God's Determinations (ca. 1682) first published
Anne Marriott's The Wind our Enemy
Awards
John Gould Fletcher's Selected Poems (1938) wins the Pulitzer Prize
 Robert Frost wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Arthur S. Bourinot won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Under the Sun
Births
Dick Allen (US); Paula Gunn Allen (US); Margaret Atwood (18 November; Canada); Frank Bidart(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); bill bissett (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Siv Cedering (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stephen Dunn (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Seamus Heaney (Ireland); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Michael Longley (Ireland); Patrick Lane (Canada) Dennis Lee (Academy of American Poets Web site; US; and Canadian Poetry Web site); José Emilio Pacheco (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Stanley Plumly (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Primus St. John (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Quincy Troupe (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Fred Wah (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Al Young (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Steele (Australia); Dennis Scott (Dec. 16; Jamaica); Wystan Curnow (New Zealand); Clive James (Australia)
Edward Archibald Markham (Oct. 1; Montserrat)
Deaths
Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson) (New Zealand); Edwin Ford Piper (US); Ma Rainey (US); Rose Hartwick Thorpe; William Butler Yeats, of heart failure
Poems about poems
 major influence: Edna St. Vincent Millay's "VI Over the Hollow Land" (Huntsman, What Quarry?1939) about John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" (1820)

1940

W. H. Auden's Another Time
Sir John Betjeman's Old Lights for New Chancels
 T. S. Eliot's East Coker, published in New English Weekly
 Dylan ThomasPortrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Yver Winters' Poems
Robert Hayden's Heart-Shape in the Dust
Ezra Pound's Cantos LII - LXXI
Phyllis McGinley's A Pocketful of Wry
Thomas McGrath's First Manifesto
Woody Guthrie composes "This Land is my Land"
A. M. Klein's Hath not a Jew
Awards
Michael Thwaites wins the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Mark Van Doren's Collected Poems (1939) wins the Pulitzer Prize
E.J.Pratt wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Brébeuf and His Brethren
Births
Douglas Barbour (Canada); Joseph BrodskyMartha Collins (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Delano Abdul Malik De Coteau (Grenada); Frank Davey (Canada); Fanny Howe (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Angela De Hoyos (US); Gary Hyland (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Michael Jackson (New Zealand); Geoffrey Lehmann (Australia); Hollis Urban Lester Liverpool, "The Mighty Chalkdust" (Trinidad and Tobago); Paul Mariani (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Rachel McAlpine (New Zealand); David W. McFadden (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Mitchell (New Zealand); Geoff Page (Australia); Robert Pinsky (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Craig Powell (Australia); Jack Prelutsky (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Andrew Taylor (Australia)
Deaths
Laurence Alma-Tadema; Alfred Cruickshank (ca.; Trinidad); William Henry Davies; Hamlin Garland; Marcus Garvey (June 10; Jamaica); Ella Higginson (US); Edwin Markham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Milicent W. Shinn (US); Ernest Lawrence ThayerAgnes Ethelwyn Wetherald(Canada); John Wheelwright (US); Humbert Wolfe

1941

JAPAN ATTACKS PEARL HARBOR (NOV. 27)
W. H. Auden's New Year Letters (or The Double Man)
 T. S. Eliot's The Dry Salvages, published in New English Weekly
On September 3, 19-year-old John Gillespie Magee, Jr., flew a high-altitude test flight in a Spitfire V and afterwards wrote "High Flight" about the experience
John Crowe Ransom's The New Criticism
Theodore Roethke's Open House
Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Sonnets
Marya Zaturenska's The Listening Landscape
Marianne Moore's What are Years
William Carlos Williams' The Broken Span
Awards
Leonard Bacon's Sunderland Capture (1940) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
 Anne Marriott won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Calling Adventurers
Births
Billy Collins (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine; Academy of American Poets Web site); Toi Derricotte (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stephen Dobyns (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eamon Grennan (Ireland); (Academy of American Poets Web site); Robert Hass (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lyn Hejinian(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Roger McDonald (Australia); Gwendolyn MacEwen;Derek Mahon (Ireland; Academy of American Poets Web site); Dave Margoshes (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Owen Marshall (New Zealand); Anthony McNeill (Jamaica); Simon J. Ortiz(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Rosenfield (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);Lloyd Schwartz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elizabeth Smither (New Zealand);Stephen Yenser (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan
Deaths
William Talbot Allison (Canada); Sherwood Anderson (US); Alfred T. Chandler ('Spinifex'; Australia); Andrew Barton ("Banjo") Paterson (Australia); Enid Derham (Australia); Frederick Robert Higgins; Aline Kilmer; James Joyce; John Gillespie Magee Jr. (US); John G. Neihardt (US); Jiri Orten (Aug. 30; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lola Ridge (US); Elizabeth Madox Roberts (US);Rabindranath Tagore (India) 

1942

 Earle Birney's David and Other Poems, including "David", for which he won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) 
Walter De la Mare's Collected Poems
 T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding, published in New English Weekly
Patrick Kavanagh's The Great Hunger
Alun Lewis' Raiders' Dawn, on a soldier's life in the World War II
J. V. Cunningham's The Helmsman
Wallace Steven's Notes toward a Supreme Fiction
John Barryman's Poems
Robert Frost's A Witness Tree
Langston Hughes' Shakespeare in Harlem
Awards
William Rose Benét's The Dust Which is God (1941) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Births
Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana); Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) Mark DeFoe (US); Douglas Eaglesham Dunn (Scotland); Jennifer Footman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Marilyn Hacker; David Henderson (US); Haki Madhubuti (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Matthews (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Pat Mora (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Arthur Nortje (South Africa); Sharon Olds (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Henry Taylor (US); Hugo Williams; Paul Keens-Douglas (Trinidad); Frederick Nathaniel "Toots" Hibbert (Jamaica); Judy Miles (ca.; Trinidad); Kevyn Arthur (Barbados); Pamela Mordecai (Jamaica); Michael Morrissey (New Zealand)
Deaths
Gertrude Bartlett; William Baylebridge (Australia); Minnie Hallowell Bowen (Aug 1; Canada); Emanuel Carnevali (US); George M. Cohan (US); Miguel Hernández (March 28) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Donald McDonald (New Zealand); Lucy Maud Montgomery; John Shaw Nielson (Australia); William Satchell (New Zealand); Furnley Maurice (Frank Wilmot) (Australia)

1943

ALLIED FORCES INVADE ITALY
Rodgers and Hammerstein's US musical Oklahoma
 Dylan Thomas's New Poems
T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets (collected and printed in US)
Edwin Muir's The Narrow Place
Yvor Winters' The Giant Weapon
A Grand Jury in the District of Columbia indicts Ezra Pound for treason in his radio broadcasts for fascist Italy
Archibald Lampman's At the Long Sault
A.J.M. Smith's News of the Phoenix
Awards
 Robert Frost's A Witness Tree (1942) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
A.J.M. Smith wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with News of the Phoenix
Sidney Keyes' The Iron Laurel wins the Hawthornden Prize
Births
Bert Almon (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alfred Corn (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Emanuel di Pasquale (Italy; Academy of American Poets Web site); Tess Gallagher (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sarah Getty (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Nikki Giovanni (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Louise Glück (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sam Hamill (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Maureen Harris (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Dinah Hawken (New Zealand); Roger McTair (Trinidad; Canada); Michael Ondaatje (Canada; Academy of American Poets Web site); Michael Palmer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stephen Scobie (Canada); Olive Senior (Jamaica); James Tate (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Tranter (Australia); Bill Zavatsky (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Andrew Thomas Knights Crozier (July 26; UK)
Deaths
Stephen Vincent Benét, at 44 (March 13; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laurence Binyon; Arthur Guiterman (US); Radclyffe Hall; Lorenz Hart (US); Marsdem Hartley (US); Kate Simpson Hayes (Canada); Sidney A. K. Keyes, killed in Tunisia in WW2; Edward Abbott Parry; Laura E. Richards; Charles G. D. Roberts (Canada); Chief K'hhalserten Sepass (Canada); William Soutar; Bertram Warr

1944

ALLIED FORCES INVADE NORMANDY 
W. H. Auden's For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
Walter De la Mare's Collected Rhymes and Verses
H. D.'s (Hilda Dolittle's) Trilogy (1944-46), on war-time London, and her The Walls do not Fall
 T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets (published as a series in the UK)
Karl Shapiro's V-Letter
Marya Zaturenska's The Golden Mirror
Marianne Moore's Nevertheless
William Carlos Williams' The Wedge
Dorothy Livesay's Day and Night
A.M. Klein's Poems
Awards
Stephen Vincent Benét's Western Star posthumously (1943) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
Edith Henrich of Williams Bay, Wisconsin, wins the first prize of the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 2)
Dorothy Livesay won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Day and Night
Births
Robert Adamson (Australia; May 17); Sandra Alcosser (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eric Bogle (Australia); Eavan Boland (Ireland; Academy of American Poets Web site); Wayne Brown (Trinidad); Faustin Charles (Trinidad); Jimmy Cliff (born James Chambers; Jamaica); John Donlan(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Paul Duncan; Susan Ioannou (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Penn Kemp (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Mary Kinzie (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sid Marty (Canada); BP Nichol (Canada); Peter Olds (New Zealand); Pedro Pietri(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Craig Anthony Raine; John Reibetanz (Canada); Linda Rogers (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Peter Tosh (Jamaica); Brian Turner (New Zealand); Alice Walker (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Frances Jones Bannerman; John Peale Bishop (US); Louise Morey Bowman (Canada); A. H. Reginald Buller; Olivia Bush; Joseph Campbell; Keith Castellain Douglas, killed in WW2 at Normandy; George Herriman; Stephen Leacock; William Ellery Leonard (US); Alun Lewis, killed in WW2 in Burma; Grace Denio Litchfield (US); Thomas Sturge Moore; Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols; James Picot (Australia);Frederick George Scott; Charles Souter ('Dr. Nil'; Australia); Charles Erskine Scott Wood (US)

1945

THE UNITED STATES DROPS ATOMIC BOMBS ON HIROSHIMA (AUG. 6) AND NAGASAKI (AUG. 9)
ALLIED FORCES FREE BUCHENWALD AND BELSEN (April)
V-E DAY (May 8)
 Louise Bogan holds the Library of Congress Chair of Poetry (1945-46)
Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, based on George Crabbe's The Borough
Randall Jarrell's Little Friend, Little Friend, including "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
Alun Lewis's Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, posthumously published
 Ezra Pound is arrested for treason at Genoa and imprisoned in a cage at Pisa by the US army (May 8)
Sir John Betjeman's New Bats in Old Belfries
Hilda Doolittle's Tribute to the Angels
Philip Larkin's The North Ship
F.R. Scott's Overture
Miriam Waddington's Green World
Awards
W. H. Auden wins the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry prize (March 28)
Karl Shapiro's V-Letter and Other Poems (1944) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
 Earle Birney won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Now is Time
Births
Linda Bierds (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Terry Blackhawk (US); Marianne Bluger(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Syl Cheyney-Coker (Sierra Leone); Hal Colebatch (Australia); Wendy Cope; Cyril Dabydeen (Guyana); W. S. Di Piero (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Annie Dillard (US); Norman Dubie (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Calvin Forbes(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Gray (Australia); Bernadette Hall (New Zealand);Daniel Halpern (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ellen Jaffe (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Bob Marley (Feb. 6; Jamaica); Bernadette Mayer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); J.D. McClatchy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carol Muske-Dukes (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alice Notley (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Skrzynecki (Australia); Alan Smith (Australia); Anne Waldman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tom Wayman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Adam Zagajewski (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Maurice Baring; Mary Ursula Bethell (New Zealand); Capel Boake; Margaret Deland (US); Robert Desnos (June 8; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas; Arthur Davison Ficke (US); Ellen Glasgow (US); James S. Martinez (ca.; Belize); Jack Moses (Australia); Paul Valéry (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Williams

1946

NUREMBERG TRIALS
W. H. Auden becomes a US citizen
Roy Campbell's Talking Bronco
Walter De la Mare's The Traveller
Henry Reed's A Map of Verona, including "Naming of Parts"
 Dylan ThomasDeaths and Entrances, including "Fern Hill" and "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London"
 William Carlos WilliamsPaterson (1946-58)
In Washington, Ezra Pound was found to be of unsound mind and thus unfit to stand trial for treason against the United States (February 13). He is incarcerated in St Elizabeth's hospital for the next twelve years until the charge of treason is dismissed on April 18, 1958
Hilda Doolittle's The Flowering of the Rod
Elizabeth Bishop's North and South
Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle
William Carlos Williams' Paterson (Book I)
Robert Finch's Poems
Awards
Ralph Hodgson wins the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Achievement to a foreign poet in the US (April 29)
Pulitzer Prize for poetry goes unawarded this year
Ridgely Torrance wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Finch won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Poems
Births
Mary Jo Bang (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ken Belford (Canada); Robert Bringhurst (Canada); Wanda Coleman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Patrick Friesen (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alison Hawthorne Deming (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sam Hunt (New Zealand); Christopher Laird (UK, Trinidad); Larry Levis (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Thomas Lux (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marilyn Nelson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Minnie Bruce Pratt (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Janis Rapoport (Canada; Canadian Poetry web site); Libby Scheier (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ian Wedde (New Zealand); Susan Wood (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dale Zieroth (Canada)
Deaths
Countee Cullen (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mary Fullerton; Sophia Almon Hensley (Canada); Orrick Johns (US); Ernest Rhys; Gertrude Stein (July 27, of cancer; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); W. J. Turner (Australia)
Touchstone poems
Dylan Thomas's "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" by Daniel Weissbort's "Poem" (1993)
Poems about poems
 parody: Elizabeth Bishop's "Casabianca" (North and South (1946) about Felicia Dorothea Hemans's "Casabianca"

1947

Richard Eberhart's Burr Oaks, including "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment"
Paul Hiebert's Sarah Binks, "the sweet songstess of Saskatchewan"
Philip Larkin's A Girl in Winter
Louis MacNeice's The Dark Tower
Stephen Spender's Poems of Dedication
Richard Wilbur's The Beautiful Changes
John Betjeman's Slick but not Streamlined
W. H. Auden's The Age of Anxiety
Langston Hughes' Fields of Wonder
Robert Frost's Steeple Bush
Wallace Stevens' Transport to Summer
J. V. Cunningham's The Judge is Fury
Robert Duncan's Heavenly City, Earthly City
Douglas Le Pan's The Wounded Prince
E.J. Pratt's Behind the Log
Raymond Souster's Go to Sleep World
Awards
Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle (1946) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Dorothy Livesay won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Poems for People
Births
Ai (Academy of American Poets Web site; US; and RPO); Cheryl Clarke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jane Kenyon (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Yusef Komunyakaa(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Liz Lochhead (Scotland); Nathaniel Mackey (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Al Moritz (Canada); Molly Peacock (Academy of American Poets Web site; US; Canadian Poetry Web site; and RPO); Charlie Smith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Steffler (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rosemary Sullivan (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site; and RPO); Rae Armantrout (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (China; Academy of American Poets Web site); Frederick Williams (Jamaica); Marlene Philip (Feb. 3; Tobago); Lorna Goodison (Jamaica); Fiona Farrell (New Zealand); Keri Hulme (New Zealand); Gary Catalano (Australia); Rhyll McMaster (Australia); Peter Kocan (Australia)
Deaths
Richard Le Gallienne; Duncan Campbell Scott; Anna Wickham

1948

ASSASSINATION OF MOHATMA GANDHI IN NEW DELHI
Sir John Betjeman's Selected Poems
Bollingen Prize for Poetry is established
Robert Graves' The White Goddess, a "historical grammar" of poetic myth and inspiration
 Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos
 Léonie Adams serves as the Poetry Consultant for Library of Congress (now the U.S. Poet Laureate) (1948-49)
William Carlos Williams' Paterson, Book II
John Berryman's The Dispossessed
Theodore Roethke's The Lost Son
Thomas McGrath's Longshot O'Leary's Garland of Practical Poesie
Earle Birney's Strait of Anian
Roy Daniells' Deeper into the Forest
Awards
W. H. Auden's The Age of Anxiety (1947) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to T. S. Eliot (Nov. 4)
Percy MacKaye wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
A.M. Klein won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Rocking Chair and Other Poems
Births
Diane Ackerman (US); Anna Couani (Australia); Lorna Crozier (Canada; Canadian Poetry website); R. S. Gwynn (US); Lawrence Joseph (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Brian Henderson(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Lehman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Anna Mioduchowska (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Oughton (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Sherod Santos (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ntozake Shange, née Paulette Williams (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Leslie Marmon Silko (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Heather McHugh (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Frank Stanford(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Waltner-Toews (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Ciaran Carson (Ireland); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carol Frost (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Albert Goldbarth (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Rachel Hadas (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kerrigan Almey (Canada); Juan Felipe Herrera(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robin “Bongo Jerry” Small (Jamaica); Eddy Grant (Guyana); John Robert Lee (St. Lucia); Kate Jennings (Australia); Alan Wearne (Australia); Bobby Miller (Australia)
Brian Bransom "Bill" Griffiths (Aug. 20; UK)
Deaths
Gordon Bottomley; Gertrude E. H. Bustill (US); Hiram Alfred Cody (Canada); Albert Goldbarth (US);Claude McKay (US); H. Phelps Putnam (US); Michael William Edward Roberts; Genevieve Taggard (US)

1949

COMMUNIST PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA LED BY MAO TSE-TUNG
Judith Wright's Woman to Man
Hilda Doolittle's By Avon River
Langston Hughes' One-Way Ticket
William Carlos Williams' Paterson, Book III
Awards
 Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos wins the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 19)
Peter Viereck's Terror and Decorum (1948) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 2)
James Reaney won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Red Heart
Births
John Agard (June 21; Guyana); Agha Shahid Ali (India); (Academy of American Poets Web site);Michael Blumenthal (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Bottoms (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marilyn Bowering (Canada); Olga Broumas (US); Ralph Burns(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Pier Giorgio di Cicco (Canada); Victor Hernández Cruz(Puerto Rico); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bei Dao (China; Academy of American Poets Web site); Lynn Emanuel (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alice Major (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Mary di Michele (Canada); Barbara Ras (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Liam Rector (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Christopher Reid (Ireland);David St. John (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robyn Sarah (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jane Urquhart (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Eliot Weinberger (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); C. D. Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Debora Greger (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Michael Dransfield (Australia); Denis Johnson(Germany; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Victor David Questel (Trinidad); Cilla McQueen (New Zealand); Murray Edmond (New Zealand); Bob Orr (New Zealand); Alan Gould (Australia); Vicki Raymond (Australia)
Deaths
William Hervey Allen; Lilian Bowes-Lyon; J. W. Gordon ('Jim Grahame'; Australia); Marie Joussaye (Canada); Roderic Quinn (Australia); Jack Sorensen (Australia); Clara Ann ThompsonThomas Thornely
The Beat Generation 1950-1970

1950

KOREAN WAR
W. H. Auden's Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944
 Ezra Pound's Seventy Cantos
Conrad Aiken serves as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (now the U.S. Poet Laureate) (1950-52)
Robert Duncan's Medieval Scenes
The US Senate, in Resolution 224, congratulated Robert Frost on his 75th birthday 
Dylan Thomas' Twenty-Six Poems
Wallace Stevens' The Auroras of Autumn
Richard Wilbur's Ceremony
Awards
The Bollingen Prize for poetry is transferred to Yale University Library because of controversy over the award of the prize last year to Ezra Pound
Gwendolyn Brooks' Annie Allen (1949) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
 E. E. Cummings wins the annual Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (Dec. 7)
 Wallace Stevens, at 70, wins the Bollingen Prize for his entire body of work (March 27)
 William Carlos Williams wins the National Book Award for poetry for his Paterson, Book III, andSelected Poems
James Wreford Watson won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Of Time and the Lover
Births
Carlton "Carly" Barrett (Dec 17; Jamaica); Charles Bernstein (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anne Carson (Canada; Academy of American Poets Web site); Frances Chung (US); Theodore Deppe (US); Christopher Dewdney (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Deborah Digges (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Forbes (Australia); Carolyn Forché (US; Academy of American Poets Web site; and RPO); Dana Gioia (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jorie Graham(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Linda Gregerson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Susan L. Helwig (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Edward Hirsch (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Marie Howe (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kim Maltman(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Susan McMaster (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); E. Ethelbert Miller (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Grace Nichols (Guyana); Wayne Scott Ray (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Stan Rogal (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Kenneth Sherman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Sandy Shreve (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);Arthur Sze (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Chase Twichell (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Yau (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
William Rose Benét; W. S. Fairbridge (Australia); Abraham Lincoln Gillespie (US); John Gould Fletcher (US); Edgar Lee Masters (US); Edna St. Vincent Millay (US), at 58 (Oct. 19), of a heart attack; James Stephens
Poems about poems
 imitation: William Carlos Williams's "Raleigh was Right" (Collected Later Poems 1950), about Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"

1951

W. H. Auden's Nones
 Bad Lord Byron, a film directed by David Macdonald about the Romantic poet
Peter Mason Opie and Iona Margaret Balfour Opie publish The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
Robert Lowell's The Mills of the Kavanaughs
James Merrill's First Poems
Adrienne Rich's A Change of World
Theodore Roethke's Praise to the End!
Kay Smith's Footnote to the Lord's Prayer
Anne Wilkinson's Counterpoint to Sleep
Awards
 Carl Sandburg's Complete Poems (1950) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
John Crowe Ransom wins the Bollingen Prize for his entire body of work (Jan. 22)
 Wallace Stevens wins the National Book Award for poetry for The Auroras of Autumn (March 6)
Charles Bruce won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Mulgrave Road
Births
Meena Alexander (India; Academy of American Poets Web site); Lily Allen (April 5; Jamaica); Ralph Angel (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ray A. Young Bear (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robin Becker (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Buckmaster (Australia); Ron Charach (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Lesley Choyce (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Peter Christensen (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Geoff Cochrane (New Zealand); Merron Cullum (Australia); Christopher Dewdney (Canada); Stephen Edgar (Australia);James Galvin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Joy Harjo (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Brenda Hillman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Garrett Hongo(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Andrew Hudgins (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Johnson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Brigit Pegeen Kelly (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Paul Muldoon (Ireland; Academy of American Poets Web site); Susan Musgrave (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Robert Priest (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);Betsy Struthers (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Afaa M. Weaver (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Wrigley (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eddy Yanofsky (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Gelett Burgess; Tom MacInnes (Canada); George Henry Powell
Poems about poems
 parody: Ogden Nash's "Song of the Open Road" (Argosy 12.8) about Joyce Kilmer's "Trees"

1952

ELIZABETH I
"concrete poetry," a phrase invented in Brazil
David Jones' The Anathemata
 Dylan ThomasCollected Poems 1934-52, including "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"
Frank O'Hara's A City Winter
Robert Creeley's Le Fou
George Woodcock's Ravens and Prophets
Awards
Padraic Colum wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
 Marianne Moore's Collected Poems (1951) wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 11) and the National Book Award for poetry (Jan. 29)
Andrew Young wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
E.J. Pratt won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Towards the Last Spike
Births
Jimmy Santiago Baca (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Roo Borson (Canada; Canadian Poetry Online Web site); Judith Ortiz Cofer (Puerto Rico; Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Barry Dempster (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rita Dove (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sky Gilbert (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jan Horner (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Mark Jarman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carole Langille (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Dorianne Laux (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Malca Litovitz (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Andrew Motion (UK); D. C. Reid (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Alberto Ríos (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Naomi Shihab Nye(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carolyn Smart (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Gary Soto (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Susan Stewart (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elizabeth SpiresAlice Fulton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Scott Hightower (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Linton Kwesi Johnson (Aug. 24; Jamaica); Mutabaruka (born Allan Hope) (Dec. 26; Jamaica); Oku Onuora (born Orlando Wong) (March; Jamaica); Kendel Hippolyte (St. Lucia); Graham Lindsay (New Zealand)
Deaths
E. J. Brady (Australia); Arthur Sheerly Cripps; Paul Éluard, at 56 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); P. J. Hartigan ('John O'Brien'; Australia); Eugene Jolas (US); George Santayana

1953

FRANCIS CRICK AND JAMES D. WATSON DISCOVER THE STRUCTURE OF DNA
Sir John Betjeman's A Few Late Chrysanthemums
Louis MacNeice's Autumn Sequel
 Wallace StevensCollected Poems
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings
Melvin Tolson's Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
John Ashbery's Turandot
Robert Creeley's The Kind of Act Of and The Immoral Proposition
Theodore Roethke's The Waking
Charles Olson's In Cold Hell, in Thicket and The Maximus Poems 1-10
Irving Layton's Love the Conqueror Worm
Awards
 Elizabeth Bishop wins the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 5)
Padraic Colum wins the Gregory Medal of the Irish Academy of Letters (May 23)
 Robert Frost wins the fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (March 3)
Oliver St. John Gogarty, of Ireland, wins the Gold Medal for Service to Poetry from the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 13)
Archibald MacLeish's Collected Poems (1952) wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 10), the National Book Award for poetry (Jan. 27), and the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
 Marianne Moore wins the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (May 27)
 Carl Sandburg wins the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement from the Poetry Society of America (Jan. 13)
Arthur Waley wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
 Marianne Moore wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Douglas LePan won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Net and the Sword
Conrad Aiken's Collected Poems wins the National Book Award
Births
Dionne Brand (Trinidad and Canada); Mark Doty (USA); Rudyard Fearon (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Susan Glickman (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jane Hirshfield (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Phil Hall (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Tony Hoagland(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Rivard (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Andrew Schelling (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tom Sleigh (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Terpstra (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rhea Tregebov(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Rosanna Warren (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Franz Wright (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Brian Bartlett; Brian Meeks (Canada; Jamaica); Iain Sharp (New Zealand); David Eggleton (New Zealand)
Deaths
Hilaire Belloc, at 82 (July 16); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) from burns resulting from a fall into a fireplace; Helena Jane Coleman (Canada); George Herbert Clarke; Idris Davies; Eugene O'NeillDylan Thomas; Bernard O'Dowd (Australia); Elaine Goodale Eastman (US); Dora Read Goodale (US)

1954

W. H. Auden's The Shield of Achilles
Sir John Betjeman's A Few Late Chrysanthemums
Robert Creeley founds and edits the Black Mountain Review
Philip Larkin's The Less Deceived
Frank Prince's Soldiers Bathing and Other Poems
Jon Silkin's The Peaceable Kingdom, including "Death of a Son (who died in a mental hospital aged one)"
 Dylan ThomasUnder Milk Wood is broadcast on radio on January 25
Tolkien's The Return of the King
W. H. Auden is Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (1954-73)
Thom Gunn's Fighting Terms
Anthony Hecht's A Summoning of Stones
William Carlos Williams' The Desert Music
Awards
Oliver St. John Gogarty and Louise Townsend Nicholl win the fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (Jan. 28)
W. H. Auden wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 10)
Ernest Hemingway wins the Nobel Prize (Oct. 28)
Theodore Roethke's The Waking: Poems, 1933-53 (1953) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
P.K. Page won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Metal and the Flower
Léonie Adams' Poems: A Selection receives the Bollingen Prize (a joint-winner with Louise Bogan
Daniel Hoffman's An Armada of Thirty Whales selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets
Births
Kim Addonizio (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Catherine Anderson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Baker (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Boates (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Janet Charman (New Zealand); Lorna Dee Cervantes(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sandra Cisneros (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Cornelius Eady (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kevin Hart (Australia); Linda Hull(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jan Heller Levi (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Thylias Moss (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dorothy Porter (March 26; Australia); Luis J. Rodriguez (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Stephen Sartarelli (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Vijay Seshadri (India; Academy of American Poets Web site); Michael Smith (Jamaica)
Deaths
Walter Conrad Arensberg (US); Leonard Bacon, at 66 (Jan. 1); Maxwell Bodenheim (US); Lil Green (US); Lynn Riggs (US); Edwin Rolfe (US); Francis Brett Young

1955

William Sydney Graham's The Nightfishing
Donald Davies' Brides of Reason
Adrienne Rich's The Diamond Cutters
Louis Dudek's Europe
Anne Wilkinson's The Hangman Ties the Holly
Awards
Leonie Adams, for Poems; a Selection, and Louise Bogan, for Collected Poems 1922-53, jointly win the Bollingen Prize
 E. E. Cummings wins the National Book Award for poetry for Poems: 1923-1954
Robert Fitzgerald wins the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America (May 16)
Rolfe Humphries wins the American Academy of Poets fellowship (Dec. 29)
Ruth Pitter wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
 Wallace StevensCollected Poems (1954) wins the Pulitzer Prize
Wilfred Watson won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Friday's Child
Births
Mark Abley (Canada); Marilyn Chin (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Dabydeen (Dec. 9; Guyana); Carol Ann Duffy (Scotland; Academy of American Poets Web site); Kimiko Hahn(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Jennifer Harrison (Australia); Margaret Lindsay Holton(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Kim Morrissey (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Erin Mouré (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Chris Orsman (New Zealand); Patricia Smith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Apirana Taylor (New Zealand); Dean Young (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
James Agee (US); Robert P. Coffin, 62 (Jan. 20); Reginald Charles (Rex) Ingamells (Australia; Dec. 30);Weldon Kees (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Mackenzie (Australia); Wallace Stevens; Brian Vrepont (Benjamin Arthur Truebridge; Australia)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Robert Graves's "Beauty in Trouble" (Collected Poems 1955), about William Shakespeare's "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments"

1956

John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
Alan Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, a signature of the Beat Generation (soon after being published, the book was banned for obscenity. The work overcame censorship trials, however, and has now been translated into more than 22 languages)
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath marry
Anne Lindbergh's The Unicorn, and Other Poems
Rock and roll music begins
John Ashbery's Some Trees
Richard Wilbur's Things of this World
Edgar Bowers' The Form of Loss
Irving Layton's The Improved Binoculars
Leonard Cohen's Let Us Compare Mythologies
Awards
Edmund Blunden wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
 Elizabeth Bishop's Poems -- North & South / A Cold Spring (1955) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
 William Carlos Williams wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Dec. 28)
Robert A.D. Ford won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with A Window on the North
John Ashbery's Some Trees selected for the Yale Younger Poets Series
Philip Booth's Letters from a Distant Land is the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets
Donald Hall's Exiles and Marriages (1955) is the Academy of American Poets' Lamont Poetry Selection 
Conrad Aiken wins the Bollingen Prize
Births
Judith Beveridge (Australia); Valerie Bloom (Jamaica); Diana Brebner (Canada); Lucie Brock-Broido(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Henri Cole (born in Japan; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Annie Finch (US); Anne French (New Zealand); Forrest Gander (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Carla Hartsfield (Canada); Michael Ogilvie (Mick) Imlah (Sept. 26; UK); Fragano Ledgister (UK; Jamaica); Michele Leggott (New Zealand); Elizabeth Nannestad (New Zealand); Gig Ryan (Australia); Anne Simpson (Canada)
Deaths
Edmund Clerihew Bentley, at 80 (Mar. 30); Frank Oliver Call (Canada); Walter De La Mare, at 83 (June 22); Haniel Long (Canada); A. A. Milne, at 74 (Jan. 31); Percy MacKaye, at 81 (Aug. 31); Leonora Speyer (US); Winifred Tennant (Australia); Joseph Tishler ('Bellrive'; Australia); Dorothy Wellesley
Poems about poems
 imitation: John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, lines 121-168 (study), about Anne Bradstreet's "In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659" (1678)
 major influence: Phyllis Webb's "Marvell's Garden" (Even Your Right Eye 1956), about Andrew Marvell's "The Garden"

1957

 T. S. Eliot's On Poetry and Poets
Ted Hughes' The Hawk in the Rain, including "The Thought Fox"
 Jay Macpherson's The Boatman
Ogden Nash's You Can't Get There from Here
 Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning
Thom Gunn's The Sense of Movement
J. V. Cunningham's Trivial, Vulgar, and Exalted: Epigrams
Awards
Conrad Aiken wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Siegfried Sassoon wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Allen Tate wins the Bollingen Prize for his life works (Jan. 13)
Richard Wilbur's Things of this World wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1957 (May 6) as well as the National Book Award (March 13)
 Jay Macpherson won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Boatman
Births
John Barton (Canada); Julie Bruck Jr. (US); Cyrus Cassells (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Afua Cooper (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Martín Espada (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Essex Hemphill (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Li-Young Lee(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bruce Meyer (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);Anthony Molino (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alan Riach (New Zealand)
Deaths
Joseph Warren Beach; Lillie A. Brooks (Canada); Ignatius Roy D. Campbell (South Africa); Skipwith Cannell (US); Charles Badger Clark (US); Frances Densmore (US); Arthur R. D. Fairburn (New Zealand); Rose Fyleman; Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty, at 79 (Sept. 22), of a heart attack; Christopher Morley, at 66 (March 28); Merrill Moore, at 54 (Sept. 20)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Stevie Smith's "Childe Rolandine" (Not Waving but Drowning 1957) about Robert Browning's "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" (1855)

1958

Chief Justice Bolitha J. Laws in the U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., dismisses treason charges against Ezra Pound (April 18) after psychologists declare him insane
Sir John Betjeman's Collected Poems
Brazilian manifesto for concrete poetry, which focuses on visual and other sensory qualities
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind
Theodore Roethke's Words for the Wind
John Hollander's A Crackling of Thorns
Awards
Robinson Jeffers wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Reaney's A Suit of Nettles, imitating Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar, wins the Governor General's award in Canada
Robert Penn Warren's Promises: Poems 1954-1956 (1956) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Conrad Aiken wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
James Reaney won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with A Suit of Nettles
E. E. Cummings wins the Bollingen Prize in Poetry
John Hollander's A Crackling of Thorns selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets
Births
Jill Battson (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Sarah Day (Australia); Tory Dent (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anne Michaels (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Roma Potiki (New Zealand); Harold Rhenisch (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Kathleen Stewart (Australia); Andrew Waterhouse (Nov. 27)
Deaths
Zoë Rumbold Akins, at 72 (Oct. 29); Blanche (B. E.) Baughan (New Zealand); Blanche Lamontagne Beauregard; Gerald William Bullett, at 64 (Jan. 3); James Branch Cabell, at 79 (May 5); Roy Campbell; Angelina Weld Grimké (US); William Christopher Handy, the "Father of the Blues" (US); J. R. Hervey (New Zealand) ; Fenton Johnson (US); May Austin Low (Canada); Hugh McCrae (Australia); Alfred Noyes, (June 25; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert W. Service, at 84 (Sept. 11); John Collings Squire

1959

John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish, written about his mentally-ill mother
Kenneth Koch's Ko, or a Season on Earth
Irving Layton's A Red Carpet for the Sun
Robert Lowell's Life Studies
W. D. Snodgrass' Heart's Needle
James Merrill's The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace
Awards
 Louise Bogan and Leonie Adams win the Fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Nov. 4)
Frances Cornford wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Donald B. Justice wins the Lamont Poetry Selection for The Summer Anniversaries (Nov. 4)
Stanley Kunitz's Selected Poems 1918-1958 (1958) wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1959 (May 4)
Theodore Roethke wins the Bollingen Prize and the National Book Award for Words for the Wind(March 3)
Irving Layton won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Red Carpet for the Sun
Richard Eberhart appointed by President Eisenhower to the Advisory commission on the Arts for the National Cultural Center
Richard Eberhart serves as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (1959-61)
Births
Brian P. Cleary (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Fitterman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Gizzi (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Iain Higgins (Canada); Philip Hodgins (Australia); Noah Leznoff (Canada); Laura Lush (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Newton (New Zealand)
Deaths
Sarah N. Cleghorn, at 83 (April 4); Dennis Devlin; Susan Gillis (Canada); Arturo Giovannitti (US); Edgar Albert Guest, at 77 (Aug. 5), known as the "poet of the people"; Luis Palés Matos, of a heart attack; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edwin Muir, at 70 (Jan. 3); Vance Palmer (Australia); Carl Phillips (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
The Movement 1960-1980

1960

W. H. Auden's Homage to Clio
Sir John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells
Ted Hughes' Lupercal
Sylvia Plath's The Colossus
Robert Duncan's The Opening of the Field
Charles Olson's The Maximus Poems 1-23 and The Distances
Awards
Sir John Betjeman wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Delmore Schwartz wins the Bollingen Prize for Summer Knowledge (Jan. 10)
W. D. Snodgrass's Heart's Needle (1959) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 2)
Jesse Stuart wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Margaret Avison won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Winter Sun
Paul Celan receives a Georg Buchner Prize
Births
April Bernard (Academy of American Poets Web site); Jenny Bornholdt (New Zealand); George Elliott Clarke (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site; Frederick D'Aguiar (UK; Guyana); Jeffery Donaldson (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); US); Kim Eggleston (New Zealand); Nick Flynn(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bob Hicok (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Manicom (Canada); Richard Sanger (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Bruce Taylor (Canada); Virginia Were (New Zealand); Forbes Williams (New Zealand)
Deaths
Franklin Pierce Adams (US); Frances Cornford; H.L. Davis (US); David Diop (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Frank S. Flint; Oscar Hammerstein II (US); Harry Kemp, at 76 (Aug. 8); Jesse Edgar MiddletonBoris Pasternak, (May 30), of lung cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site); Richard Wright (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: Phyllis McGinley's "View from a Suburban Window", about John Milton's "When I Consider how my Light is Spent"

1961

Thom Gunn's My Sad Captains
LeRoi Jones' Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Robert Frost recites, from memory, his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John Kennedy (Jan. 20) after he cannot see to read the poem he wrote for the occasion, "Dedication" 
Alan Dugan's Poems
Robert Lowell's Imitations
Theodore Roethke's I Am! Says the Lamb
Richard Wilbur's Advice to a Prophet
Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth
Irving Layton's The Swinging Flesh
Awards
Robert Fitzgerald wins the Bollingen Translation Prize for his Homer's Odyssey (Oct. 31), the first time it is awarded
Horace V. Gregory wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Nov. 15)
Randall Jarrell wins the National Book Award for The Woman at the Washington Zoo (March 14)
Phyllis McGinley's Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades (1960) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
Yvor Winters wins the Bollingen Prize for his Collected Poems (Jan. 8)
Robert Finch won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Acis in Oxford
James Dickey is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship 
X. J. Kennedy's Nude Descending a Staircase wins the Lamont Poetry Selection
Births
Gil Adamson (Canada); Gitaujali Badruddin (India); Walid Bitar (Canada); Harry Cummins (Australia);Denise Duhamel (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Greene (Canada); Steven Heighton (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Kenneth Goldsmith (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eric Miller (Canada); Gregory O'Brien (New Zealand); Ruth Taylor (Jan. 10; Canadian)
Deaths
Hilda Doolittle ("H.D."), at 75 (Sept. 27), of a heart attack; Kenneth Fearing (US); Robert Hillyer (US);Ernest Miller Hemingway, at 61 (July 2), suicide by gunshot; Harry Hooton (Australia); John Thompson (Australia)

1962

The Beatles (1962-70)
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, including settings for Wilfred Owen's poems
 Robert Frost's In the Clearing
Thom Gunn's My Sad Captains
Kenneth Koch's Thank You
Anne Sexton's All my Pretty Ones, including "The Truth the Dead Know"
Derek Walcott's In a Green Night
George Oppen's The Materials
James Merrill's Water Street
John Hollander's Movie-Going
John Ashbery's The Tennis Court Oath
Robert Hayden's A Ballad of Remembrance
Robert Creeley's For Love
Robert Bly's Silence in the Snowy Fields
Malcolm Lowry's Selected Poems
Al Purdy's Poems for all the Annettes
Phyllis Webb's The Sea is Also like a Garden
Awards
Alan Dugan's Poems (1961) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7), the National Book Award (March 13), and is selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets 
Richard Eberhart, for his life work, and John Hall Wheelock, for The Garden and Other Poems, jointly win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 7)
 Stand Up, Friend, with Me by Edward Field is the Academy of American Poets' Lamont Poetry Selection (Nov. 13)
Christopher Fry wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Lattimore's The Frogs, from Aristophanes, and Robert Lowell's Imitations, jointly win the Bollingen Translation Prize (Nov. 13)
John Crowe Ransom wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Reaney won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Twelve Letters to a Small Town
Jack Gilbert's Views of Jeopardy wins the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition
Births
Elizabeth Alexander (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Paul Beatty (US); Caroline Bergvall (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kevin Connolly (Canada); Stacy Doris(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Julia Kasdorf (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David McGimpsey (Canada); Virgil Suárez (Cuba) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Richard Aldington; Lereine Ballantyne; Elspeth Honeyman Clarke (Canada); E. E. Cummings, at 67 (Sept. 3), of a stroke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Faulkner, at 64 (July 6), of a heart attack; Wilfrid Wilson Gibson; Mary Gilmore (Australia); Ralph Edwin Hodgson; John Holmes (US); John Robinson Jeffers (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Hyam Plutzik (US); Frank Prewett (Canada); Walter Adolpe Roberts (Jamaica)
Poems about poems
 parody: D. J. Enright's "Fine and Private Place" (Addictions 1962; imitation), about Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress" (1681)
 parody: Kenneth Koch's "Variations on a William Carlos Williams's 'This is just to say'" (Thank You and Other Poems 1962) about William Carlos Williams's "This is just to say" (1923)
 major influence: Stevie Smith's "Thoughts about the Person from Porlock" (Selected Poems 1962) about Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"

1963

Philip Hobsbaum and Edward Lucie-Smith edit A Group Anthology
Silvia Plath's The Bell Jar, an autobiographical novel published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas
 The Raven, a film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, and loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem of the same name
Edgar Bowers' The Astronomers
W. S. Merwin's The Moving Target
Adrienne Rich's Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law
Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool" in her Selected Poems
Irving Layton's Balls for a One-armed Juggler
Awards
William C. Plomer wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
 Ezra Pound and Allen Tate win the American Academy of Poets Fellowship (Sept. 4)
 William Stafford wins the National Book Award for Traveling through the Dark (March 12)
 William Carlos WilliamsPictures from Brueghel (1962) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 6), and he wins the American Academy of Arts and Letters gold medal (May 22)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz awarded the Lenin Peace Prize
Robert Frost receives the Bollingen Prize
Births
Simon Armitage (UK; Academy of American Poets Web site); Geoffrey Cook (Canada); Lynn Crosbie (Canada); Olena Kalytiak Davis (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Andrew Johnston (New Zealand); Claudia Rankine (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mark Sinnett (Canada); Patricia Warner (Canada); Damien Wilkins (New Zealand) 
Deaths
Reuben Butchart, at 100 (Canada); W.E.B. Du Bois (US); Robert Frost, at 88 (Jan. 29); Christopher Vernon Hassall; Nazim Hikmet, of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Louis MacNeice, at 55 (Sept.3), of pneumonia (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Will H. Ogilvie (Australia); Maude Caldwell Perry (US); Sylvia Plath, by suicide (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Theodore Roethke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Carlos Williams, at 79 (March 4)

1964

 Margaret Atwood's The Circle Game
Sir John Betjeman's Ring of Bells
Leonard Cohen's Flowers for Hitler, including "The Only Tourist in Havana Turns his Thoughts Homeward"
Philip Larkin's Whitsun Weddings
Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead
John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs
R. Berman calls the earl of Rochester's "A ramble in St. James' Park" "this unprintable poem" (Kenyon Review 26: 362)
Donald Davie's Events and Wisdoms
Robert Duncan's Roots and Branches
LeRoi Jones' The Dead Lecturer
Eli Mandel's Black and Secret Man
Awards
 Elizabeth Bishop wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
John Crowe Ransom wins the National Book Award for Selected Poems (March 10)
Louis Simpson's At the End of the Open Road (1963) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Rev. Ronald S. Thomas wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Raymond Souster won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Colour of the Times
Anna Akhmatova awarded the Etna-Taormina prize in Sicily
Jack Gilbert receives the Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry
Zbigniew Herbert receives the Koscielski Foundation Prize
Births
Tim Bowling (Canada); Geoffrey Brock (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Rafael Campo(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Catherine Graham (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);Kathy Shaidle (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Clive Bell; Zora Cross; Alton Delmore (US); Red Lane (Canada); Cole Porter (US); E.J. Pratt (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 81 (April 26); Edith Sitwell, at 77 (Dec. 9), of a heart attack

1965

Bob Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited
Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist
Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings
Sylvia Plath's Ariel, including "Daddy," published posthumously
Jon Silkin's Nature with Man
Meic Stephens founds Poetry Wales
Melvin Tolson's Harlem Gallery
Zbigniew Herbert wins the national Austrian Lenau Prize and the Alfred Jurzykowski Prize
Elizabeth Bishop's Questions of Travel
John Hollander's Visions from the Ramble
George Oppen's This is Which
Derek Walcott's The Castaway
Awards
John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs (1964) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Richard Dickey's Buckdancer's Choice wins the National Book Award for Poetry
Philip Larkin wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
 Marianne Moore wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Theodore Roethke posthumously wins the National Book Award for The Far Field (March 9)
Alfred Purdy wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Cariboo Horses
 To Be Alive, the narrative of which is written by Edward Field, wins the Academy Award for best documentary short subject
Horace Gregory receives the Bollingen Prize
Births
Michael Crummey (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); John Degen (Canada); Adeena Karasick(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Jay Ruzesky (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Andrew Steinmetz (Canada); R. M. Vaughan (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Joseph Auslander, at 67 (June 22), of a heart attack; Mary Josephine Benson (Canada); Richard Blackmur, at 61 (Feb. 2; US); Daniel Aloysius Casey (Canada); Nancy Cunard; T. S. Eliot, at 76 (Jan. 4); Eleanor Farjeon; Edwin Gerard ('Trooper Gerardy') (Australia); Randall Jarrell, at 51 (Oct. 14), in a highway accident (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); T. H. Jones (Australia); Timothy Liu(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Una Marson (Jamaica)
Poems about poems
 major influence: Basil Bunting's "13. Fearful Symmetry" (First book of odes 1965) about William Blake's "The Tyger" (1794)

1966

Basil Bunting's Briggflatts
James Dickey serves as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, 1966-68
Josephine Jacobsen's The Animal Inside
LeRoi Jones' Black Art
 Raymond Souster founds the League of Canadian Poets
Anthony Thwaite and John Hollander publish the first anthology of double dactyls, Jiggery Pokery
Margaret Avison's The Dumbfounding
Gwendolyn MacEwen's A Breakfast for Barbarians
Awards
Richard Eberhart's Selected Poems 1930-65 (1965) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 2)
Archibald MacLeish and John Berryman win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
William Meredith wins the National Institute of Arts and Letters Loines Award for poetry (March 23)
 Margaret Atwood wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Circle Game
James Dickey's Buckdancer's Choice is awarded both the Melville Cane Award and a National Book Award
Robert Hayden awarded the grand prize for poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal for his book Ballad of Remembrance
David Ignatow receives the Shelley Memorial Award
Births
Sherman Alexie (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Christian Bök (Canada; August 10; Academy of American Poets Web site); John MacKenzie (Canada); Maurice Manning (US); Barbara Nickel (Canada); Michael Redhill (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Karen Solie (Canada); Todd Swift (Canada); Natasha Trethewey (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova, at 76 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Berton Braley, at 83 (Jan. 23); Raymond Duncan, at 91 (Aug. 14); Georgia Douglas Johnson, at 86 (May 14), of a stroke; Alfred Kreymborg, at 82 (Aug. 14; US); Mina Loy (US); Frank O'Hara (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edward Philip Harrington (Australia); W. W. E. Ross (Canada); Delmore Schwartz, at 52 (July 11), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Melvin Tolson; Henry Treese, at 55 (June 10); Arthur David Waley; Arnold Wall (New Zealand) 
Poems about poems
 imitation: Martin Bell's "It is the Blight Man was Born for" (Complete Poems 1988) completed by now about Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring & Fall" (1918)

1967

the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band (recording)
C. Day-Lewis made British Poet Laureate
Ted Hughes' Wodwo
The Liverpool poets: Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten
Wole Soyinka's Idanre, and Other Poems
Dorothy Livesay's The Unquiet Bed
Awards
A. R. Ammons wins the Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (May 24)
Charles Causley wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
James Merrill wins the National Book Award for Nights and Days (March 8)
Anne Sexton's Live or Die, to win the Pulitzer Prize for 1967 (May 1)
Mark Van Doren wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Penn Warren wins the Bollingen Prize for his Selected Poems (Feb. 5)
Eli Mandel won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with An Idiot Joy, and Alden Nowlan with Bread, Wine, and Salt
Births
Saskia Hamilton (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Sullivan (New Zealand); Karen Volkman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Ida Cox (US); David C. DeJong, at 62 (Sept. 5); Woody Guthrie (US); Peter Hopegood (Australia);Langston Hughes, at 65 (May 22), of heart failure (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Patrick Kavanagh, at 62 (Nov. 30), of pneumonia; Margaret Larkin, at 67 (May 8); John Masefield; Thomas MacGreevy; Meade Minnigerode; Christopher Okigko; Dorothy Parker, at 73 (June 7), of a heart attack; V. Penelope Pelizzon (US); Carl Sandburg, at 89 (July 22), of a heart attack; Siegfried Sassoon, at 80 (Sept. 1); Odel Shepard, at 82 (July 19); Jean Toomer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Vernon Watkins
Poems about poems
 parody: Anthony Hecht's "The Dover Bitch" (The Hard Hours 1967) about Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867)

1968

Cecil Day-Lewis is named British Poet Laureate (Jan. 1)
LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal co-edit Black Fire, an anthology of African-American poetry
John Berryman serves as Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets (1968-72)
Leonard Cohen's Songs (Canada; music)
Don Gutteridge's Riel
Red Lane's Collected Poems
W.W.E. Ross's Shapes and Sounds
Awards
W. H. Auden wins the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (May 28)
Robert Bly's The Light around my Body wins the National Book Award (March 6)
Gwendolyn Brooks succeeds Carl Sandburg as Poet Laureate of Illinois
Robert Graves wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Anthony Hecht's The Hard Hours (1967) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 6) and he also wins the Loines Award (May 28)
Stanley Kunitz wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
W. H. Auden wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Leonard Cohen won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Selected Poems 1956-68 but declined the award 
Births
Nan Cohen (US); Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaasen (Canada); David O'Meara (Canada); Michael Teig(Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Witter Bynner, at 86 (June 1; US); Donald Davidson, at 74 (April 26); George Hill Dillon, at 62 (May 9);Henry Dumas, shot at 33 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dudley Fitts (US); Dorothea Mackellar (Australia); Harley Matthews (Australia); Mervyn Laurence Peake; Salvatore Quasimodo, (June 14; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sir Herbert Edward Read, at 74 (June 12); Winfield Townley Scott, at 58 (April 28; US); David Stacton, at 42 (Jan. 20); Yvor Winters, at 67 (Jan. 25; Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Kenneth Patchen's "The Queer Client and the Forest-Inn" (Collected Poems 1968)about Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867)

1969

MOON-WALK and the ARPANET 
W. H. Auden's City without Walls
Sir Arthur Bliss' cantata The world is charged with the grandeur of God, from Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet of the same first line
 Louise Bogan publishes The Blue Estuaries and retires after 38 years as poetry critic for The New Yorker (Dec.)
Lucille Clifton's Good Times, selected as one of the year's best books by The New York Times
Donald Davies' Essex Poems
Seamus Heaney's Door into the Dark
LeRoi Jones's Black Magic: Poetry, 1961-1967
Wole Soyinka's Poems from Prison
Milton Acorn's I've Tasted my Blood
Elizabeth Brewster's Passage of Summer
Phyllis Gotlieb's Ordinary, Moving
Awards
Samuel Beckett awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
Richard Eberhart and Anthony Hecht win the fellowship of the American Academy of Poets (Feb. 13)
George Oppen's Of Being Numerous (1968) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Karl Shapiro's Selected Poems and John Berryman's His Toy, His Dream, His Rest win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 5), and Berryman also wins the National Book Award for his book (March 10)
 Stevie Smith wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
 Gwendolyn MacEwen won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Shadow-Maker
Marvin Bell's poem collection A Probable Volume of Dreams is a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets
Jane Cooper's The Weather of Six Mornings is the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets
Roque Dalton's Taberna y ostros lugares (Tavern and Other Places) wins the Casa de las Américas Poetry Prize
Mahmoud Darwish is the recipient of the Lotus Prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers
Births
Stephanie Bolster (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Tina Chang (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Davis McCombs (US); Christopher Patton (Canada); Jemal Sharah (Australia); Adam Sol (Canada); Natalie Wilson (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Floyd Bell, at 82 (July 23), of a heart ailment; Arthur Stanley Bourinot (Canada); Max Eastman (US); Charles Edison, aka Tom Sleeper, at 78 (July 31), of heart failure; Rolfe Humphries, at 74 (April 22), of emphysema; Frank Loesser (US); Sir Osbert Sitwell, at 76 (May 4), of a heart attack 

1970

 Margaret Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie
Noël Coward knighted
Ted Hughes' Crow
LeRoi Jones' It's Nation Time
Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
 Ezra Pound's Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX to CXVII
Henry Reed's "The Naming of Parts," published in his The Lessons of War
 Tomfoolery, an animated film directed by Joy Batchelor and John Halas, based on the nonsense verse of Edward Lear (especially "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo") and Lewis Carroll
George Jonas's The Happy Hungry Man
Alden Nowlan's Playing the Jesus Game
Bertram Warr's Acknowledgment to Life
Awards
Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems wins the National Book Award (March 2)
Roy Fuller wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Howard's Untitled Subjects (1969) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 4)
Howard Nemerov wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
bpNichol won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Still WaterThe True Eventual Story of Billy the KidBeach Head, and The cosmic chef: an evening of concrete; and Michael Ondaatje with The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Births
Ken Babstock (Canada); Jordan Davis (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Rupert McCall (Australia); Brenda Shaughnessy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); nathalie stephens (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Kevin Young (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Louise Bogan, at 72 (Feb. 4); Paul Celan (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Dos Passos (US); Mary Phelps Crosby; Edsel Ford, at 41 (Feb. 19); Lorine Niedecker (Dec 31; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Arthur Nortje; Charles Olson, of cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Mona Van Duyn's "Leda" (To See, To Take 1970) about W. B. Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" (1928)

1971

Dick Allen's Anon and Various Time Machine Poems
Maya Angelou's Just Give Me a Cool Glass of Water 'Fore I Diie
 The Canterbury Tales, a film directed by Pier Paulo Pasolini, providing a soft-pornographic, controversial version of four tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Josephine Jacobsen is named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (1971-73)
 Right On!, a film directed by Herbert Danska, of poetry recitations with bongo accompaniments on New York city streets (April 8)
Louis Dudek's Collected Poetry
Earle Birney's Rag and Bone Shop
George McWhirter's The Catalan Poems
Awards
Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns wins a Whitbread Literary award
W. S. Merwin's The Carrier of Ladders (1970) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3)
Stephen Spender wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard P. Wilbur's Walking to Sleep and Mona Van Duyn's To See, To Take win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 10); and Van Duyn also wins the National Book Award for her book (March 2)
James Wright wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
John Glassco wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Selected Poems
Adonis' The Blood of Adonis wins the Syria-Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum
Michael S. Harper's History is Your Heartbeat wins the Black Academy of Arts & Letters Award for poetry
Laura Riding Jackson is honoured with the Mark Rothko Appreciation Award
Births
Jeffrey Angles (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Terrance Hayes (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); George Murray (Canada)
Deaths
Bruce Charles (Canada); Clifford Dyment; Lenore G. Marshall, at 72 (Sept. 9); R.A.K. Mason (New Zealand); Ogden Nash, at 68 (May 19; US) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Giorgos Seferis (Sept. 21; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Slessor (Australia); Stevie Smith; Alexander Young
Poems about poems
 imitation: Adrienne Rich's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (The Will to Change 1971), about John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"

1972

Sir John Betjeman made British Poet Laureate (Oct. 10)
LeRoi Jones' Spirit Reach (as Amiri Imamu Baraka, a Black Muslim)
Mervyn Laurence Peake's A Book of Nonsense
Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt
Muriam Waddington's Driving Home
Awards
Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems and Howard Moss's Selected Poems win the National Book Award (April 11)
W. D. Snodgrass wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Wright's Collected Poems (1971) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 1)
Dennis Lee wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Civil Elegies and Other Poems
A. R. Ammons' Collected Poems 1951 - 1971 wins the National Book Award
Births
Anita Lakey (Canada); Suzanne Buffam (Canada); Sue Sinclair (Canada)
Deaths
James K. Baxter (New Zealand); John Berryman, at 57 (Jan. 7), of suicide (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Buckmaster, age 21, of suicide (Australia); Padraic Colum, at 90 (Jan. 11); Cecil Day-Lewis, British poet laureate, at 68 (May 22); Eileen Duggan (New Zealand); Robert Fletcher, at 87 (Nov. 20), poet of "Don't Fence Me In"; Jean Garrigue (US); Paul Goodman, of a heart attack (US); Joseph Kalar (US); A.M. Klein (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 63 (Aug. 21); Marianne Craig Moore, at 84 (Feb. 5); Kenneth Patchen, at 60 (Jan. 8), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ezra Pound, at 87 (Nov. 1), of an intestinal blockage; Gladys Schmitt, 63 (Oct. 3); Mark Van Doren, 78 (Dec. 10); Daniel Williams (US; St. Vincent); Edmund Wilson (US); Andrew John Young
Touchstone poems
Ted Hughes' Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow by Wendy Cope's "Budgie Finds his Voice" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) 

1973

Derek Walcott's Another Life
Margaret Atwood's Power Politics
Awards
A. R. Ammons's Collected Poems wins the National Book Award (April 10)
John Heath-Stubbs wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Maxine Kumin's Up Country: Poems of New England (1972) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
James Merrill wins the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 7)
W. S. Merwin wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
John Crowe Ransom wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Miriam Mandel wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Lions at her Face
Robert Hass' Field Guide selected for the Yale Younger Poets Series
Zbigniew Herbert wins the prestigious European Herder Prize
Daniel Hoffman serves as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1973-74)
Laura Riding Jackson receives a Guggenheim fellowship 
Josephine Jacobsen serves as honorary consultant in American letters to the Library of Congress (1973-79)
Births
Asa Boxer (Canada); Pino Coluccio (Canada); Ben Doyle (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Sonnet L'Abbé (Canada); Paul Vermeersch (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Deaths
Conrad Aiken (Academy of American Poets Web site; US), at 84 (Aug. 17), of a heart attack; Kenneth Allott; W. H. Auden, at 66 (Sept. 28); Arna Bontemps, at 70 (June 4), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charles Brasch (New Zealand); Noël Coward, at 73 (March 26), of a heart attack; Michael Dransfield (Australia; April 20); Ramon Guthrie, at 77 (Nov. 22; US); Nan McDonald (Australia); Pablo Neruda, (Sept 23), of leukemia (Chile; Academy of American Poets Web site); J. R. R. Tolkien, at 81 (Sept. 2); Francis Webb (Australia)

1974

David Jones' The Sleeping Lord
Philip Larkin's High Windows, including "This Be the Verse" ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad").
Bruce Springsteen's song "Born to Run"
Dennis Lee's Alligator Pie
Awards
Léonie Adams wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Allen Ginsberg's The Fall of America and Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck win the National Book Award (April 18)
Ted Hughes wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Robert T. S. Lowell Jr.'s The Dolphin (1973) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 7)
Ralph Gustafson wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Fire on Stone
A. R. Ammons' Sphere wins the Bollingen Prize
Tony Connor elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, founded by King George IV in 1820 (England)
Debora Greger awarded the Grolier Prize in Poetry
Marilyn Hacker's Presentation Piece is both the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and the recipient of the National Book Award
Births
Dorothy Fields (US); Matt Robinson (Canada)
Deaths
Edmund Clarke Blunden; Jacob Bronowski, at 66 (Aug. 22); Austin Clarke; Julian Davis, at 72 (Sept. 6), the gold-miner poet of "Cripple Creek Poem Poke"; David Jones, at 78 (Oct. 28); Kenneth Leslie (Canada); Ogden Nash, (May 19; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tyler Parker, 70 (July 24); John Crowe Ransom, at 86 (July 5; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eric Roach (Tobago); Anne Sexton, at 45 (Oct. 4), of suicide (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Philip Larkin's "Sad Steps" (High Windows 1974; parody), about Sir Philip Sidney's "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies" (1591)

1975

Maya Angelou's Oh Pray My Wings are Gonna Fit Me Well
Kenneth Koch's The Art of Love
 Stevie Smith's Collected Poems
Awards
Robert Hayden wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Gary Snyder's Turtle Island wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 5)
Milton Acorn wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with The Island Means Minago
John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror receives the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award
Births
Michael de Beyer (Canada); Joe Denham (Canada); Michael Dickman (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Amber McWilliams (New Zealand); Shane Neilson (Canada); Tony Tost (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Deaths
Shelton Brooks (Sept. 6); Roque Dalton, executed May 10, at 39 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Lloyd Frankenberg, at 67 (March 12); Sir Julian Sorell Huxley; Chester Kallman, at 53 (Jan. 18); Pat Lowther (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), murdered by her husband, Roy Lowther; Sir Francis Meynell, at 84 (July 10); Sydney Goodsir Smith; Joe Wallace; Stanley Young, at 69 (March 22)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Stevie Smith's "A Soldier Dear to Us" (Collected Poems 1975) about Robert Browning's "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" (1855)

1976

Marya Fiamengo's In Praise of Older Women
Thom Gunn's Jack Straw's Castle
Two poems written in 1965 by Mao Tse-tung just before the cultural revolution, including "Two Birds: A Dialogue," are published on Jan. 1 (Facts on File 36 [1976]: 9)
Derek Walcott's Sea Grapes
Gary Geddes' War Measures
Pat Lowther's A Stone Diary
Awards
John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) wins the Pulitzer Prize (May 3) and the National Book Award (April 19)
Alex Derwent Hope wins the Robert Frost Award for Poetry
J. V. Cunningham wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Joe Rosenblatt wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Top Soil
Carolyn Forché's Gathering the Tribes is selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets 
Tess Gallagher's first collection, Instructions to the Double, wins the Elliston Book Award 
Robert Hayden becomes the first black American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1976-78)
Births
Stephen McInerney (Australia)
Deaths
Benjamin Britten; Waring Cuney (US); Anne Elder; Florence K. Frank (US); Richard A. W. Hughes; Walter Lowenfels (US); James McAuley (Australia); Johnny Mercer (US); Ian Mudie (Australia);Charles Reznikoff (Jan. 22; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Louis Sissman, at 48 (March 10), of Hodgkin's disease (March 10); Anne Spencer (US)
Poems about poems
 major influence: Karl Jay Shapiro's "Adult Bookstore" (Adult Bookstore 1976), about William Shakespeare's "Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame" (1609)

1977

Samuel Beckett's Collected Poems in English and French
 Joseph Brodsky's A Part of Speech
Donald Davies' To Scorch or Freeze
 Gay News is successfully prosecuted for blasphemy and libel for publishing James Kirkup's "The love that dares to speak its name"
Ted Hughes' Gaudete
James Dickey read his poem "The Strength of Fields" at the presidential inaugural concert for Jimmy Carter at the Kennedy Center in Washington (January 19). 
Awards
Louise Coxe wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Richard Eberhardt's Collected Poems wins the National Book Award (April 11)
James Merrill's Divine Comedies (1976) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 18)
Norman Nicholson wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
D.G. Jones wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth
Michael S. Harper's Images of Kin wins the Melville-Cane Award from the Poetry Society of America 
Deaths
Gitaujali Badruddin; Katherine C. Biddle, at 87 (Dec. 30); Elizabeth Daryush; Donald Evans (US); Leon Gellert (Australia); Robert Lowell; Joseph Moncure March (US); Vladimir Nabokov (US); Alan Riddell (Australia); Isidor Schneider (US); Wilbert Snow (US); Louis Untermeyer, at 92 (Dec. 18); Bukka White (US)

1978

Audre Lord's "Hanging Fire" in The Black Unicorn
Maya Angelou's And Still I Rise
Craig Raine's The Onion, Memory
 Stevie, a film directed by Robert Enders, based on Hugh Whitemore's play about the poet Stevie Smith, played here by Glenda Jackson
George Faludy's East and West
A.J.M. Smith's The Classic Shade
Awards
Josephine Miles wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Howard Nemerov's Collected Poems (1977) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 17) and the National Book Award (April 10)
Patrick Lane wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with Poems New and Selected
Ai's Killing Floor wins the Lamont Poetry Award of the Academy of American Poets
Claribel Alegría's Sobrevivo (I Survive) wins the Cuban-sponsored Casa de las Américas prize
Deaths
Faith Baldwin, at 84 (March 19); Martin Bell; David Campbell (Australia); Leon Gellert (Australia); Gilbert Highet, at 71 (Jan. 20), of cancer; Hugh MacDiarmidPhyllis McGinley (US); Frank Stanford, at 29 (June 3), by suicide (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sylvia Townsend Warner; John Hall Wheelock, at 91 (March 22); Louis Zukofsky, at 74 (May 12)

1979

One copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789) fetches £70,000 in London
Ted Hughes' Moor Town
Craig Raine's A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
Derek Walcott's The Star-Apple Kingdom
Awards
James Merrill's Mirabell: Books of Numbers wins the National Book Award (April 23)
Mark Strand and May Swenson win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Penn Warren's Now and Then wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 16)
Archibald MacLeish wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Michael Ondaatje wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do
David Bottoms' Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump selected for the Walt Whitman Award
Richard Eberhart serves as New Hampshire's Poet Laureate (1979-84)
Clayton Eshleman receives the National Book Award for his co-translation of César Vallejo's Complete Posthumous Poetry
Zbigniew Herbert receives the Petrarch Prize in Verona
Laura Riding Jackson receives a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
Deaths
Patrick Anderson (Canada); Elizabeth Bishop (US); Alter Brody (US); David Campbell (Australia); Peter Cape (New Zealand); Edward Dahlberg (US); Ernest G. Moll (Australia); I. A. Richards; Jean Rhys (Dominica); Allen Tate at 79 (Feb. 9), of emphysema (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)
Postmoderns 1980-

1980

Derek Walcott's The Star-Apple Kingdom
"O Canada" becomes Canada's official national anthem
Awards
Donald Justice's Selected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1980 (April 14)
Mona Van Duyn wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Stephen Scobie wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama (Canada) with McAlmon's Chinese Opera
Michael Blumenthal's Sympathetic Magic receives the Water Mark Poets of North America First Book Prize
Lucille Clifton's Two-Headed Woman receives the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize
Deaths
Frank A. Collymore (Barbados); Denis Glover (New Zealand); Robert Hayden, at 66 (Feb. 25), of a heart ailment (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Julia Reynolds, at 98 (Nov. 28); Muriel Rukeyser, at 66 (Feb. 12), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Schubert (US); A. J. M. Smith (Canada); Mary Stanley (New Zealand); James Wright, at 52 (March 25), of cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)

1981

Robert Bringhurst's The Beauty of the Weapons
 Pier Giorgio di Cicco's Flying Deeper into the Century
Awards
Kenneth Burke wins the National Medal for Literature (April 30)
Dennis J. Enright wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Hugo wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Howard Nemerov and May Swenson win the Pulitzer Prize
James Schuyler's The Morning of the Poem wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 13)
M. Travis Lane wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Divinations and Short Poems 1973-1978
A. R. Ammons' A Coast of Trees receives the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
Frank Bidart's "The War of Vaslav Nijinsky" wins The Paris Review's first Bernard F. Conners Prize
F.R. Scott wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott
Lorna Dee Cervantes' Emplumada wins an American Book Award
Edward Hirsch's For the Sleepwalkers goes on to receive the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University
Susan Howe's The Liberties wins a National Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation
Deaths
Isabella Stewart Gardner; Robert Garioch; John Glassco; E.Y. Harburg (US); M. K. Joseph (New Zealand); Bob Marley (May 11; Jamaica); Eugenio Montale, at 85 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Helen Steiner Rice, at 80 (April 23), greeting-card poet

1982

Margaret Avison's Winter Sun / The Dumbfounding: Poems 1940-66
Gitaujali Badruddin's Poems of Gitaujali, posthumously published
Louise Simone Bennett's Selected Poems
 Dylan Thomas was posthumously honoured by a floor plaque in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey (March 1)
Awards
John Ashbery and John Frederick Nims win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
William Bronk receives the American Book Award for Life Supports (April 27)
Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems (1981), introduced by Ted Hughes, wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 12)
Rona Murray wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Journey
Phyllis Web wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with The Vision Tree: Selected Poems
Yehuda Amichai receives the Israel Prize for Poetry 
Cyrus Cassells' The Mud Actor is a National Poetry Series selection
Amy Clampitt receives the Guggenheim Fellowship
Henri Cole becomes the executive director of The Academy of American Poets (1982-88)
W. S. Di Piero's translation This Strange Joy: Selected Poems of Sandro Penna wins the Academy of American Poets' first Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize
Richard Eberhart elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters 
Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us wins the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and is the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets
Alice Fulton's Dance Script With Electric Ballerina wins the Associated Writing Programs Award
Jack Gilbert's Monolithos wins the Stanley Kunitz Prize and the American Poetry Review Prize
Deaths
Djuna Barnes, at 90 (June 18); P'Bitek; Babette Deutsch, at 87 (Nov. 13; US); Rose Drachler (US); Horace Gregory, at 83 (March 11); Lightnin' Hopkins (US); Richard Hugo, at 58 (Oct. 22), of leukemia (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Archibald MacLeish, at 89 (April 20; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Victor David Questel (Trinidad); Kenneth Rexroth, at 76 (June 6), of a heart ailment; Edgell Rickword; Maria Zaturenska, at 80 (Jan. 19), of heart failure
Poems about poems
 parody: Gavin Ewart's "They Flee from me that sometime did me seek" (The New Ewart 1980-82), about Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They Flee from Me" (ca. 1525-32)
 parody: Gavin Ewart's "Jubilate Matteo" (The New Ewart 1982) about Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno" (ca. 1759-63) 

1983

Maya Angelou's Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
 Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Poems 1927-1979, published posthumously
Amy Clampitt's Kingfisher
Awards
Philip Booth and James Schuyler win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Anthony E. Hecht and John Hollander win the Bollingen Prize
Galway Kinnell's Selected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 18)
Kinnell's collection and Charles Wright's Country Music win the American Book Award (April 28)
Rhea Tregebov wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Remembering History
David Donnell wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Settlements
Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka edit Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Womenwhich wins an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation
Stephen Dobyns' Black Dog, Red Dog is a winner in the National Poetry Series
Richard Howard's translation of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal receives the American Book Award for translation 
Denis Johnson's Angels receives the Sue Kauffman Prize for First Fiction of the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
Deaths
Ted Berrigan, at 48 (July 4; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edwin Denby, at 80 (July 12), by suicide (US); Ira Gershwin (US); Abbie Huston Evans (US); R. Buckminster Fuller, at 87 (July 1), of a heart attack; Frances Horovitz; Alden Nolan; Robert Payne, at 71 (Feb. 18); Michael Smith (Jamaica); Tennessee Williams (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: Irving Feldman's "Just Another Smack" (Teach Me, Dear Sister 1983) about W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938)
 imitation: Wilfred Owen's "How do I Love Thee?" (The Complete Poems and Fragments 1983) about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" (1850)

1984

Seamus Heaney's Station Island
Philip Larkin turns down the British Poet Laureateship, and Ted Hughes becomes Poet Laureate (Dec. 19 until his death Oct 1998)
Craig Raine's Rich
Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and "Glory Days"
A Poet's Corner is established at Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. Each honoured poet has a stone slab that bears the name, dates of birth and death, and a quotation of the poet. Poets include Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Anne Bradstreet, Hart Crane, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams. 
Awards
Robert Francis and Richard Lattimore win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mary Oliver's American Primitive wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1984 (April 16)
Bronwen Wallace wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Signs of the Former Tenant
Paulette Jiles wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Celestial Navigation
David Antin receives the PEN Los Angeles Award for Poetry
John Ashbery's A Wave wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Michael Blumenthal's Laps: A Book-Length Poem receives the Juniper Prize
James Galvin's God's Mistress is selected for the National Poetry Series
Donald Hall serves as Poet Laureate of New Hampshire (1984-1989)
Births
Laura Ranger (New Zealand)
Deaths
Sir John BetjemanRichard Brautigan (October) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sir William Empson, at 77 (April 15); Jorge Guillén (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Lattimore, at 77 (Feb. 26), of cancer; George Oppen, at 76 (July 2), of Alzheimer's disease (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Hal Porter, at 73 (Australia; Sept. 29); Jesse Stewart, at 76 (Feb. 17), of a stroke; Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Alberta Hunter
Poems about poems
 major influence: Richard Howard's "An Old Dancer" (Quantities/Damages: Early Poems 1984) about W. B. Yeats's "Among School Children" (1926)

1985

Amy Clampitt's What the Light was Like
Douglas Eaglesham Dunn's Elegies
Robert Hayden's Collected Poems, posthumously published
Stephen Spender's Collected Poems 1947-80
Gwendolyn Brooks is named Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress for 1985-86
Lorna Crozier's The Garden Going on without Us
Awards
John Ashbery and Fred Chappell win the Bollingen Prize for their life's works (Jan. 15)
Amy Clampitt and Maxime Kumin win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Douglas Dunn's Elegies wins a Whitbread literary award (Jan. 28)
Carolyn Kizer's Yin wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 24)
Norman MacCaig wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Sharon Olds's The Dead and the Living wins the National Book Critics Circle award (Jan. 14)
Robert Penn Warren wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Paulette Jiles wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Celestial Navigation
Fred Wah wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Waiting for Saskatchewan
Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street (1984) wins the American Book Award
Carol Ann Duffy's first collection Standing Female Nude receives a Scottish Arts Council Award 
Cornelius Eady' Victims of the Latest Dance Craze chosen for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets
Alice Fulton's Palladium selected for the National Poetry Series and winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award (1987)
Louise Glück's The Triumph of Achilles wins the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Boston Globe Literary Press Award, and the Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award
Deaths
Basil Bunting, at 85 (April 17; of American Poets Web site; US); J. V. Cunningham (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Graves, at 90 (Dec. 7; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Stuart Fitzgerald, at 74 (Jan. 16; US); Geoffrey Grigson, at 80 (Nov. 25); Alfred Hayes, at 74 (Aug. 14), of menengitis, poet of the labor song "Joe Hill"; Philip Larkin, at 63 (Dec. 2), of throat cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)); J. S. Manifold (Australia); Josephine Miles, of pneumonia (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Nathan, at 91 (May 25), of kidney failure; F. R. Scott (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 85 (Jan. 31); Douglas Stewart (Australia; Feb. 14

1986

Ai's Sin wins an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation
Wendy Cope's Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis becomes a best-seller
The Pforzheimer Collection of the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle is donated to the New York Public Library (Dec. 18)
US President Ronald Reagan demonstrates the educational value of memorization by reciting lines from Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (March 4)
Robert Penn Warren, first US Poet Laureate, 1986-87 (Jan. 26)
Awards
Deborah Digges' Vesper Sparrows, which will receive the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize from New York University
Afrikaner poet Breten Breytenbach wins the Rapport Prize in South Africa (April 12)
Irving Feldman and Howard Moss win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Louise Gluck's The Triumph of Achilles wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Feb. 17)
Peter Reading's Stet wins the Whitbread Poetry Award
Adrienne Rich wins the Lilly Prize (June 6);
Wole Soyinka wins the Nobel Prize (Oct. 16)
Henry Taylor's The Flying Change wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 17)
Erin Mouré wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Domestic Fuel
Al Purdy wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with The Collected Poems of Al Purdy
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale wins the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award
Stephen Dunn's Local Time is a winner in the National Poetry Series
Donald Hall's The Happy Man wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Edward Hirsch's Wild Gratitude wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson wins a National Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation
Lynda Hull's Ghost Money wins the Juniper Prize
Deaths
Milton Acorn, at 63 (Aug. 20), of heart disease and diabetes (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site);John Ciardi, at 69 (March 30), of a heart attack; Elizabeth Coatsworth, at 93 (Aug. 31); William Sydney Graham; Brion Gysin, at 70 (July 13); Bob Kaufman, at 60 (Jan. 12), of emphysema; (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Henry Reed, at 72 (Dec. 8); Elizabeth Smart, at 72 (March); Rex Warner; Marie Bullock, founder of the Academy of American Poets (Dec 25); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laurence Collinson (Australia); Phyllis Allfrey (Dominica)
Poems about poems
 parody: Wendy Cope's "The expense of spirits is a crying shame" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis1986) about William Shakespeare's "Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame"
 parody: Wendy Cope's "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) about William Shakespeare's "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck" (1609)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "My glass shall not persuade me I'm senescent" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) about William Shakespeare's "My glass shall not persuade me I am old" (1609)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "Not only marble, but the plastic toys" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis1986) about William Shakespeare's "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments" (1609)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "How like a sprinter you have turned and run" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) about William Shakespeare's "How like a winter hath my absence been" (1609)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "Let me not to the marriage of true swine" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis1986) about William Shakespeare's "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" (1609)
 parody: Owen Seaman's "To Julia in Shooting Togs and a Herrickose Vein" about Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes" (1648)
 parody: Peter De Vries's "To his Importunate Mistress: Andrew Marvell Updated" (The New Yorker24 Feb. 1986; imitation), about Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress"
 parody: Wendy Cope's "My Lover" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis) about Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno" (ca. 1759-63)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "From Strugnell's Rubáiyát"(Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) about Edward FitzGerald's "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" (1859)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "A Policeman's Lot" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) about W. S. Gilbert's "When a felon's not engaged in his employment" (The Pirates of Penzance, 1879)
 parody: Wendy Cope's "Waste Land Limericks" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis 1986) about T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
 parody: Wendy Cope's "Budgie Finds his Voice" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis) about Ted Hughes' Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1972)
 imitation: Wendy Cope's "Indeed 'tis true. I travel here and there" (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis1986) about William Shakespeare's "Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there" (1609)
 imitation: Marilyn Hacker's "Did you love well what very soon you left?" (Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons 1986), about William Shakespeare's "That time of year thou mayst in me behold"
 major influence: A. K. Ramanujan's "Zoo Gardens Revisited" (Second Sight 1986) about William Blake's "The Tyger" (1794)

1987

Maya Angelou's Now Sheba Sings the Song
U.S. Supreme Court Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., Harry A. Blackman, and John Paul Stevens rule unanimously that Shakespeare's sonnets were written by Shakespeare, not by Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford (Sept. 25)
Richard Wilbur, US Poet Laureate, 1987-88 (April 17)
Jay Wright's Selected Poems
Awards
 Joseph Brodsky (a US citizen from 1972) wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (Oct. 22)
Alfred Corn and Josephine Jacobsen win the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (April 16)
Seamus Heaney's The Haw Lantern wins the Whitbread literary award
Edward Hirsch's Wild Gratitude wins the National Book Critics Circle award (Jan. 12)
Stanley Kunitz wins the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 10)
Philip Levine wins the Lilly Prize (July 4)
Heather Spears wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for How to Read Faces
 Gwendolyn MacEwen wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Afterworlds
Jimmy Santiago Baca's Martin and Meditations on the South Valleyreceives the American Book Award for poetry
Stephen Dobyns' Cemetery Nights wins a Melville Cane Award
Carol Ann Duffy's Selling Manhattan wins the Somerset Maugham Award
Marie Howe's The Good Thief selected for the 1987 National Poetry Series
Brigit Pegeen Kelly's first collection of poems, To The Place of Trumpets selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets
Deaths
Carlton "Carly" Barrett (April 17; Jamaica); Frank Marshall Davis (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); R. D. Fitzgerald (Australia) (May 24); Hildegarde Flanner (US); Robert Francis (US); Richard Lehmann; John Logan, (Nov. 6); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Gwendolyn MacEwen; Howard Moss, poetry editor of The New Yorker, at 65 (Sept. 16), from a heart attack); Grace Perry (Australia); Peter Tosh (Jamaica); Byron Vazakas (US); Glenway Wescott, at 85 (Feb. 22), from a stroke
Poems about poems
 parody: Tom Clark's "Julia's Under-garments Viewed as a Vision of H2O" (Easter Sunday 1987), about Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes" (1648)
 major influence: Tom Clark's "Dover Beach" (Easter Sunday 1987) about Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867)

1988

 Joseph Brodsky's To Urania
Philip Larkin's Collected Poems
Howard Nemerov becomes US Poet Laureate (May 16)
Awards
Anthony Hecht wins the Lilly Prize (June 3)
Donald Justice wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
William Meredith's Partial Accounts wins the Pulitzer Prize (March 31)
Peter Porter's The Automatic Oracle wins a Whitbread literary award
Derek Walcott wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
C. K. Williams' Flesh and Blood wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Jan. 11)
Gwendolyn MacEwen wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) forAfterworlds
Erin Mouré wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Furious
Donald Hall's The One Day wins the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize
Michael S. Harper appointed as the first Poet Laureate of the State of Rhode Island (1988-93)
Daniel Hoffman's Hang-Gliding from Helicon: New and Selected Poems, 1948-1988 wins the Paterson Poetry Prize
Garrett Hongo's The River of Heaven is the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets 
Marie Howe is selected for a Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets 
Andrew Hudgins' After the Lost War: A Narrative receives the Poetry Prize
Deaths
Léonie Fuller Adams (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Sterling Brown; Vincent Buckley (Australia); Henry Coulette; Robert Duncan, at 69 (Feb. 3), of a heart attack; Thomas Hornsby Ferril (US); John Clellon Holmes, at 62 (March 30), of cancer; Flexmore Hudson (Australia); Louis Johnson (New Zealand); Iain Lonie (New Zealand); Miguel Pinero, at 41 (June 16), of cirrhosis of the liver; Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, at 90 (Oct. 1) 
Poems about poems
 imitation: Edwin Morgan's "Variations on Omar Khayyám" (Themes on a Variation 1988) about Edward FitzGerald's "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" (1859)
 imitation: Louis Simpson's "Back in the States" (Collected Poems 1988) about Sarah Fuller Adams's "Nearer, my God, to Thee" (1841)
 major influence: Neil Curry, "Voyages. II of Mr John Newton" (Ships in Bottles 1988) about John Newton's "Amazing Grace" (1779)
 major influence: George Szirtes's "A Greek Musée" (Metro 1988) about W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938)

1989

 The Dead Poets Society, a film directed by Peter Weir, with a screenplay by Tom Schulman and excerpts from many traditional poets, ending with the title and opening line of Walt Whitman's lament on the death of Abraham Lincoln, "O Captain! My Captain!"
Edward Dorn's The Gunslinger
Rita Dove's Grace Notes
 My Left Foot, a film directed by Jim Sheridan about Christy Brown, the Irish poet, and based on his autobiography
Howard Nemerov, US Poet Laureate, 1988-90
Awards
Edgar Bowers is awarded the Bollingen Prize for For Louis Pasteur
Allen Curnow wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Michael Donaghy's Shibboleth wins the Whitbread Poetry Award
Donald Hall's The One Day wins the National Book Critics Circle award (July 9)
Richard Howard wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mona Van Duyn wins the Lilly Prize (June 2)
Richard Wilbur's New and Collected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize (March 30)
Heather Spears wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for The Word for Sand
Heather Spears wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with The Word for Sand
April Bernard's Blackbird Bye Bye selected for the Walt Whitman Award
Robert Creeley serves as New York State Poet Laureate (1989-91)
Deaths
Richard Willard Armour, at 82 (Feb. 28), of Parkinson's disease; Irving Berlin (US); Sterling A. Brown, at 87 (Jan. 13), of leukemia (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Malcolm Rowley (US); Arthur J. Seymour (Guyana); May Swenson (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Robert Penn Warren, at 84 (Sept. 15), of cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US) 
Poems about poems
 parody: Gavin Ewart's "So We'll Go No More A-roving" (Penultimate Poems 1989) about George Gordon, lord Byron's "So We'll Go No More a Roving" (1830)
 imitation: Charles Reznikoff's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (Poems 1918-1975 1989) about John Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (1820)

1990

Maya Angelou's I Shall Not be Moved
Allen Ginsberg is crowned Majelis King in Prague on May Day
Mark Strand, US Poet Laureate, 1990-91 (May 25)
Awards
Hayden Carruth wins the Lilly Prize (June 1)
Paul Durcan's Daddy, Daddy wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Rodney Jones' Transparent Gestures wins the National Book Critics Circle award (Feb. 12)
Sorley Maclean wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
William Meredith wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Merrill's The Inner Room wins the Library of Congress Bobbitt National Prize (Oct. 26)
Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 12)
Patricia Young wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for The Mad and Beautiful Mothers
Margaret Avison wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with No Time
Amy Gerstler's Bitter Angel wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
Louise Glück's Ararat receives the the Library of Congress's Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
Marilyn Hacker's Going Back to the River receives the Lambda Literary Award
John Haines' New Poems 1980-88 receives both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Western States Book Award
Joy Harjo's In Mad Love and War receives an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award
Lynda Hull's Star Ledger: Poems wins the Edwin Ford Piper Award
Deaths
Howard Baker (US); Ronald M. Berndt (Australia); Frances Chung (US); Lawrence George Durrell; William Hart-Smith (Australia; April 15); Thomas McGrath (US)

1991

W. H. Auden's Collected Poems
 Joseph Brodsky, US Poet Laureate, 1991-92 (May 10)
Wendy Cope's best-selling Serious Concerns
Awards
Amy Gerstler wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
Laura Riding Jackson's The Word "Women" and other Related Writings and Donald Justice's New and Selected Poems win the Bollingen Prize (Jan. 30). Laura Riding Jackson is honoured for her lifetime contribution to poetry.
Philip Levine's What Work Is wins the National Book Award (Nov. 20)
Michael Longley's Gorse Fires wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
J. D. McClatchy wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mona Van Duyn's Near Changes wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 9)
David Wagoner wins the Lilly Prize
Judith Wright wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Richard Wilbur wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Karen Connelly wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for The Small Words in My Body
Don McKay wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Night Field
Sandra Cisneros' Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories wins the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award
Billy Collins' Questions About Angels selected for the National Poetry Series
Martha Collins' The Arrangement of Space wins the Peregrine Smith Poetry Competition
Albert Goldbarth's Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology wins the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry 
 Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, edited by Essex Hemphill, wins a Lambda Literary Award
Lynda Hull's Star Ledger: Poems wins the Carl Sandburg Award
Mark Jarman's The Black Riviera (1990) wins the Poets' Prize
Deaths
Dorothy Auchterlonie (Australia; Feb. 21); George Barker; R. F. Brissenden; Constance Carrier (US); Paul Engle; Roy Fuller; Etheridge Knight (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Howard Nemerov, at 71 (July 5), of cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Laura Riding Jackson, at 90 (Sept. 2), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); James Schuyler, at 67 (April 12), of a stroke (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dennis Scott (Feb. 21; Jamaica); George Thaniel (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Poems about poems
 parody: Gavin Ewart's "On Being Criticized for Categorizing Rochester's 'A Ramble in St James's Park' as Light Verse" (Collected Poems 1980-1990 1991; criticism), about John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's "A Ramble in Saint James's Park" (1680)
 parody: Gavin Ewart's "'If'" (Collected Poems 1980-1990 1991) about Rudyard Kipling's "If--" (1910)
 imitation: Mimi Khalvati's "La Belle Dame" (In White Ink 1991) about John Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (1820)

1992

Mona Van Duyn, US Poet Laureate, 1992-93 (June 14)
Awards
John Ashbery wins the Lilly Prize
Albert Goldbarth's Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Feb. 14)
Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats, about AIDS, wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection (UK and Eire); Simon Armitage wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Kid; and Jackie Kay wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Black Bottom"
Tony Harrison's The Gaze of the Gorgon wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems wins the National Book Award for poetry (Nov. 18)
Adrienne Rich wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
James Tate's Selected Poems (1991) wins the Pulitzer Prize for 1992 (April 7)
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Derek Walcott (Oct. 8)
Kate Braid wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Covering Rough Ground
Lorna Crozier wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Inventing the Hawk
Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 receives the National Book Critics' Circle Award
Amy Clampitt becomes a MacArthur Foundation Fellow
Lynn Emanuel's The Dig selected for the National Poetry Series
Essex Hemphill's Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry wins the National Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award
Tony Hoagland's Sweet Ruin is chosen for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and wins the Zacharis Award from Emerson College 
David Ignatow receives the Frost Medal
Deaths
Kenneth Burke; George MacBeth (Feb. 16), of motor neuron disease; John Cage (US); R.G. Everson (Canada); Robert W. V. Gittings; Audre LordeEve Merriam, (née Moskowitz; April 11), of cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Elder Olson (US); Roland Robinson (Australia; Feb. 8)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Jo Shapcott's "Vegetable Love" (Phrase Book 1992; imitation), about Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress"

1993

Maya Angelou reads "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President William Clinton (Jan. 20), excerpt at Poetry Foundation
 Bound by Honor, a film directed by Taylor Hackford, based on the life of poet Jimmy Santiaga Baca, who co-wrote the screenplay
Geoffrey Dearmer's A Pilgrim's Song: Selected Poems
Rita Dove, 7th US Poet Laureate, 1993-95 (May 18)
 Poetic Justice, a film directed by John Singleton: Maya Angelou's poetry is featured, and she appears as Aunt June
Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia"
Awards
Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats (1992), a collection memorializing his friends and loved ones who had fallen victim of the AIDS pandemic, receives the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
A. R. Ammons' Garbage wins the National Book Award for poetry and the Library of Congress's Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
Hayden Carruth's Collected Poems 1946-1991 wins the National Book Critics Circle poetry award (Feb. 28)
Ciaran Carson's First Language wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection and the Whitbread Poetry Prize; Don Paterson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Nil Nil; and Vicki Feaver wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Judith"
Louise Glück's The Wild Iris (1992) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 13) and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award
Stanley Kunitz wins the National Medal of Arts (Oct. 7)
Kathleen Raine wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Gerald Stern wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Mark Strand's Dark Harbor wins the Bollingen Prize
Charles Wright wins the Lilly Poetry Prize (May 4)
Lorna Crozier wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Inventing the Hawk
Don Coles wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Forests of the Medieval World
Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven receives the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
Michael Blumenthal's Weinstock Among the Dying: A Novel receives the Harold U. Ribalow Prize
Rafael Campo's The Other Man Was Me: A Voyage to the New World wins the National Poetry Series Open Competition
Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Latin Deli: Prose & Poetry wins the Anisfield Wolf Book Award
Mónica de la Torre arrives from Mexico in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York City
Alison Hawthorne Deming's Science and Other Poems selected to receive the Walt Whitman Award
Allen Ginsberg receives the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters) from the French Minister of Culture
Donald Hall's autobiographical Life Work wins the New England Book award for nonfiction
Daniel Halpern receives the PEN Publisher Citation
Denis Johnson receives a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction
Deaths
Helen Adam (US); Thomas A. Dorsey (US); Nancy Keesing (Australia; Jan. 19); Ronald McCuaig (Australia); Oodgeroo Noonuccal ('Kath Walker') (Sept. 16; Australia); Keith Sinclair (New Zealand);William Stafford
Poems about poems
 imitation: Roseanna Warren's "Lena's House: Watercolor" (Stained Glass 1993), about Sir Philip Sidney's "You Gote-heard Gods" (1590)
 imitation: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "The Sea is Calm Tonight" (These Are My Rivers 1993) about Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867)
 major influence: Daniel Weissbort's "Poem" (Nietzsche's Attaché Case: New & Selected Poems1993) about Dylan Thomas's "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" (1946)

1994

 Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film directed by Mike Newell in which W. H. Auden's "Stop all the clocks" is read as a eulogy
Craig Raine's History: The Home Movie
John Wain's Hungry Generations
Awards
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters for her Annie Allen (Nov. 16)
 Mark Doty's My Alexandria wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (Feb. 13)
James Fenton's Out of Danger wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
David Ferry wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Donald Hall wins the Lilly Poetry Prize
Alan Jenkins' Harm wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection; Kwame Dawes wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Progeny of Air; and Iain Crichton wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Smith Autumn"
Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular (1993) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 12)
W. S. Merwin wins the Academy of American Poets Tanning Prize (Sept. 29)
Paul Muldoon's The Annals of Chile wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
James Tate's Worshipful Company of Fletchers wins the National Book Award for poetry (Nov. 16)
Richard Wilbur wins the National Medal of Arts (Oct. 14)
Diana Brebner wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for The Golden Lotus
Robert Hilles wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Cantos from a Small Room
Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues wins the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award
Cyrus Cassells' Soul Make a Path Through Shouting receives the William Carlos Williams Award
Marilyn Hacker's Winter Numbers wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award
Richard Howard serves as Poet Laureate of New York State (1994-96)
Josephine Jacobsen is inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters
Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Song is the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets
Deaths
Charles Bukowski, of leukemia (March 9; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Amy Clampitt, (Sept. 10), of ovarian cancer (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); William Everson (US); Lindley Williams Hubbell (US); Lynda Hull, in an automobile accident (March 29; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Peter Quennel; John Wain (May 24), of a stroke
Poems about poems
 parody: Tom Clark's "Fate Taint" (Junkets On A Sad Planet: Scenes From The Life Of John Keats1994) about John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" (1820)
 imitation: Adrian Henri's "Winter Garden" (Not Fade Away: Poems 1989-1994 1994; response), about Thomas Campion's "There is a Garden in her Face"
 imitation: Adrian Henri's "From an Antique Land" (Not Fade Away: Poems 1989-1994 1994) about Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" (1818)
 imitation: Frank Kuppner (1951-): "In a Persian Garden" (132 original stanzas, revised and increased to 150; Everything is Strange 1994) about Edward FitzGerald's "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" (1859)
 imitation: Hugh MacDiarmid's "Nearer, my God, to Thee" (Complete Poems, II, 1994) about Sarah Fuller Adams's "Nearer, my God, to Thee" (1841)

1995

Robert Hass is named US Poet Laureate 1995-97 (May 7)
Jim Mays, head of English at University College, Dublin, announces that 300 poems by S. T. Coleridge have been discovered (Feb. 16)
Sotheby's uncovers four Walt Whitman notebooks (Feb. 17)
Awards
A. R. Ammons wins the Lilly Poetry Prize (April 26)
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the National Medal of Arts (Oct. 5)
 Mark Doty's My Alexandria chosen for the National Poetry Series, also wins the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize
Seamus Heaney wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (Oct. 5)
Kenneth Koch's One Train wins the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 6)
Stanley Kunitz's Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected wins the National Book Award for poetry
Denise Levertov wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Philip Levine's Simple Truth (1994) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 18)
Sean O'Brien's Ghost Train wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection; Jane Duran wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Breathe Now, Breathe; and Jenny Joseph wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "In Honour of Love" 
Bernard O'Donoghue's Gunpowder wins the Whitbread Poetry Prize
Mark Rudman's Rider wins the National Book Critics Circle poetry award (Feb. 26)
James Tate wins the Academy of American Poets Tanning Prize (Sept. 19)
Beth Goobie wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Scars of Light
Anne Szumigalski wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Voice
Ralph Angel's Neither World receives the James Laughlin Award
Margaret Atwood's Morning in the Burned House is a co-winner of the Trillium Award
Hayden Carruth awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship
Cyrus Cassells is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize
Lorna Dee Cervantes receives a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award
Jane Cooper holds the post of New York State Poet (1995-97)
Deborah Digges wins the Kingsley Tufts Prize
 Mark Doty's Atlantis receives the Ambassador Book Award, the Bingham Poetry Prize, and a Lambda Literary Award
Kimiko Hahn's The Unbearable Heart receives an American Book Award
Bob Hicok's The Legend of Light receives the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry (and is later named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year)
Scott Hightower's Part of the Bargain wins the Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets
Deaths
Kingsley Amis, at 73 (Oct. 22), after an accidental fall; Earle Birney (Canada); John Blight (Australia); Donald Davie, at 73 (Sept. 18), of cancer; Max Harris (Jan. 13; Australia); Gwen Harwood (Australia; Dec. 4); Essex Hemphill, from complications relating to AIDS (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Philip Hodgins (Australia); Helene Johnson (July 7), after osteoporosis (US); Jane Kenyon, of leukemia (April; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Charlee Marshall (Australia); James Merrill, at 68 (Feb. 6), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Bruce St. John (Barbados); Andrew Salkey (April 28; Panama); May Sarton (US); Kendrick Smithyman (Dec. 28; New Zealand); Sir Stephen Spender, at 86 (July 16), of a heart ailment (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Harold Stewart (Australia) 
Poems about poems
 parody: Jon Stallworthy's "From the Life [My Last Mistress]" about Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842)
 imitation: Elizabeth Spires's "Good Friday. Driving Westward" (Worldling 1995; imitation), about John Donne's "Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward" (1613) 
 imitation: Jon Stallworthy's "The Thread" (The Guest From the Future 1995) about Robert Browning's "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" (1855)
 imitation: Richard Howard's "Nikolaus Mardruz to his Master Ferdinand, Count of Tyrol, 1565" (Yale Review 1995) about Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842)
 major influence: Amelia Blossom Pegram's "Burials" (The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry 1995) about Cecil Frances Alexander's "Maker of Heaven and Earth" (1848)

1996

 Dead Man, a film directed by Jim Jarmusch about a man named William Blake who goes on a trek through the western US and is taken by a character named Nobody as the resurrected Romantic poet
Stone tablet placed in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey for Sir John Betjeman (Nov. 11).
Awards
Hayden Carruth's Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995 wins the National Book Award (Nov. 6)
John Fuller's Stones and Fires wins the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection; Kate Clanchy wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Slattern; and Kathleen Jamie wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "The Graduates"
Jorie Graham's The Dream of the Unified Field (1995) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 9)
Seamus Heaney's The Spirit Level wins the Whitbread Prize (Jan. 21, 1997)
William Matthews' Time & Money wins the National Book Critics Circle poetry award (March 21)
Sir Les Murray's Subhuman Redneck Poems wins the T. S. Eliot Prize
Peter Redgrove wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Adrienne Rich wins the Tanning Prize
Gerald Stern wins the Lilly Prize
Jay Wright wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Lorna Crozier wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Everything Arrives at the Light
 E.D. Blodgett wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Apostrophes: Woman at a Piano
Robin Becker's All-American Girl wins the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry
Rafael Campo's What the Body Told wins the Lambda Literary Award
Joshua Clover's Madonna anno domini chosen to receive the Walt Whitman Award
Judith Ortiz Cofer's young adult book An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio receives The American Library Association Reforma Pura Belpre Medal and the Fanfare Best Book of the Year Award
Olena Kalytiak Davis is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award
Mark Doty's Heaven's Coast receives the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction
Rita Dove wins the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and President Bill Clinton awards her the National Humanities Medal
Denise Duhamel's The Star-Spangled Banner wins the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize 
Martin Espada's Imagine the Angels of Bread wins an American Book Award 
Nikki Giovanni wins the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters
Marilyn Hacker's Selected Poems: 1965-1990 receives the Poets' Prize
Susan Howe is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship 
Deaths
Joseph Brodsky; George M. Brown, at 74 (April 13); Geoffrey Dearmer, at 103 (Aug. 18); Lincoln Kirstein (US); Larry Levis, at 49, of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Dorothy Livesay (Canada); Mina Loy (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anthony McNeill (Jamaica); J. R. Rowland (Australia)
Poems about poems
 imitation: Rafael Campo's "IX. Sonnet for the Portuguese" (What the Body Told 1996) about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" (1850)
 imitation: Maxime Kumin's "Almost Spring, Driving Home, Reciting Hopkins" (Connecting the Dots: Poems 1996) about Gerard Manley Hopkins's "God's Grandeur" (1877)

1997

Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at the inauguration of President Clinton (Jan. 20)
 Regeneration, a film based on Pat Barker's novel of the same name, about the World War I poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon
 Wilde, a film directed by Brian Gilbert, on the life of Oscar Wilde
Robert Pinsky becomes new US Poet Laureate, 1997-2000
Bill Manhire named first Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate of New Zealand.
Awards
John Haines wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Hass' Sun under Wood wins the Book Critics Circle Award (March 18)
Anthony Hecht wins the Tanning Prize
Ted Hughes wins the Whitbread Award for Tales from Ovid (Jan. 27, 1998)
William Matthew wins the Lilly Prize
William Meredith's Effort at Speech wins the National Book Award (Nov. 18)
Lisel Mueller's Alive Together: New and Selected Poems (1996) wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 7)
Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers without End wins the Bollingen Prize
John Ashbery wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Marilyn Bowering wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) forAutobiography
Dionne Brand wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Land to Light On
Jamie McKendrick wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for The Marble Fly; Robin Robertson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for A Painted Field; and Lavinia Greenlaw wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "A World Where News Travelled Slowly"
Mary Jo Bang's first book Apology for Want chosen for the Bakeless Prize
Cyrus Cassells' Beautiful Signor wins the Lambda Literary Award
Mahmoud Darwish is the recipient of France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal 
Olena Kalytiak Davis' And Her Soul Out of Nothing selected for the Brittingham Prize
Jorie Graham serves as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets (1997-2003)
Eamon Grennan's Leopardi: Selected Poems wins the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
Geoffrey Hill's Canaan wins the Kahn Award
David Ignatow receives the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America
Hettie Jones' first collection of poems, Drive receives the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America
Donald Justice serves as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets (1997-2003)
Deaths
Alfred G. Bailey (Canada); Martin Wylde Carter (Dec. 13; Guyana); James Dickey, at 73 (Jan. 19; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Allen Ginsberg, at 70, of liver cancer (April 5; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); David Ignatow (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ellsworth McGranaham 'Shake' Keane (Nov. 11; St. Vincent); James Laughlin, at 83 (Nov. 12); Laurie Lee, at 82 (May 15); Denise LevertovWilliam Matthews, at 55 (Nov. 12), of a heart attack (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anne Marriott (Canada); David Martin (Australia); David McCord (US)
Poems about poems
 parody: Dorothy Hickson's "129F. A Response to Shaxper's Sonnet 129" (The Muses Strikes Back1997), about William Shakespeare's "Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame" (1609) 
 parody: Adrian Mitchell's "Nostalgia---Now Threepence Off" (Heart on the Left: Poems: 1953-19841997) about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" (1838)
 imitation: Annie's Finch's "Coy Mistress", about Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress"
 imitation: David Wojahn's "Till we have built Jerusalem (Guyana, 1976)" (The Falling Hour 1997) about William Blake's "And did those feet in ancient time" (1808)

1998

Robert Pinsky, Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress, launched the Favorite Poem Project (FPP), which solicited Americans for a year, until April 30, 1999, to submit their favorite poem by letter and email to Boston University's Mugar Library, where they are stored at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. The Library of Congress has audio recordings of a thousand reading their poem, and videotapes of two hundred doing so. 18,000 Americans wrote in. Pinsky and Maggie Dietz (Director of the FPP) published 200 of these poems in a project anthology, Americans' Favorite Poems (W. W. Norton, 1999).
Lynn Crosbie's Queen Rat
Awards
A. R. Ammons wins the Tanning Prize
Paul Farley's The Boy from the Chemist is here to see you, wins the Forward award for the best first collection of poems
Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, a volume of poems addressed to his late first wife, Sylvia Plath, wins the Whitbread Award (Jan. 27, 1999)
W. S. Merwin wins the Lilly Prize (July 8)
Sir Les Murray wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Charles Simic wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Gerald Stern's This Time wins the National Book Award (Nov. 18) and the National Book Critics Circle Award
Charles Wright wins the Pulitzer Prize for Black Zodiac (April 14)
Barbara Nickel wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for The Gladys Elegies
 Stephanie Bolster wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with White Stone: The Alice Poems
Ted Hughes wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Birthday Letters; Paul Farley wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You; and Sheenagh Pugh wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Envying Owen Beattie"
Sandra Alcosser's Except By Nature receives the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin Award (also selected for the 1997 National Poetry Series)
Toi Derricotte's Tender (1997) wins the Paterson Poetry Prize
Toi Derricotte's The Black Notebooks (1997) wins the Annisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction
Emanuel di Pasquale wins the Bordighera Poetry Prize for his translation of Joe Salerno's Song of the Tulip Tree
Lawrence Ferlinghetti becomes the first Poet Laureate of San Francisco 
David Ferry elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Nikki Giovanni wins three NAACP Image Awards for Literature
Geoffrey Hill's The Triumph of Love wins the Heinemann Book Award 
Tony Hoagland's Donkey Gospel receives the James Laughlin Award
Mark Jarman's Questions for Ecclesiastes wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Deaths
John Malcolm Brinnin; Audrey Alexandra Brown (Canada); Geoffrey Dutton (Sept. 17; Australia); John Forbes (Australia); Aimee Joan Grunberger, of cancer, at 44; Zbigniew Herbert (July 28; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Ted Hughes, of cancer (Oct. 28; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Janet Lewis (Dec. 1; US); Hilda Morley, at 81; Alastair Morrison ('Afferbeck Lauder') (Australia); Octavio Paz, Mexican poet (April 19; Academy of American Poets Web site); Elizabeth Riddell (Australia; July 3); Martin Seymour-Smith (July 1); Vivian Lancaster Virtue (Dec. 17; Jamaica)
Poems about poems
 major influence: Alicia Ostriker's "Holocaust" about W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938)

1999

 Ernest Hemingway's oldest son John donates his father's Three Stories and Ten Poems to the Library of Congress
Andrew Motion becomes British Poet Laureate (May 19)
Robert Pinsky becomes US Poet Laureate (April 27)
Scotland's Parliament opened with the singing of Robert Burns' "A Man's a Man For A'That," instead of "God Save The Queen" (July 1)
Awards
Ai's Vice: New and Selected Poems wins the National Book Award (Nov. 17)
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Robert Creeley's So There and Life & Death win the Bollingen Prize (Feb. 9)
Seamus Heaney wins the Whitbread Prize for his translation of Beowulf (Jan. 2000)
Maxime Kumin wins the Lilly Prize
Jackson MacLow wins the Tanning Prize
Edwin Morgan wins the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (UK)
Marie Ponsot wins the Book Critics Circle Award for The Bird Catcher (March 8)
Adrienne Rich wins the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (Oct.)
Mark Strand wins the Pulitzer Prize for Blizzard of One (April 12)
Hilary Clark wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for More Light
Jan Zwicky wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Songs for Relinquishing the Earth
Jo Shapcott wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for My Life Asleep; Nick Drake wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for The Man in the White Suit; and Robert Minhinnick wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Twenty-five Laments for Iraq"
Michael Blumenthal's Dusty Angel wins the Isabella Stewart Gardner Prize
Geoffrey Brock receives the Raiziss de Palchi Translation Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for his work on Cesare Pavese's poetry. His resulting volume, Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (2002) wins the MLA's Lois Roth Translation Award and the PEN Center USA's Translation Award
Lucille Clifton and Robert Creeley are elected Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets
Wanda Coleman's Bathwater Wine (1998) wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Tory Dent's HIV, Mon Amour wins the James Laughlin Award
Carol Ann Duffy becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in England 
Denise Duhamel's The Star-Spangled Banner wins the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize 
Lynn Emanuel's Then, Suddenly— awarded the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets
David Ferry's Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Bingham Poetry Prize from Boston Book Review, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
Louise Glück's Vita Nova wins the Boston Book Review's Bingham Poetry Prize and The New Yorker's Book Award in Poetry; Glück is elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Terrance Hayes' Muscular Music wins the Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Juan Felipe Herrera's Crashboomlove receives the Americas Award
Susan Howe is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Peter Johnson receives a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
Judy Jordan's Carolina Ghost Woods selected for the Walt Whitman Award and wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
Deaths
Patricia Beer, at 79; Edward Dorn, 70 (Dec.); Ida Affleck Graves, 97 (Dec.) Moondog, street poet (aka Louis T. Hardin), 83 (Sept. 8); John Frederick Nims, (Jan. 13; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Shel Silverstein, 66 (May 9; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John J. M. Figueroa (March 5; Jamaica)
Michael Hartnett (Oct. 13; Irish), from alcoholic liver syndrome
Poems about poems
 major influence: Lorna Goodison's "To Mr. William Wordsworth, Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland" (Turn Thanks 1999)
 major influence: David Ray's "The Ashes" (Demons in the Diner 1999) about Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring & Fall" (1918)

2000

Stanley Kunitz is appointed US Poet Laureate (July 31)
Janice Mirikitani succeeds Lawrence Ferlinghetti as San Francisco's Poet Laureate (Feb.)
National Poetry Day in Great Britain (Oct. 4): 300 school children at the Royal Festival Hall and 4,000 persons nationwide performed Patience Agbabi's "Word," a new Guinness World Record for simultaneous mass performance of a poem
Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat" named Britain's favourite children's poem in a BBC Poll (Oct. 3)
Justin Trudeau quotes from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods" at the funeral of his father, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Oct. 3)
Spike Milligan is made an honorary knight
David Bottoms appointed poet laureate of Georgia (to present)
Awards
John Burnside's The Asylum Dance wins the Whitbread Poetry Award
Anne Carson and Lucia Perillo win MacArthur Fellowships (June 13)
Lucille Clifton's Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 wins the National Book Award
Carl Dennis wins the Lilly Prize (April 17)
Lyn Hejinian wins the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Ruth Stone's Ordinary Words wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (March 13)
Hugo Williams's Billy's Rain wins the T. S. Eliot Prize (Jan.)
C. K. Williams' Repair wins the Pulitzer Prize (April 10)
Maya Angelou wins the National Medal of Arts (Dec. 14)
Frank Bidart wins the Wallace Stevens Award, formerly the Tanning Prize (Dec. 15)
David Ferry's Of No Country I Know wins the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry (Dec. 18)
Esta Spalding wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Lost August
Linda Rogers won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Snail Love with Opera"
Don McKay wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Another Gravity
Michael Donaghy wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Conjure; Andrew Waterhouse wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for In; and Tessa Biddington wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "The Death of Descartes"
Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin wins the Booker Prize and the Dashell Hammett Prize
Lawrence Ferlinghetti receives the lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle 
Nick Flynn's Some Ether receives the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award
Seamus Heaney's translation Beowulf wins the Whitbread Book of the Year Award
Susan Howe is elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers' The Gospel of Barbecue selected for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize 
Deaths
Yehuda Amichai (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edgar Bowers, at 75, of non-Hodgkins' lymphoma; Gwendolyn Brooks (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Bruce (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Roland Flint, at 66 (Jan. 2), of cancer; A. D. Hope (Australia; July 13); Al Purdy (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site), at 81 (April 21), of lung cancer; Libby Scheier (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Karl Shapiro, at 86 (May 14); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); R. S. Thomas, 87 (Sept. 25); Judith Wright, 85, of a heart attack (Australia; June 26); William Scammell (Nov. 29); Gwendolyn Brooks, 83 (Dec. 3), of cancer; Adrian Henry (Dec. 20); Nancy Cato (Australia); Aldwyn "Lord Kitchener" Roberts (Feb 11; Trinidad and Tobago); Philip Manderson Sherlock, at 98 (Dec. 4; Jamaica); Lauris Edmond (New Zealand); Judith Wright (Australia)

2001

On September 11, al-Qaeda terrorists kill 3,000 by hijacking four planes and crashing them into the twin towers of the New York World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia
Billy Collins is named US Poet Laureate (June 20), starting October
(Canadian) P. K. Page's poem "Planet Earth" was selected by Marilyn Hacker to be read during the last week in March as part of the United Nations project, "Dialogue among Civilizations through Poetry," at the U.N. building in New York, Mount Everest, the West Philippines Sea, and Antarctica. Over 200 poetry readings in 150 cities worldwide took place that week.
Professor John Basinger, 67, performed, from memory, John Milton's Paradise Lost at Three Rivers Community-Technical College in Norwich, Connecticutt, on Dec. 7-9, a feat that took 18 hours
A commemorative plaque unveiled for Wilfrid Owen at his boyhood Merseyside home in Birkenhead 
Paul Celan's Glottal Stop wins the Griffin Prize (International)
Awards
Judy Jordan's Carolina Ghost Woods wins the Book Critics Circle Award (March 12)
Stephen Dunn's Different Hours wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (April 16)
Yusef Komunyakaa wins the Lilly Prize (April 26)
Alan Dugan's "Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry" wins the National Book Award for Poetry (Nov.)
Anne Carson's Men in the Off Hours wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband wins the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry Awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Sharon Thesen wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for A Pair of Scissors
Rowland Molony won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "The Dying and the Light"
 George Elliott Clarke wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Execution Poems
Sean O'Brien wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Downriver; John Stammers wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for The Panoramic Lounge Bar; and Ian Duhig wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "The Lammas Hireling"
Philip Booth's Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999 receives the Poets' Prize
Laure-Anne Bosselaar's Small Gods of Grief wins the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry
Ralph Burns' Ghost Notes to win the Field Poetry Prize
Mahmoud Darwish is the recipient of the Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation
Emanuel di Pasquale's translation from the Italian of Silvio Ramat's Sharing a Trip: Selected Poemswins the Academy of American Poets' Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship
Clayton Esleman's translation of César Vallejo's Trilce is a co-winner of the Academy of American Poets' 2001 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
Dana Gioia's Interrogations at Noon wins the American Book Award
Albert Goldbarth's Saving Lives wins the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry 
Edith Grossman wins the PEN-BOMC Translation Prize for her rendering of Mario Vargas Llosa'sFeast of the Goat
Robert Hass serves as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets (2001-07)
Terrance Hayes' Hip Logic wins the 2001 National Poetry Series
Fanny Howe's Selected Poems wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Peter Johnson's Miracles & Mortifications (2001) wins the James Laughlin Award
Deaths
Agha Shahid Ali (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); A. R. Ammons (Feb. 25; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Helen Bevington; Diana Brebner (Canada); Gregory N. Corso, at 70 (Jan. 17; Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Allen Curnow (New Zealand); Louis Dudek(Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); David Gascoyne (Nov. 25); Pamela Gillilan (Oct. 26); Elizabeth Jennings (Oct. 26); Anne Ridler, 89 (Oct. 16); Andrew Waterhouse (Oct. 20); Amy Witting (Australia) 
Poems about poems
 translation: W. D. Snodgrass's "Sonnet #129 -- de/composed from Shakespeare, A" and "Sonnet #129 -- de/composed from Shakespeare, B" (De/Compositions 2001), about William Shakespeare's "Th'expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame" (1609)
 translation: W. D. Snodgrass's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways -- de/composed from Wordsworth" (De/Compositions 2001) about William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways" (1800)

2002

George Bowering, appointed Canada's first Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2002-04)
On April 9, the memorial booklet at the service for the Queen Mother at Westminster Abbey showed an anonymous poem, titled "She is Gone":

You can shed tears that she is gone
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.
Your heart can be empty because you can't see her
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her and only that she's gone
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
or you can do what she'd want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

This was based on a prose piece, "Remember Me," written by Cumbria writer David Harkins in 1981 

Awards
 Christian Bök's Eunoia (a lipogram that uses only one vowel in each of its chapters) wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Alice Notley's Disobedience wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize
Alice Oswald's Dart wins the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Carl Dennis's Practical Gods wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Heather Spears wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Required Reading: A Witness in Words and Drawings to the Reena Virk Trials 1998-2000
Christopher James won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Walking Southward on O'Connell Street"
Roy Miki wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Surrender
Peter Porter wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Max is Missing; Tom French wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Touching the Bones; and Medbh McGuckian wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "She is in the Past, She has this Grace"
Meena Akexander's Illiterate Heart wins the PEN Open Book Award
Ciaran Carson's translation of Dante's Inferno awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize
Madeline DeFrees' Blue Dusk wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and a Washington Book Award
Alice Fulton's Felt awarded the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress
Linda Gregerson's Waterborne wins the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
Deaths
June Jordan, of breast cancer (June 14); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Kenneth Koch; Dorothy Hewett (Australia; Aug. 25); R. A. Simpson (Australia; Oct. 2); Gloria Escoffery (April 24; Jamaica); Gary Catalano (Australia)

2003

Linda Gregg wins the Sara Teasdale Award 
Louise Glück serves as U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (Library of Congress; 2003-04) and is announced as the new judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets 
Frank Bidart elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Awards
Paul Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Margaret Avison's Concrete and Wild Carrot wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Don Paterson's Landing Light wins T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Book Society
W. S. Merwin wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Dionne Brand wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for thirsty
Sheenagh Pugh won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Chocolate from the Famine Museum" 
Tim Lilburn wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Kill-site
Ciarán Carson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Breaking News; A. B. Jackson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Fire Stations; and Robert Minhinnick wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "The Fox in the National Museum of Wales"
Martin Espada's Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002) receives the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and is named an American Library Association Notable Book of the year
Eamon Grennan's Still Life with Waterfall wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Deaths
Alan Dugan (Sept. 3) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); John Newlove (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Clement Byrne Christesen (Australia)
Carol Shields (July 16; Canada); Tada Chimako (Japan); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US);Josephine Jacobsen (Canada); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)

2004

Ted Kooser serves as U.S. Poet Laureate (Library of Congress) 2004-06
Pauline Michel, appointed Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2004-06)
Awards
August Kleinzahler's The Strange Hours Travelers Keep wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize
Anne Simpson's Loop wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Franz Wright's Walking to Martha's Vineyard wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
George Szirtes' Reel wins T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Betsy Struthers wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Still
William Hampton won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Encountering my first untouchables"
Roo Borson wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida
Kathleen Jamie wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for The Tree House; Leontia Flynn wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for These Days; and Daljit Nagra wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Look We Have Coming to Dover!"
Geoffrey Brock's Weighing Light receives the New Criterion Poetry Prize
Henri Cole's Middle Earth (2003) receives the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
Nick Flynn's memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City receives the the PEN/Martha Albrand Award 
Anselm Hollo's translation of Pentii Saarikoski's Trilogy receives the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets 
Deaths
Pedro Pietri, March 3 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Anthony Hecht (Oct. 20); Mona Van DuynThom Gunn, April 25 (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Fred Cogswell (Canada); Bruce Beaver (Australia; Feb. 17); Janet Frame (New Zealand); Donald Justice (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Wilbur G. Howcroft (Australia)
Poems about poems
 parody: David Hoover's "Trees" about Joyce Kilmer's "Trees"

2005

Marvin Bell begins the first of two terms as Iowa's first Poet Laureate
Awards
Charles Simic's Selected Poems 1963-2003 wins the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Roo Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Ted Kooser's Delights and Shadows wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture wins T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Book Society
Roo Borson wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida
Carole Bromley won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "The Lovers"
Anne Compton wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Processional
David Harsent wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Legion); Helen Farish wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Intimates; and Paul Farley wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Liverpool Disappears for a Billionth of a Second"
Kazim Ali's The Far Mosque wins the Alice James Books' New England/New York Award
Jack Gilbert's Refusing Heaven wins the National Book Critics Circle Award
Tony Hoagland receives the Poetry Foundation's Mark Twain Award in recognition of his contribution to humor in American poetry
Daniel Hoffman receives the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize "for an exceptional poet" from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Deaths
Stanley Kunitz, May 14, in Manhattan; Malca Litovitz (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site)
Rosamund Stanhope (Dec. 7; UK); Robert Creeley, at 78 (March 30) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Tory Dent (December) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Richard Eberhart, at 101 (June 9) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US)

2006

John Steffler, appointed Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2006-08)
Awards
Sylvia Legris's Nerve Squall wins the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize for 2006, and the 2006 Pat Lowther Memorial Award
Kamau Brathwaite's Born to Slow Horses wins the 2006 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Claudia Emerson's Late Wife wins the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Robin Blaser wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Lifetime Recognition Award)
Seamus Heaney wins the T. S. Eliot Prize (Poetry Book Society) for District and Circle
Sylvia Legris wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Nerve Squall
Anthony Snider won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Panegyric"
John Pass wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Stumbling in the Bloom
Robin Robertson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Swithering; Tishani Doshi wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Countries of the Body; and Sean O'Brien wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright"
Rita Dove wins the Common Wealth Award
Rita Dove elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Linda Gregg wins the PEN/Voelcker Award winner for Poetry
Edith Grossman is awarded the PEN Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation for lifetime achievement in the field
Donald Hall appointed the Library of Congress's fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (2006-07) (US)
Lyn Hejinian elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Deaths
Louise Bennett-Coverley (Jamaica), "Miss Lou", folk poet, July 26; Ivor Cutler (UK), March 3; Patricia Goedicke (US), of pneumonia, July 14; Irving Layton, Jan. 4, of Alzheimer's disease (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Trinidad Sánchez Jr. (US); Muriel Spark (Scotland); Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (May 14; US), at 100; Ruth Taylor (Feb. 18; Canadian), of alcoholism; Barbara Guest (Feb. 15; US); Cole Turnley (Australia); Peter Robert Edwin Viereck (May 13; US); Francis Berry (Oct. 10; UK); Philip Martin (Australia); John Heath-Stubbs (Dec. 26; US), at 88; Colin Thiele (Australia; Sept. 5)

2007

Charles Simic serves as U.S. Poet Laureate (Library of Congress) 2007-08
Michele Leggott, University of Auckland, became the inaugural poet laureate of New Zealand, 2007-09
Awards
 Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Don McKay wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Canadian) for Strike/Slip
Charles Wright wins the Griffin Trust Prize (International) for Scar Tissue
Tomas Tranströmer wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Lifetime Recognition Award)
Sean O'Brien wins the T. S. Eliot Prize (Poetry Book Society) for The Drowned Book
Sina Queyras wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Lemon Hound
Christopher Buehlman won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Wanton"
Don Domanski wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with All Our Wonders Unavenged
Sean O'Brien wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for The Drowned Book;Daljit Nagra wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Look We Have Coming to Dover!; and Alice Oswald wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Dunt"
Elizabeth Alexander selected to receive the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers
Frank Bidart wins the Bollingen Prize in American Poetry
Lucille Clifton wins the Ruth Lilly Prize
Erica Funkhouser is the receipient of the Guggenheim Foundation grant for poetry
Robert Hass' Time and Materials wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize
Deaths
Vernon Scannell (Nov. 17; US)
Brian Bransom "Bill" Griffiths (Sept. 13; UK)
Michael Peter Leopold Hamburger (June 7; UK)
Leonard Nathan, at 82 of Alzheimer's disease (US); Philip Booth, of Alzheimer's disease (July 2) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Margaret Avison (Canada; Canadian Poetry Web site); Meg Campbell (New Zealand)
William Morris Meredith (May 30; US)
Artie Gold (Feb. 14; Canadian); Jane Cooper (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Eric Rolls (Australia); John Croyston (Australia)
Poems about poems
 parody: Helen Bevington's "Herrick's Julia", about Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes" (1648)

2008

Awards
Henri Cole's Blackbird and Wolf wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
 Time and Materials by Robert Hass and Failure by Philip Schultz win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Ko Un wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Lifetime Recognition Award)
Robin Blaser wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Canadian) for The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser
John Ashbery wins the Griffin Trust Prize (International) for Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems
Jen Hadfield wins the T. S. Eliot Prize (Poetry Book Society) for Nigh-No-Place
Anne Simpson wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Quick
Anne Stewart won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Still Water, Orange, Apple, Tea"
Jacob Scheier wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with More to Keep Us Warm
Mick Imlah wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for The Lost Leader; Kathryn Simmonds wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Sunday at the Skin Launderette; and Don Paterson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "Love Poem for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze"
Victor Hernández Cruz elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Mark Doty's Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems wins the National Book Award
Clayton Eshleman receives the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets for his translation of The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo
Louise Glück receives the Wallace Stevens Award for mastery in the art of poetry
Edith Grossman receives a Guggenheim Fellowship and is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Marilyn Hacker elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Juan Felipe Herrera's Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems receives the PEN/Beyond Margins Award 
Bob Hicok's This Clumsy Living (2007) wins the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress
Edward Hirsch elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Brigit Pegeen Kelly is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Deaths
William De Witt Snodgrass (Jan. 13; US); Dorothy Porter (Dec. 10; Australian); Hayden Carruth (Sept. 29); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Betty (Elizabeth) Bartlett (June 18; UK); Andrew Thomas Knights Crozier (April 3; UK); Edward Archibald Markham (March 23; Montserrat); James Reaney (June; Canadian), at 81; Ruth Dallas (Ruth Mumford) (Mar. 18; New Zealand)
Aimée Césaire (Martinique); (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Mahmoud Darwish(Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Hone Tuwhare (New Zealand)

2009

Cilla McQueen, from Bluff, became the poet laureate of New Zealand (National Library of New Zealand; July 22)
Pierre DesRuisseaux, appointed Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate (April)
Elizabeth Alexander read her poem, "Praise Song for the Day," at the ceremony for the inauguration of President Barack Obama (Jan. 20)
A bronze plaque was unveiled on the wall of the Tennent's brewery in Dennistoun, Glasgow, the site of the former home of William Miller, who wrote "Wee Willie Winkie."
Awards
 The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Hans Magnus Enzensberger wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Lifetime Recognition Award)
 A.F. Moritz wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Canadian) for The Sentinel
C. D. Wright wins the Griffin Trust Prize (International) for Rising, Falling, Hovering
Philip Gross wins the T. S. Eliot Prize (Poetry Book Society) for The Water Table
Mark Strand wins American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (Poetry)
Alice Major wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for The Office Tower Tales
Dore Kiesselbach won the Bridport Prize (Dorset; poetry) with "Non-invasive"
David Zieroth wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with The Fly in Autumn
Don Paterson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Rain; Emma Jones wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for The Striped World; and Robin Robertson wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "At Roane Head"
Jericho Brown's first collection Please wins the American Book Award
Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and a Whiting Writer's Award (2009-10)
Julie Carr's 100 Notes on Violence selected for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize
Michael Dickman is awarded the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University for (2009-10) 
Carol Ann Duffy appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate (May 1), becoming the first woman to hold the position in its more than 300 year history
Linda Gregg's All of It Singing (2008) wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award
Daniel Halpern awarded the first Editor’s Award from Poets and Writers 
Fanny Howe receives the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Deaths
James Kirkup (May 10; UK); Robin Blaser (May 7; Canadian), at 83; Maurice Lindsay (Scottish), at 90; Ursula Askham Fanthorpe (April 28; US); Bub Bridger (New Zealand); Michael Ogilvie (Mick) Imlah (Jan. 12; UK); Ivan van Sertima (May 25; Guyana); Wayne Brown (Trinidad); Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (New Zealand)

2010

Kay Ryan serves as U.S. Poet Laureate (Library of Congress) 2008-10; W. S. Merwin serves as U.S. Poet Laureate (Library of Congress) 2010-
Awards
 Versed by Rae Armantrout wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Adrienne Rich wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Lifetime Recognition Award)
Karen Solie wins the Griffin Trust Prize (Canadian) for Pigeon
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin wins the Griffin Trust Prize (International) for The Sun-fish
Karen Solie wins the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets) for Pigeon
Richard Greene wins the Governor General's Award for Poetry (Canada) with Boxing the Compass
Seamus Heaney wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Human Chain; Hilary Menos wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) for Berg; and Julia Copus wins the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for "An Easy Passage"
Carl Adamshick's debut collection selected for the 2010 Walt Whitman Award
Rae Armantrout's Versed wins the Pulitzer Prize
Julie Carr's Sarah - of Fragments and Lines is a National Poetry Series winner
Tina Chang elected Brooklyn Poet Laureate 
Michael Dickman receives the James Laughlin Award 
Terrance Hayes' Lighthead wins the National Book Award for Poetry
Deaths
P.K. Page (Jan. 14), at 93 (Canadian); Ai (March 19) (Academy of American Poets Web site; US); Edwin Morgan (August 19), Scottish; William A. Bauer (June 12); Lucille Clifton (Feb. 13; US), at 73, David Rowbotham (Australia; Oct. 6); Peter Porter (Australia; April 23); Randolph Stow (Australia; May 29); Graham Fredriksen (Australia)