1936 in poetry

Events

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

May — In Nazi Germany, the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps attacked the expressionist and experimental poetry of German Gottfried Benn as degenerate, Jewish, and homosexual.

William Butler Yeats begins delivering broadcast lectures on the BBC (the lectures continue into 1937), and makes recordings of his own verse.

Ursula Bethell, Time and Place: poems by the author of 'From a garden in the Antipodes, Christchurch: Caxton Press
Robin Hyde:

T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-35, including "Burnt Norton"
F. R. Leavis, Revaluation rejects Milton, Spenser, and Shelley and praises Donne, Pope, Hopkins, Eliot, and others (criticism)
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 (anthology)
Dylan Thomas, Twenty-Five Poems, including "And Death Shall have No Dominion"
W. B. Yeats, editor, The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935 (anthology)

W. H. Auden, Look, Stranger! (Anglo-American)
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well
Charles Reznikoff, Separate Way, including "The Socialists of Vienna" (Objectivist Press)
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.

Gottfried Benn, Ausgewählte Gedichte ("Selected Poems"); when first published in May, the book contained two poems that were removed for the next edition in November : "Mann und Frau gehen durch die Krebsbaracke" and "D-Zug". The vast majority of the first editions were collected and destroyed.
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

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

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
November 17 — Dahlia Ravikovitch, Israeli poet
December 1 — George Bowering, Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer
date not known:

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
Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, 73, Arab poet, philosopher and champion of women's rights
date not known — Govinda Kristna Chettur