1912 in poetry

Events

• March - The Poetry Review, edited by Harold Monro, supersedes the Poetical Gazette as the journal of the Poetry Society, just renamed from the Poetry Recital Society.
• April 14–15 - Sinking of the RMS Titanic: The ocean liner strikes an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States. This leads to a flood of poems, including Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain".
• Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore takes a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they impress W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore and others. Yeats writes the preface to the English translation of Tagore's Gitanjali
• Harriet Munroe founds Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in Chicago ; this year she describes its policy this way:

  Imagist poets

• Three poets meet and work out the principles of Imagist poetry. The most prominent of the poets, Ezra Pound, later writes about the formulation in 1954:
• At a meeting with Doolittle and Aldington in the British Museum tea room, Pound appends the signature H.D. Imagiste to Doolittle's poetry, creating a label that was to stick to the poet for most of her writing life
• October — Pound submits to Poetry: A Magazine of Verse three poems each by Doolittle and Aldington under the label Imagiste. Aldington's poems are printed in the November issue, and H.D.'s appear in the January 1913 issue. The March 1913 issue of Poetry also contains Pound's A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste and F. S. Flint's essay Imagisme. This publication history means that Imagism, although London-based, has its first readership in the United States.

  Works published in English

Canada">Canadian poetry">Canada

• William Henry Drummond, The Poetical Works of William Henry Drummond. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. posthumous.
• Pauline Johnson, also known as "Tekahionwake", Flint and Feather, with an introduction by Theodore Watts-Dunton, an English critic
• Seranus, In Northern Skies and Other Poems
• Robert W. Service, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Canada

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

• Sarojini Naidu, The Bird of Time, London; Indian poet writing in English, published in the United Kingdom
• Bharati Sarabhai, The Well of the People, Calcutta: Visva-Bharati
• Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, Indian poet writing in English, published in the United Kingdom

  United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Robert Bridges, Poetical Works Excluding the Eight Dramas
• Walter de la Mare, The Listeners, and Other Poems
• John Drinkwater, Poems of Love and Earth
• Wilfrid Gibson, Fires
• T. E. Hulme, The Complete Poetical Works, five poems
• Rudyard Kipling, Collected Verse
• Edward Marsh, Georgian Poetry 1911-12, the first Georgian Poetry anthology
• Claude McKay, Constab Ballads; along with Songs of Jamaica, constitute the first published collections of English-language, Creole dialect poetry; Jamaican poet published in the United Kingdom
• Sarojini Naidu, The Golden Threshold, Indian poet writing in English, published in Britain
• Ezra Pound, American poet published in the United Kingdom:
• *Ripostes, London
• *Translator, The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti, London
• Isaac Rosenberg, Night and Day
• Dora Sigerson, New Poems
• James Stephens, The Hill of Vision
• Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, Indian poet writing in English, published in Britain

  United States">American poetry">United States

• Florence Earle Coates,
• Robinson Jeffers, Flagons and Apples
• William Ellery Leonard, The Vaunt of Man
• Vachel Lindsay, Rhymes to be Traded for Bread
• Amy Lowell, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Renascence"
• Ezra Pound, American poet published in the United Kingdom:
• *Ripostes, London
• *Translator, The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti, London
• John Hall Wheelock, The Beloved Adventure
• Charles Williams, The Silver Stair
• Elinor Wylie, Incidental Numbers

  Other in English

• Adam Lindsay Gordon, The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Australia
• Claude McKay of Jamaica, publishes the first collections of English-language, Creole dialect poetry:
• * Songs of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica
• * Constab Ballads, London, England

  Works published in other languages

France">French poetry">France

• Paul Claudel, L'Annonce faite à Marie
• Jean Cocteau, La Danse de Sophocle
• Léon-Paul Fargue, Poemes, suivi de Pour la musique
• Francis Jammes, Les Géorgiques chrétiennes, three volumes, published from
• Pierre Jean Jouve, Présences
• Max Jacob, Les Oeuvres Burlesques et Mystiques de Frère Matorel
• René Maran, La Vie Intérieure, Guyanese writer
• Charles Péguy, Le Porche du mystère de la deuxième vertu
• Saint-John Perse, pen name of Marie-René Alexis Saint-Léger, Eloges
• Victor Segalen, Stèles, an edition of 81 copies

  Indian">Indian poetry">Indian subcontinent

Telugu">Telugu poetry">Telugu language

• Gurajada Appa Rao, narrative poems written in a four-line, stanzaic form, new for Telugu poetry:
• * Kanyaka
• * Purnima

  Other languages of the Indian subcontinent

• Akshay Kumar Baral, Esa, Indian, Bengali-language
• Maithilisharan Gupta, "Bharat Bharati", Hindi poem glorifying the nation's past, deploring its contemporary social and political condition and calling for good relations between Hindus and Muslims at a time when animosity between the two groups was rising
• Sumatiben Mehta, Hridayjharnan, a poem conveying her anguish during an extended illness, written in the Gujarati language

  Other

• Anna Akhmatova, Vecher, her first collection, Russia
• Gottfried Benn, Morgue und andere Gedichte , Germany
• David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, Russian Futurist anthology
• Takuboku Ishikawa, Kanashiki gangu published posthumously, Japan
• Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla, first edition ; Spain
• Patrick Pearse, Mise Éire, Ireland

  Awards and honors

Births

• January 1 - Nikiforos Vrettakos, Greek
• February 11 - Roy Fuller, English poet and novelist
• February 27 - Lawrence Durrell, Indian-born English novelist, poet, dramatist and travel writer
• May 3 - May Sarton, American poet, novelist and memoirist
• May 8 - George Woodcock, Canadian poet, biographer, academic and prominent anarchist
• May 25 - Meeraji, Indian, Urdu-language
• June 12 - Roland Robinson, Australian
• June 13 - Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, Canadian poet, considered "Quebec's first truly modern poet"
• June 16 - Enoch Powell, English MP from 1950 to 1987, classical scholar and poet
• June 29 - John Gawsworth, born Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, English poet and anthologist
• July 14 - Northrop Frye, Canadian critic
• August 29 - Kenneth Allott Welsh-born Anglo-Irish poet and academic
• September 10 - William Everson, also known as "Brother Antoninus", American poet, author, literary critic and small-press printer
• September 12 - J. F. Hendry, Scottish poet later living in Canada
• September 13 - F. T. Prince South African–British poet and academic
• September 16 - John Jefferson Bray, Australian
• September 24 - Ian Serraillier, English children's writer
• November 12 - Donagh MacDonagh, Irish poet, playwright and judge
• December 9 - Denis Glover, New Zealand poet and publisher
• December 11 - Micky Burn, English writer, journalist, World War II commando and prize-winning poet
• Also:
• *Ali Jafri, Indian, Urdu-language poet
• * P. R. Kaikini, Indian, writing Indian poetry in English
• * Nityananda Mahapatra, Indian, Oriya-language novelist, short-story writer, poet and politician
• * Prahlad Parekh, Indian, Gujarati-language
• * Bharati Sarabhai, Indian English- and Gujarati-language playwright, including verse drama
• * Konduru Viraraghavacaryulu, Indian, Telugu-language poet, novelist and scholar

  Deaths

• January 16 - Georg Heym, German poet
• April 13 - Takuboku Ishikawa 石川 啄木, Japanese poet
• November 28 - Lorentzos Mavilis, Greek
• December 18 - Will Carleton, American poet