1916 in poetry

• February 5 – Cabaret Voltaire is opened by German performance poet Hugo Ball and his future wife Emmy Hennings in the back room of Ephraim Jan's Holländische Meierei in Zürich, Switzerland; although surviving only until the summer it is pivotal in the creation of the Dada movement in art, poetry and literature. Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp are among those who gather here to discuss art and put on performances expressing their disgust with World War I and the interests they believe have inspired it.
• 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).[1]
  • The first poems of English children's author Enid Blyton are published, in Nash's Magazine.[2]
• 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).
• March 30 – Don Marquis introduces the characters Archy and Mehitabel in his "The Sun Dial" column in The Evening Sun (New York City); archy is a poetry-writing cockroach unable to operate the typewriter shift key.
• 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.[3] 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), David Jones receives physical and psychological injuries, Ford Madox Hueffer suffers concussion and shellshock, A. A. Milne and J. R. R. Tolkien are 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.
  • W. B. Yeats makes his fifth and final proposal of marriage to the newly widowed Maud Gonne in France.
• July 14 – Hugo Ball recites the Dada manifesto in Zürich.
• August 17 – English poet F. W. Harvey becomes a Prisoner of War.
• October 6 – Romanian poet and critic Perpessicius loses his right arm while fighting in a skirmish at Muratan.[4]
• 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.[5]

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 10
  • William Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir, also known as "William Tweedsmuir" (died 2008), English peer and author of novels, short stories, memoirs and verse[18]
  • Bernard Binlin Dadié, Ivorien author and politician
• January 12 – Mary Wilson (died 2018), English prime ministerial spose and poet
• February 1 – Venibhai Purohit (died 1980), Indian, Gujarati-language[10]
• February 4 – Gavin Ewart (died 1995), English
• February 10 – Thomas Blackburn (died 1977), English
• March 7 – Balmukund Dave (died 1993), Indian, Gujarati-language poet[10]
• March 11 – Jack Clemo (died 1994), English poet of Cornwall
• May 9 – Helen Haenke (died 1978), Australian poet and playwright[19]
• June 14 – John Ciardi (died 1986), American poet, translator and etymologist
• June 15 – Hari Daryani, "Dilgir" (died 2004), Indian, Sindhi-language poet[10]
• July 6 – Harold Norse (died 2009), American poet and memoirist; writes seminal memoir of the Beat poets in Paris
• August 1
  • Anne Hébert (died 2000), Canadian, French language
  • 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[20]
• 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[10]
  • Jnanindra Barma (died 1990), Indian, Oriya-language poet[10]
  • Ghulam Nabi Dilsoz (died 1941), Indian, Kashmiri-language poet[10]
  • Margaret Irvin, Australian[21]
  • Sheikh Davud Kavi, Indian, Telugu-language poet, scholar and translator[10]
  • Sankeevani Marathi, Indian, Marathi-language[10]
  • Dina Nath Kaul Nadim (died 1987), Indian, Kashmiri-language poet[10]
  • Felix Paul Noronha, Indian, Marathi-language poet in the Konkani dialect[10]
  • Lal Chand Prarthi (died 1982), Indian, Dogri-language Pahadi poet and editor[10]
  • Tom Rawling (died 1996), English poet and angler
  • Pinakin Thakore, Indian, Gujarati-language poet[10]
  • Pritam Singh Safir (died 1999), Indian, Punjabi-language poet[10]
  • Raghunath Vishnu Pandit (died 1990), Indian, Konkani language poet also writing in Marathi, modernist poet, novelist, short-story writer and essayist[10]
  • 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[10]
  • Asad Pare, Indian, Kashmiri-language, Sufi[10]

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam, Swedish poet and novelist

• List of years in poetry
• Dada
• Imagism
• Modernist poetry in English
• Silver Age of Russian Poetry
• Ego-Futurism movement in Russian poetry
• Expressionism movement in German poetry
• Young Poland (Polish: Młoda Polska) modernist period in Polish arts and literature
• Poetry