1918 in poetry

James Joyce in 1918

• January 23 — English poet Robert Graves marries the painter Nancy Nicholson in London. Wedding guests include Wilfred Owen, who will be killed by the end of the year, and whose first nationally published poem appears 3 days later ("Miners" in The Nation).
• April — Hu Shih, chief advocate of the revolution in Chinese literature at this time, publishes an essay, "Constructive Literary Revolution - A Literature of National Speech" in New Youth proposing a four-point reform program.
• June — English poet Basil Bunting is imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
• August 17 — English poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon meet for the last time, in London, and spend what Sassoon later describes as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together."[1]
• November 4 — English war poet Wilfred Owen is killed in action, aged 25, at the Sambre–Oise Canal with only five of his poems published. News of his death reaches his parents in Oswestry a week later on Armistice Day.

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

—Closing line of "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen

• December — The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (d. 1889; including The Wreck of the Deutschland, 1875/6) are published by his friend Robert Bridges; few were published in Hopkins's lifetime, so this presents his innovative sprung rhythm and imagery to many readers for the first time.

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

• February 1 – Muriel Spark (died 2006), Scottish novelist and poet
• February 17 – William Bronk (died 1999), American poet
• April 15 – Louis Coxe (died 1993), American poet
• April 23 – James Kirkup (died 2009), English poet, translator and travel writer
• May 10 – Jane Mayhall (died 2009), American poet and novelist[20]
• May 21 – Gopal Prasad Rimal (died 1973), Indian, Nepali-language poet and playwright[18]
• July 9 – John Heath-Stubbs (died 2006), English poet and translator
• August 23 – Vinda Karandikar, also known as C. V. Karandikar (died 2010), Indian, Marathi-language poet, critic and translator[18]
• August 31 – Shimizu Motoyoshi 清水基吉 (died 2008), Japanese Shōwa and Heisei period novelist and poet (surname: Shimizu)
• September 30 – Gevorg Emin Գևորգ Էմին (died 1998), Armenian[21]
• November 14 – Valentin Iremonger (died 1991), Irish poet and diplomat
• November 16 – Nicholas Moore (died 1986), English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, who later drops out of the literary world
• November 18 – İlhan Berk (died 2008), Turkish poet
• November 19 – W. S. Graham (died 1986), Scottish poet often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic poets
• December 8 – Hans Børli (died 1989), Norwegian poet, novelist and writer
• December 30 – Al Purdy (died 2000), popular Canadian poet
• Also:
  • M. Gopalakrishna Adiga (died 1992), Indian, Kannada-language poet often said to be the pioneer of the "navya" (modernist) literary movement in Karnataka[18]
  • Indra Dev Bhojvani, also known as "Indur", Indian, Sindhi-language[18]
  • Ram Narain Singh Dardi, Indian, Punjabi-language poet who wrote in the Lahndi dialect[18]
  • Siddayya Puranika, Indian, Kannada-language poet[18]
  • Amritdhari Singha, Indian, Maithili-language writer, philosopher and poet[18]

John McCrae's grave at Wimereux cemetery

Note two subsections, below. Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 1 – Wilfred Campbell (born c.1860), Canadian poet
• January 6 – Dora Sigerson (born 1866), Irish poet
• June 10 – Arrigo Boito (born 1842), Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer
• June 26 – Peter Rosegger (born 1843), Austrian poet
• September 18 – Saul Adadi (born 1850), Libyan Sephardi Jewish hakham, rosh yeshiva and writer of piyyutim
• October 12 – Mary Hannay Foott (born 1846), Australian poet
• December 23 – Thérèse Schwartze (born 1851), Dutch portrait painter and poet
• Also:
  • A. R. Raja Raja Varma (born 1863), Indian, Malayalam-language poet, grammarian, scholar, critic and writer; nephew of Kerala Varma Valiya Koil Thampuran[22]
  • Balakavi, pen name of Tryambak Bapuji Thomare (born 1890), Indian, Marathi-language poet; died in a train accident[18]
  • Gobinda Rath (born 1848), Indian, Oriya-language poet and satirist[18]
  • Govind Vasudev Kanitkar (born 1854), Indian, Marathi-language poet and translator[18]

Killed in World War I

Sgt. Joyce Kilmer, American poet and a member of the 69th Volunteer Infantry Unit

• January 28 – John McCrae (born 1872), Canadian poet, author of "In Flanders Fields" and lieutenant colonel serving as a field surgeon in the war, from pneumonia
• April 1 – Isaac Rosenberg (born 1890), English war poet, killed in Fampoux in the Somme at dawn (there is a dispute as to whether his death occurred at the hands of a sniper or in close combat); first buried in a mass grave, but in 1926, his remains are identified and reinterred at Bailleul Road East Cemetery[23][24] Plot V, St. Laurent-Blangy, Pas de Calais, France
• July 30 – Joyce Kilmer (born 1886), American, killed in Second Battle of the Marne in France after volunteering to join Major William "Wild Bill" Donovan's First Battalion to lead the day's attack; while scouting, Kilmer is shot in the head near the village of Seringes; posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre
• November 4 – Wilfred Owen (born 1893), English war poet, killed in action in France (see Events above)
• John Munro (Iain Rothach) (born 1889), Scottish Gaelic poet, killed serving with the Seaforth Highlanders
• See also Guillaume Apollinaire below

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Sara Teasdale: Love Songs

• List of years in poetry
• Dada
• Imaginism movement in Russian poetry
• Modernist poetry in English
• Silver Age of Russian Poetry
• Young Poland (Polish: Młoda Polska) modernist period in Polish arts and literature
• Poetry