1948 in poetry

Years in poetry:	1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951
Years in literature:	1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951
Decades in poetry:	1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1960s 1970s 1980s
Centuries in poetry:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades:	1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1960s 1970s 1980s
Years:	1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951

[edit] Events

Sometime this year, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase Beat Generation to describe his friends and as a general term describing the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York at that time to the novelist John Clellon Holmes
September — The body of William Butler Yeats who died in Menton, France in 1939, is moved from its original burial place Roquebrune-Cap-Martin to Drumcliffe, County Sligo, in accordance with his last wish. The Irish Naval Service corvette L.E. Macha carried the remains. Yeats' grave is a famous attraction in Sligo.

Sir John Betjeman, Selected Poems
T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
Robert Graves, The White Goddess, a "historical grammar" of poetic myth and inspiration
Randall Jarrell, Losses
Olga Kirsch, Mure van die Hart
Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos
Derek Walcott, 25 Poems

January 31 — Albert Goldbarth
March 5 — Leslie Marmon Silko, Native American writer, a figure in what has been called the Native American Renaissance
May 24 — Lorna Crozier, Canadian poet
August 1 — Frank Stanford (died 1978), American poet
October 7 — Diane Ackerman an American author, poet, and naturalist
October 18 — Ntozake Shange (pronounced En-toe-ZAHK-kay SHONG-gay) née Paulette Williams, an African American playwright, performance artist, writer and poet
date not known:
- Anna Couani, Australian poet and teacher
- R. S. Gwynn, American poet and anthologist associated with New Formalism
- Lawrence Joseph, American poet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, and law professor
- Brian Henderson (writer)
- David Lehman, series editor for The Best American Poetry book series and American poet
- Anna Mioduchowska
- John Oughton
- Sherod Santos
- Heather McHugh
- Frank Stanford, American poet (died 1978)
- David Waltner-Toews

Andrei Zhdanov, persecutor of poets

May 22 — Claude McKay, Jamaican writer, humanist, Communist, and part of the Harlem Renaissance
August 31 — Andrei Zhdanov, 52, Soviet government official and persecutor of poets, writers and artists; until the late 1950s, Zhdanovism, defined cultural production in the Soviet Union; reducing permissible culture to a straightforward, scientific chart, where a given symbol corresponded to a simple moral value; Zhdanov and his associates further sought to eliminate foreign influence from Soviet art, proclaiming that "incorrect art" was an ideological diversion^[1]
December 13 — Michael Roberts, 46, British poet, writer, critic and broadcaster, and teacher
date not known:
- Gordon Bottomley, English poet, known for his verse dramas