1936 in poetry

Years in poetry:	1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
Years in literature:	1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
Decades in poetry:	1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1950s 1960s 1970s
Centuries in poetry:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades:	1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1950s 1960s 1970s
Years:	1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

[edit] Events

James Laughlin founds New Directions Publishers in New York, which published many modern poets for the first time;

W. H. Auden, Look, Stranger!
T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-35, including "Burnt Norton"
Federico García Lorca (killed this year; see deaths, below):
- Diván del Tamarit (Spanish for "The Diván of Tamarit") written this year, will be published in 1941);
- Sonetos del amor oscuro ("Sonnets of Dark Love") published this year
- Primeras canciones ("First Songs") published this year

Sir Muhammad Iqbal:
- Pas Chih Bayad Kard ay Aqwam-i-Sharq (or What should then be done O people of the East), philosophical poetry book in Persian
- Zarb-i-Kalim (or The Rod of Moses), philosophical poetry book in Urdu
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well
Charles Reznikoff, Separate Way, including "The Socialists of Vienna" (Objectivist Press)
Dylan Thomas, Twenty-Five Poems, including "And Death Shall have No Dominion"
William Carlos Williams, Adam & Eve & The City

New Directions publishes its first book and its first "annual", New Directions in Prose and Poetry with contributions from Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams and others.
Michael Roberts edits The Faber Book of Modern Verse, which praises poets such as W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot and ignores poets like Robert Frost and Thomas Hardy
W. B. Yeats, editor, The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935

F. R. Leavis, Revaluation rejects Milton, Spenser, and Shelley and praises Donne, Pope, Hopkins, Eliot, and others

March 31 — Marge Piercy, American poet, novelist, and social activist
April 6 — John Pepper Clark, Nigerian poet and playwright who originally published under the name of "J.P. Clark"
June 27 — Lucille Clifton, African-American poet and feminist
June 26 — Elisabeth Harvor, Canadian novelist and poet
July 9 — June Jordan (died 2002), African-American political activist, writer, poet, and teacher
November 4 — C. K. Williams, American poet
December 1 — George Bowering, Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer
date not known:
- J. H. Prynne, British poet, writer, key figure in the British Poetry Revival, and a major contributor to The English Intelligencer
- John Robert Colombo, Canadian poet, editor and humorist
- Jayne Cortez, African-American poetry poet
- Sandra M. Gilbert
- Clarence Major
- Christopher Wiseman
- David Young (writer), editor and co-founder of FIELD Magazine

January 18 — Rudyard Kipling, English author and poet who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1907
April 30 — A. E. Housman, 77, English poet and writer and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad
June 11 — Robert E. Howard, 30, American writer and poet, committed suicide
June 14 — G. K. Chesterton English writer, journalist, poet, biographer and Christian apologist
August 19 — Federico García Lorca, 38, Spanish dramatist, poet, painter, pianist, composer, and emblematic member of the Generation of '27, killed by Nationalist partisans at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (see "Works published" above)
September 26 — Harriet Monroe, 75, American editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts best known as founder and long time editor of Poetry magazine, of a cerebral haemorrhage
December 28 — John Cornford, 21, English Communist poet, in the Spanish Civil War
December 31 — Miguel de Unamuno, 72, Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, and philosopher
date not known — Govinda Kristna Chettur