—Closing lines of "Easter, 1916" by W. B. Yeats
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
March
Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) is wounded in the head by shell fragments while serving as a lieutenant in the French infantry on the Western Front (World War I).
The first poems of English children's author Enid Blyton are published, in Nash's Magazine.
March 10 – Sir Hubert Parry writes the choral setting of William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time" (c.1804-08) which becomes known as "Jerusalem" (first performed 28 March at the Queen's Hall, London).
April 24–30 – Easter Rising in Ireland: Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin before surrendering to the British Army. Of the seven leaders of the Rising (subsequently executed), Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse and Joseph Plunkett are all poets and James Connolly a balladeer. The event is the theme of W. B. Yeats' poem "Easter, 1916", first published this September.
July 1
First day on the Somme: Poets W. N. Hodgson, Will Streets, Gilbert Waterhouse, Henry Field, Alfred Ratcliffe, Alexander Robertson and Bernard White are among the 19,000 British soldiers killed on this day alone. The Battle of the Somme continues until October 18, during which time American poet Alan Seeger (serving with the French), English poet Edward Wyndham Tennant and short story writer 'Saki' are killed, Robert Graves is seriously wounded (believed killed), Ford Madox Hueffer suffers concussion and shellshock and A. A. Milne is invalided out, Siegfried Sassoon wins the Military Cross and Cameron Highlander Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna composes the Scottish Gaelic love song An Eala Bhàn ("The White Swan") in the oral literature tradition. J. R. R. Tolkien serves as a communications officer.
W. B. Yeats makes his fifth and final proposal of marriage to the newly widowed Maud Gonne in France.
July 14 – At the first public soiree at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich) in Switzerland, Hugo Ball recites the first Dada manifesto (see text).
August 17 – F. W. Harvey becomes a Prisoner of War.
October 6 – By some accounts, the Dada movement in art, poetry and literature coalesces by this date at the cabaret, where Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Sophie Täuber and others discuss art and put on performances expressing their disgust with World War I and the interests they believe inspired it.
When Wallace Stevens' job as a lawyer for a New York City insurance company is abolished as a result of mergers, he joins the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and moves to Hartford, where he will remain the rest of his life.
Bliss Carman, April Airs: A Book of New England Lyrics, Boston: Small, Maynard and Co.; Canadian poet published in the United States
Thomas O'Hagan, Songs of Heroic Days, Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild and Stewart
Marjorie Pickthall, The Lamp of Poor Souls and Other Poems.
Duncan Campbell Scott, Lundy's Lane and Other Poems, including "The Height of Land"
Frederick George Scott, In the Battle Silences: Poems Written at the Front (Toronto: Musson)
Robert W. Service, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.
Laurence Binyon, The Anvil, and Other Poems
Edmund Blunden, Pastorals
Mary Gabrielle Collins, Branches unto the Sea
Elizabeth Daryush, Verses
W. H. Davies:
Child Lovers, and Other Poems
Collected Poems
Eleanor Farjeon, Nursery Rhymes of London Town
Robert Graves, Over the Brazier
Thomas Hardy, Selected Poems
F. W. Harvey, A Gloucestershire Lad At Home and Abroad
Aldous Huxley, The Burning Wheel
D. H. Lawrence, Amores
Joseph Lee, Ballads of Battle, Scottish poet
Winifred Mary Letts, Hallow-e'en and Poems of the War (including "The Spires of Oxford")
Charlotte Mew, The Farmer's Bride
Jessie Pope, Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times
Lady Margaret Sackville, The Pageant of War
Dorothy L. Sayers, Op. 1
Edith Sitwell and Osbert Sitwell, Twentieth Century Harlequinade, and Other Poems
The first Wheels poetry anthology Wheels 1916 edited by the Sitwells.
Cicily Fox Smith, Fighting Men
Charles Hamilton Sorley, Marlborough and Other Poems (posthumous)
Muriel Stuart, Christ at Carnival and Other Poems
Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit Gathering, lyrics translated by the author into English from the original Bengali (Indian poetry in English)
Edward Wyndham Tennant, Worple Flit and other poems (posthumous)
Edward Thomas, Six Poems, his first published poetry (under the pen name 'Edward Eastaway')
Aelfrida Tillyard, The Garden and the Fire
Katharine Tynan, The Holy War
Gilbert Waterhouse, Rail-Head and other poems (posthumous)
Evelyn Waugh, The World to Come: A Poem in Three Cantos (written at age 12; privately printed)
Anna Wickham, The Man With A Hammer
Alfred Williams, War Sonnets and Songs
W. B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
"Easter, 1916"
Responsibilities and Other Poems
Reveries Over Childhood and Youth
Some Imagist Poets second anthology
Conrad Aiken:
Turns and Movies
The Jig of Forslin
James Branch Cabell, From the Hidden Way
Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927), Poems (collected edition in two volumes)
J. W. Cunliffe, editor, Poems of the Great War
Hilda Doolittle (also known as "H.D."), Sea Garden
John Gould Fletcher, Goblins and Pagodas
Robert Frost, Mountain Interval, including "The Road Not Taken" and "Out, Out—"
Edgar A. Guest, A Heap o' Livin'
Robinson Jeffers, Californians
Sarah Orne Jewett, Verses, published posthumously (died 1909)
Alfred Kreymborg, Mushrooms
Amy Lowell, Men, Women and Ghosts
Edgar Lee Masters:
Songs and Satires
The Great Valley
Emanuel Morgan and Anne Knish, both pen names, Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments
James Oppenheim, War and Laughter
Josephine Preston Peabody, Harvest Moon
Ezra Pound, Lustra
Edward Arlington Robinson, The Man Against the Sky
Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems, Holt, Rinehart and Winston; including "Chicago"
Alan Seeger, Poems
C. J. Dennis, The Moods of Ginger Mick, Australia
W. Walter Gill, Juan-y-Pherick’s Journey and Other Poems, Isle of Man
N. C. Rai, An Indian Tale, a tale of rural life; Calcutta; India, Indian poetry in English
Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit Gathering lyrics translated by the author into English from the original Bengali; India, Indian poetry in English
W. B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
"Easter, 1916"
Responsibilities and Other Poems
Reveries Over Childhood and Youth
Jean Cocteau, Discours du Grand Sommeil, a poem written after experience as a Red Cross ambulance driver at the Belgian front in World War I
Francis Jammes, Cinq prières pour le temps de la guerre, Paris: Librairie de l'Art catholique
Pierre Reverdy, La Lucarne ovale
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname:
B. Tirumal, Angala jarmani-yuddha vivaranam, Sanskrit-language epic poem on World War I (India)
Kavikondala Venkata Rao, Vividha Kusumavali, Telugu-language (India), a collection of khandikas
Lalchand Amardinomal Jagatiani, Sunharo Sacal, Sindhi-language essays of criticism and biography on the life and work of Sachal Sarmast, a Sindhi poet (India)
Lekhnath Ponday, Rtuvicar, Nepali-language
Rabindranath Thakur, Balaka, Bengali-language (India)
Rayaprolu Subba Rao, editor, Andhravali, a Telugu-language anthology (India)
José María Eguren, La canción de las figuras, Peru
Albert Ehrenstein, Der Mensch schreit and Nicht da nicht dort, Germany
Yvan Goll, Requiem pour les morts de l’Europe, German poet in Switzerland writing in French
Joseph Lenoir-Rolland, Poèmes épars, lyrics; French language; Canada
Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla (revised edition), Spain
Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Backbone Flute (Fleyta pozvonochnik) and War and the World (Voina i mir), Russian
1914–1916: Eine Anthologie, Germany
Martinus Nijhoff, De wandelaar, Netherlands
Sergei Yesenin, Radunitsa (Радуница, "Ritual for the Dead"), his first book of poetry, Russian
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 10 – William Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir, also known as "William Tweedsmuir" (died 2008), an English peer and author of novels, short stories, memoirs and verse
February 1 – Venibhai Purohit (died 1980), Indian, Gujarati-language
February 4 – Gavin Ewart (died 1995), English
February 10 – Thomas Blackburn (died 1977), English
March 7 – Balmukund Dave (died 1993), Indian, Gujarati-language poet
March 11 – Jack Clemo (died 1994), English poet of Cornwall
May 9 – Helen Haenke (died 1978), Australian poet and playwright
June 14 – John Ciardi (died 1986), American poet, translator and etymologist
June 15 – Hari Daryani, "Dilgir" (died 2004), Indian, Sindhi-language poet
July 6 – Harold Norse (died 2009), American poet and memoirist; writes seminal memoir of the Beat poets in Paris
August 1 – Val Vallis (died 2009), Australian
August 29 – Rhydwen Williams (died 1997), Welsh poet, novelist and minister of religion
September 8 – Philip O'Connor (died 1998), English writer and surrealist poet
September 13 – John Malcolm Brinnin (died 1998), American poet and literary critic
September 24 – W. J. Gruffydd (Elerydd) (died 2011), Welsh
September 25 – Paul Roche (died 2007), English poet, translator and academic associated with the Bloomsbury Group
October 10 – Samar Sen, সমর সেন (died 1987), Bengali poet and journalist
October 16 – David Gascoyne (died 2001), English author and poet
November 23 – P. K. Page (died 2010), Canadian
December 14 – Harold Stewart (died 1995), Australian
December 21 – Maurice Chappaz (died 2009), Swiss, French-language poet, travel writer, translator and author
Also:
Ghulam Nabi Aziz (died 1965), Indian, Kashmiri-language poet, nephew of Abdul Ahad Azad
Jnanindra Barma (died 1990), Indian, Oriya-language poet
Ghulam Nabi Dilsoz (died 1941), Indian, Kashmiri-language poet
Margaret Irvin, Australian
Sheikh Davud Kavi, Indian, Telugu-language poet, scholar and translator
Sankeevani Marathi, Indian, Marathi-language
Dina Nath Kaul Nadim (died 1987), Indian, Kashmiri-language poet
Felix Paul Noronha, Indian, Marathi-language poet in the Konkani dialect
Lal Chand Prarthi (died 1982), Indian, Dogri-language Pahadi poet and editor
Tom Rawling (died 1996), English poet and angler
Pinakin Thakore, Indian, Gujarati-language poet
Pritam Singh Safir (died 1999), Indian, Punjabi-language poet
Raghunath Vishnu Pandit (died 1990), Indian, Konkani language poet also writing in Marathi, modernist poet, novelist, short-story writer and essayist
Takis Varvitsiotis (died 2011), Greek poet
Note "Killed in World War I" subsection, below. Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
February 7 – William Little (born 1839), English-born Australian
February 12 – John Townsend Trowbridge (born 1827), American poet and author
March 11 – Duncan MacGregor Crerar (born 1836), Scottish
April 26 – Mário de Sá-Carneiro (born 1890), Portuguese-born poet and novelist, suicide
July 1? – Arabella Eugenia Smith (born 1844), American
August 27 – Petar Kočić (born 1877), Bosnian Serb
October 7 – James Whitcomb Riley (born 1849), American
October 21 – Olindo Guerrini (born 1845), Italian
October 25 – John Todhunter (born 1839), Irish poet and playwright
November 27 – Emile Verhaeren (born 1855), Belgian French language Symbolist poet
December 9 – Natsume Sōseki 夏目 漱石 (commonly referred to as "Sōseki"), pen name of Natsume Kinnosuke 夏目金之助 (born 1867), Japanese Meiji Era novelist, haiku poet, composer of Chinese-style poetry, writer of fairy tales and a scholar of English literature; from 1984–2004, his portrait will feature on the 1000 yen note
Also:
Sacchindananda Tribhuban Deb (born 1872), Indian Oriya-language poet, patron of Oriya literature and ruler of Bamanda, a feudal state in Sambalpur District
Asad Pare, Indian, Kashmiri-language, Sufi
January 24 – H. Rex Freston (born 1891), English poet
January 27 – C. Morton Horne (born 1885), Irish-born musical comedy performer, writer and war poet
May 31 – Gorch Fock (born 1880), German poet and novelist
July 1 – First day on the Somme:
W. N. Hodgson (born 1893), English war poet
Will Streets (born 1886), English war poet
Gilbert Waterhouse (born 1883), English architect and war poet, second lieutenant in 2nd Bn Essex Regiment
July 4 – Alan Seeger (born 1888), American poet who joined the French Foreign Legion in 1914 and died in battle, cheering on his fellow soldiers after being hit; uncle of American folk singer Pete Seeger
September 9 – Tom Kettle (born 1880), Irish writer and politician
September 22 – Edward Wyndham Tennant (born 1897), English war poet
November 14 – H. H. Munro ("Saki"; born 1870), English poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright
December 3 – Geoffrey Bache Smith (born 1894), English poet
Awards and honors
Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam, Swedish poet and novelist
