Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
March 28 – Spanish poet Miguel Hernández dies of tuberculosis as a political prisoner in a prison hospital having scrawled his last verse on the wall.
April 3 – French poet Paul Éluard (Eugène Paul Grindel)'s poem "Liberté" is first published in the collection Poésie et vérité ("Poetry and truth") in Paris. In June it is reprinted by the magazine Fontaine, titled "Une seule pensée", to reach Vichy France. It is published by Éditions de Minuit and printed in London by the official Gaullist magazine La France libre. Thousands of copies are parachuted into Occupied France by aircraft of the British Royal Air Force.
October – English poet Keith Douglas takes part in the Second Battle of El Alamein (against orders).
December – BIM magazine founded in Barbados.
American poet George Oppen forces his induction into the U.S. Army.
Preview, a small literary magazine, is founded in Canada (merged with First Statement in 1945 to form Northern Review, which lasts until 1956); it is published by F. R. Scott, A. J. M. Smith, A. M. Klein and P. K. Page, led by English-born poet and travel writer Patrick Anderson.
First Statement, a mimeographed, small literary magazine, is founded in Canada (merged with Preview in 1945); it is published by John Sutherland; Irving Layton and Louis Dudek are also involved.
French poet André Breton delivers a lecture entitled "Situation du surealisme entre les deux guerres" at Yale University.
Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
Earle Birney, David and Other Poems, the title piece, David, a long, narrative poem, was one of the most frequently taught poems in Canadian schools for decades Governor General's Award, 1942.
Arthur Bourinot, Canada at Dieppe.
Ralph Gustafson ed., Anthology of Canadian Poetry, including work by F. R. Scott, A. M. Klein, A. J. M. Smith, Leo Kennedy, E. J. Pratt, Finch, Dorothy Livesay, P. K. Page and Earle Birney; Penguin
Anne Marriott, Salt Marsh, Toronto: Ryerson Press.
Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems and Plays (Poetry & Plays in English), in two volumes, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Raul De Loyola Furtado, also known as Joseph Furtado, Selected Poems (Poetry in English), Bombay: published by the author in a limited edition of 100 copies (second edition, revised 1947; third edition, revised 1967)
P. R. Kaikini, The Snake in the Moon (Poetry in English), Bombay: New Book Co.
Poetry in War Time (Poetry in English), London: Faber and Faber; anthology; Indian poetry, published in the United Kingdom
Manjeri Sundaraman, Penumbra
Walter de la Mare, Collected Poems
T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, long poem, last of his Four Quartets, published in The New English Weekly September
Roy Fuller, The Middle of a War
W. S. Graham, Cage Without Grievance
John Heath-Stubbs, Wounded Thammuz
J. F. Hendry, The Bombed Happiness
Agnes Grozier Herbertson, This is the Hour: Poems
Patrick Kavanagh, The Great Hunger
Sidney Keyes, The Iron Laurel
Alun Lewis, Raiders' Dawn, and Other Poems, on a soldier's life in the World War II
Robert Nichols, Such Was My Singing
Leslie Norris, Tongue of Beauty
William Plomer, In a Bombed House, 1941: Elegy in Memory of Anthony Butts
Poetry in Wartime: An Anthology, edited by Tambimuttu, London: Faber and Faber
John Pudney, Dispersal Point, and Other Air Poems, including "For Johnny"
Henry Reed, "Naming of Parts", part 1 of his "Lessons of the War" sequence, published in the New Statesman August 8
Stevie Smith, Mother, What is Man?
Stephen Spender, Ruins and Visions
Dorothy Wellesley, Lost Planet, and Other Poems
Conrad Aiken, Brownstone Eclogues
Stephen Vincent Benét, They Burned the Books
John Berryman, Poems
R. P. Blackmur, The Second World
John Malcolm Brinnin:
The Garden Is Political
The Lincoln Lyrics
Malcolm Cowley, A Dry Season
Robert Frost, A Witness Tree
Langston Hughes, Shakespeare in Harlem
Randall Jarrell, Blood for a Stranger
Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Murder of Lidice
Kenneth Patchen, The Teeth of the Lion
Muriel Rukeyser, Wake Island
Karl Shapiro:
Person, Place and Thing
The Place of Love
Wallace Stevens:
Parts of a World, includes "The Poems of Our Climate," "The Well Dressed Man with a Beard," and "Examination of the Hero in a Time of War", Knopf
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Cummington Press
Mark Van Doren, Our Lady Peace
Margaret Walker, For My People
Robert Penn Warren, Eleven Poems on the Same Theme
Edmund Wilson, Notebooks of Night
Louise Bennett, Dialect Verses, Caribbean
Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
Louis Aragon, Les Yeux d'Elsa
René-Guy Cadou:
Bruits du coeur
Lilas du soir
Paul Claudel, Cent phrases pour éventails
Robert Desnos, Fortunes
Paul Éluard, pen name of Paul-Eugène Grindel:
Le livre ouvert
Poésie et Vérité
Pierre Emmanuel, pen name of Noël Mathieu,
Cantos
Jour de colère
Léon-Paul Fargue, Refuges
Jean Follain, Canisy
Eugène Guillevic, Terraqué
Loys Masson, Déliverez-nous du mal, war poems
Alphonse Métérié, Prix Lasserre
Henri Michaux, Au pays de la magie
Saint-John Perse, pen name of Alexis Saint-Léger Léger, Exil
Francis Ponge, Le parti pris des choses, 32 short to medium-length prose poems
Raymond Queneau, Pierrot mon ami
Jean Tortel, De mon vivant
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname:
Birendra Chattopadhyay, Grahacyta
Dinesh Das, Kabita 1343–48
Jibanananda Das, Banalata Sen
Akhtar Ansari Akbarabadi, Abgine, Urdu
Hari Daryani, Koda, Sindhi-language (India)
K. S. Narasimha Swami, Mysuru Malige, Indian, Kannada-language, called "the most famous collection of love poems in Kannada"
N. Gopla Pillai, Sita-Vicara-Lahari, translation into Sanskrit from the Malayalam of Kumaran Asan's poem Cintavistayaya Sita
Pritam Singh Safir, Pap de Sohle, Indian, Punjabi-language
Sumitra Kumari Sinha, ' 'Asa Parva' ', Hindi-language (India)
Chairil Anwar, "Nisan" ("Grave"), Indonesian
Erik Lindegren, Manen utan väg ("The Man Without a Way"), Sweden
Cesare Pavese, Lavorare stanca ("Hard Work"), expanded version nearly double the size of the first edition published in 1936; Italy
César Moro, pen name of César Quíspez Asín, La tortuga ecuestre, Peru
Saint-John Perse, Exil: poème, Marseilles: Editions Cahiers du Sud; France
Francis Ponge, Le parti pris des choses, Gallimard; France
Stella Sierra, Sinfonía jubilosa en doce sonetos ("Joyful Symphony in Twelve Sonnets"), Panama
Hannah Szenes, "A Walk to Caesarea", Modern Hebrew poetry
Awards and honors
Governor General's Award, poetry or drama: David and Other Poems, Earle Birney (Canada)
Robert Frost Medal: Edgar Lee Masters
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Rose Benét, The Dust Which Is God
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 17 – Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay, died 2016)), African-American heavyweight boxer and occasional poet
January 19 – Pat Mora, female Mexican-American author and poet
February 14 – Rafiq Azad (died 2016), Bengali poet, editor and academic
February 20 – Hugo Williams, English poet, journalist and travel writer
February 23 – Haki R. Madhubuti (born Don Luther Lee), African-American poet, author and academic
March 13 – Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet and prose writer
March 23 – Ama Ata Aidoo Ghanaian author, poet and playwright
March 26 – Erica Jong, American author and poet
April 10 – Stuart Dybek, American poet and author
April 27 – Sadakazu Fujii 藤井 貞和, Japanese poet and literary scholar (surname: Fujii)
June 21 – Henry S. Taylor, Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet
October 5 – Nick Piombino, American poet, essayist and psychotherapist, sometimes associated with Language poets, because of his frequent appearance in the seminal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine early in his poetic career
October 23 – Douglas Dunn, Scottish poet, academic and critic
November 9 – Karin Kiwus, German poet
November 11 – William Matthews, American poet and essayist
December 16 – Peter Seaton, American poet associated with the Language poets
November 19 – Sharon Olds, American poet
November 27 – Marilyn Hacker, American poet, critic and reviewer
November 28 – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Irish poet
December 9 – David Harsent, English poet and crime novelist
December 16 – Arthur Nortje, South African poet (died 1970)
Also:
Gladys Cardiff, American poet and academic
David Henderson, American poet associated with the Umbra workshop and Black Arts Movement
Pat Ingoldsby, Irish television presenter and poet
Peter Klappert, American poet
Sydney Lea, American poet
Charles Martin, American poet, critic and translator
Macdara Woods, Irish poet
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 4 – Joan Vincent Murray (born 1917), English-born Canadian American poet
February 2 – Daniil Kharms (born 1905) early Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist poet, writer, dramatist, and founder of Oberiu poetry school, probably of starvation in his Leningrad prison asylum cell
February 15 – Marie Heiberg (born 1890), Estonian poet, insane
March 28 – Miguel Hernández (born 1910), Spanish poet, from tuberculosis in harsh conditions during imprisonment
April 19 – José María Eguren (born 1874), Peruvian symbolism poet
April 24 – Lucy Maud Montgomery, known as "L. M. Montgomery" (born 1874), Canadian poet and author best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables
c. Early May – Jakob van Hoddis (born 1887), German-Jewish Expressionist poet, in Sobibór extermination camp
May 7 – William Baylebridge, pseudonym of Charles William Blocksidge (born 1883), Australian poet and short story writer
May 11 – Sakutarō Hagiwara 萩原 朔太郎 (born 1886), Taishō and early Shōwa period Japanese literary critic and free-verse poet called the "father of modern colloquial poetry in Japan" (surname: Hagiwara)
May 12 – Shaw Neilson (born 1872), Australian poet
May 26 – Libero Bovio (born 1883), Italian poet in the Neapolitan dialect
May 29 – Akiko Yosano 与謝野 晶子 pen name of Yosano Shiyo (born 1878), late Meiji period, Taishō period and early Shōwa period Japanese poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist and social reformer; one of the most famous, and most controversial, post-classical woman poets of Japan (surname: Yosano)
October 29 – Màrius Torres (born 1910), Catalan Spanish poet, from tuberculosis
November 2 – Hakushū Kitahara 北原 白秋, pen name of Kitahara Ryūkichi 北原 隆吉 (born 1885), Taishō and Shōwa period Japanese tanka poet (surname: Kitahara)
November 4 – Clementine Krämer (born 1873), German poet and short-story writer, in Theresienstadt concentration camp
December 23 – Konstantin Balmont (born 1867), Russian Symbolist poet, in Paris
