1941 in poetry

Events

• January 20 — Chittadhar Hridaya begins a 6-year sentence of imprisonment in Kathmandu for writing poetry in Nepal Bhasa during which time he secretly composes his Buddhist epic Sugata Saurabha in the same language.
• Spring — The Antioch Review is founded as a literary magazine at Antioch College in Ohio
• May 5 — Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin meet while both reading English at St John's College, Oxford
• August 18 — 19-year-old Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., American poet serving in Britain with the Royal Canadian Air Force, flies a high-altitude test flight in a Spitfire V from RAF Llandow in Wales and afterwards writes the sonnet "High Flight" about the experience ; on December 11 he dies in a collision over England.
• September 6-7 — Under Nazi occupation, Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever is among the Polish Jews interned in the Vilna Ghetto. He will escape and join the resistance in 1943. During the Nazi era, Sutzkever writes over 80 poems, whose manuscripts he manages to save for postwar publication
• c. October — The first known reference to Babi Yar in poetry is written soon after the Babi Yar massacres by the young Jewish-Ukrainian poet from Kiev and an eyewitness, Liudmila Titova. Her poem "Babi Yar" will be discovered only in the 1990s
• December — During the Siege of Leningrad, Yakov Druskin, ill and starving, and Maria Malich, the second wife of Russian avant-garde poet Danil Kharms, trudge across the city to Kharms' bombed-out apartment building and collect a trunk full of manuscripts which they hide through the 1940s and 1950s, even bringing them to Siberia, then covertly show them to others in the 1960s. Their actions save much of Kharms' work for posterity as well as that of fellow poet Alexander Vvedensky. Vvedensky, arrested in September in Kharkov for "counterrevolutionary agitation", was evacuated but died of pleurisy en route
• The surrealist magazine VVV is founded in New York City by French poet André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and David Hare

  Works published in English

Canada">Canadian poetry">Canada

• Anne Marriott, Calling Adventurers!, Toronto: Ryerson Press.
• E. J. Pratt, Dunkirk, Toronto: Macmillan.
• Bertram Warr, Yet a Little Onwards, Broadsheet No. 3, Resurgam Younger Poets series, Favil Press.

  India">Indian poetry">India, in English">Indian poetry in English">in English

• Sri Aurobindo, Poems, Hydrabad: Government Central Press
• Bimal Chandra Bose, Thought-Ray, Calcutta: Biman Panthi Publishing House
• Baldoon Dhingra, Comes Ever the Dawn, Lahore: Ripon Press
• Manjeri Sundaraman, Brief Orisons, Madras: Hurley Press
• Thurairajah Tambimuttu, editor, Out of This War, London: Fortune Press; anthology; Indian poetry published in the United Kingdom
• Hariprasad Sastri, editor and translator, Indian Mystic Verse, anthology

  United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• W. H. Auden, New Year Letter, May, English poet living in the United States
• Laurence Binyon, The North Star, and Other Poems
• Edmund Blunden, Poems 1930-1940
• Lilian Bowes Lyon, Tomorrow is a Revealing
• T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, published in New English Weekly, republished in Four Quartets, 1944
• A Choice of Kipling's Verse by T. S. Eliot, published December 1941
• G. S. Fraser, The Fatal Landscape and Other Poems
• Robert Greacen, The Bird, Northern Ireland poet
• J. F. Hendry and Henry Treece, editors, The White Horseman, poetry anthology featuring poets in the New Apocalyptics movement
• Louis MacNeice, Plant and Phantom
• John Pudney, "For Johnny"
• W. R. Rodgers, Awake! and Other Poems, Northern Ireland poet
• Alan Ross, Summer Thunder
• A. L. Rowse, Poems of a Decade
• Sydney Goodsir Smith, Skail Wind, in Scots and English
• Tambimuttu, editor, Out of This War, London: Fortune Press; anthology; Indian poetry in English, published in the United Kingdom
• Terence Tiller, Poems, New Hogarth Library 5
• Vernon Watkins, The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, and Other Poems

  United States">American poetry">United States

• W. H. Auden, The Double Man, published in March; later published as New Year Letter in the United Kingdom in May; English poet living in the United States
• Stephen Vincent Benet, A Summons to the Free
• John Peale Bishop, Selected Poems
• Louise Bogan, Poems and New Poems
• Paul Engle, West of Midnight
• Kenneth Fearing, Dagger of the Mind
• John Gould Fletcher, South Star
• Robinson Jeffers, Be Angry at the Sun
• Edgar Lee Masters, Illinois Poems
• Josephine Miles, Poems on Several Occasions
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets
• Marianne Moore, What Are Years
• John G. Neihardt, The Song of Jed Smith
• Carl Rakosi, Selected Poems
• John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism, criticism
• Charles Reznikoff, Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down, self-published
• Theodore Roethke, Open House
• Winfield Townley Scott, Wind the Clock
• Ridgely Torrence, Poems
• Mark Van Doren, The Mayfield Deer
• William Carlos Williams, The Broken Span
• Louis Zukofsky, 55 Poems

  Other in English

• Allen Curnow, Island Time, New Zealand
• Lesbia Harford, The Poems of Lesbia Harford, Australia
• Rex Ingamells and John Ingamells, At a Boundary, Adelaide, written by two brothers, includes Reginald Ingamells' "The Gangrened People", Australia
• Donagh MacDonagh, Veterans, and other poems, Ireland
• R. A. K. Mason, The Dark Will Lighten, New Zealand

  Works published in other languages

France">French poetry">France

• Louis Aragon, Le Creve-Coeur
• Paul Éluard, pen name of Eugène Grindel, Le Livre ouvert, published from 1940 to this year
• Luc Estang, Puissance du matin
• Léon-Paul Fargue, Haute Solitude

  Indian">Indian poetry">Indian subcontinent

Hindi">Hindi poetry">Hindi

• Girija Kumar Mathur, Manjir, Indian, Hindi
• Sumitra Kumari Sinha, Vihag, Hindi
• Syed Kalbe Mustapha, Malik Muhammad Ja'isi, biography in Urdu of Malik Mohammad Jaisi, a Hindi poet of the 15th century, with descriptions of the poet's works

  Other languages on the Indian subcontinent

• Abanindranath Tagore and Rani Chanda, a memoir describing the lives of the family that included Rabindranath Tagore; a companion volume to Joda Sakor Dhare 1944 and Apan Katha 1946; Bengali
• Ananta Pattanayak, Tarpana Kare Aji, Indian, Oriya-language
• Baidyanath Mishra, also known as "Yatri", a dramatic monologue given by a child-widow character, told in colloquial language, a new development in Maithili poetry
• Bewa Balwant, Maha Nac, Punjabi-language poems inspired by Marxist and left-leaning politics
• Darshan Singh Awara, Main Bagi Han, Punjabi-language poems reflecting anger toward society as well as religious traditions and institutions
• Dimbeshwar Neog, Svahid Karbala, Assamese-language narrative poem on a tragedy at Karbala and the martyrdom of Hussain
• Jyotsna Shukla, Akashnan Phool, Indian poet writing in Gujarati
• Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Naqsh-e-Faryadi, Indian, Urdu-language
• Hari Daryani, Hariscandra Jivana Katha, Sindhi-language
• M. U. Malkani, Gitanjali, translation into Sindhi from the English of Rabindranath Thakur's book of the same name
• Mohammad Mumtaz Ali, Amir Minasi, biography of the Urdu poet Amir Minai, including descriptions of Minai's works; written in Urdu
• Narayan Bezbarua, Sakti Singa, Indian, Assamese
• Pritam Singh Safir, Kattak Kunjam, Indian, Punjabi-language
• Sri Chandra Singh, "Vadali", a Rajasthani-language nature poem in 130 verses which influenced Rajasthani poets for a generation
• Wahab Pare of Hajin, Kashmiri Shahnama Firdosi, an adaptation in Kashmiri of the Persian classic poem by Firdousi; with a canto added at the end

  Spanish language

• José Santos Chocano, Oro de Indias, Peru
• Gerardo Diego, Alondra de verdad, 42 sonnets on diverse topics; Spain
• Federico García Lorca, Diván del Tamarit (Spanish for "The Diván of Tamarit", written in 1936, published posthumously this year; Spain
• Gabriela Mistral, Antología: Selección de Gabriela Mistral, Santiago, Chile: Zig Zag

  Other

• Amir Hamzah, Buah Rindu, Dutch East Indies
• Pier Paolo Pasolini, Versi a Casarsa, Friulian poetry published in Italy

  Awards and honors

• Governor General's Award, poetry or drama: Calling Adventurers, Anne Marriott

  United States">American poetry">United States

• Frost Medal: Robert Frost
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Leonard Bacon: Sunderland Capture

  Births

• February 7 - Kevin Crossley-Holland, English poet and children's author
• February 19 - Stephen Dobyns, American poet and novelist
• March 1 - Robert Hass, American poet
• March 13 - Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet
• March 21 - Abdulla Oripov, Uzbek poet and statesman
• March 22 - Billy Collins, American poet who served two terms as the 44th Poet Laureate of the United States
• April 12 - Toi Derricotte, American poet
• April 18 - Michael D. Higgins, Irish President, academic and poet
• April 29 - Yusef Komunyakaa, American poet, academic and recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• May 17 - Lyn Hejinian, American poet, essayist, translator and publisher often associated with the Language poets
• May 24 - Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter and recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature
• May 27 - Simon J. Ortiz, Native American poet and writer associated with the Native American Renaissance
• August 4 - Robert Grenier, American poet essayist, and editor often associated with the Language poets
• September 1 - Gwendolyn MacEwen, Canadian novelist and poet
• September 15 - Lindsay Barrett, Jamaican novelist, poet and journalist
• October 2 - John Sinclair, American poet jailed in 1969 after selling two joints to undercover narcotics officers; in 1971 his case receives international attention when John Lennon performs at a benefit concert on his behalf
• October 13 - John Snow, English cricketer and poet
• October 20 - Stewart Parker, Northern Irish poet and playwright
• October 27 - Rodolfo Hinostroza, Peruvian poet, writer, journalist, food critic and astrologer
• November 8 - David MacLeod Black, South African-born Scots poet
• November 15 - Heathcote Williams, English poet, political activist, film actor and dramatist
• November 23 - Derek Mahon, Irish poet
• November 29 - Lloyd Schwartz, American poet
• December 14 - Rachel Blau DuPlessis, American poet, essayist, critic and academic
• December 16 - Poldy Bird, Argentinian poet
• date not known:
• * Jonathan Holden, American poet and academic
• * Jeremy Hooker, English poet, critic, lecturer and broadcaster
• * John Mole, English poet
• * William Pitt Root, American poet
• * Gibbons Ruark, American poet
• * Stephen Yenser, American poet

  Deaths

• January 6 - F. R. Higgins, Irish poet
• January 13 - James Joyce, 58, Irish novelist and poet
• January 23 - John Oxenham, English novelist and poet
• February 5 - A. B. Paterson, Australian bush poet, journalist and author
• March 13 - Elizabeth Madox Roberts, American novelist and poet
• May 2 - Ibrahim Touqan إبراهيم طوقان, Palestinian, Arab-language poet
• May 19 - Lola Ridge, American anarchist poet, editor of avant-garde, feminist and Marxist publications
• June 15 - Evelyn Underhill, English poet
• August 7 - Rabindranath Tagore, 80, Bengali poet in India, Brahmo Samaj philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer and novelist whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
• August 31 - Marina Tsvetaeva, Soviet Russian poet, suicide by hanging
• September 1 - Jiří Orten, Czech poet
• c. October? - Alexander Vvedensky, Russian poet
• October 1 - Aline Murray Kilmer, American poet and children's writer
• October 17 - May Ziadeh, Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist and translator
• November 18 - Émile Nelligan, Canadian French language poet