1917 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

 * Hu Shih, the primary advocate for the revolution in Chinese literature at this time to replace scholarly language with the vernacular, publishes an article in New Youth magazine titled ""A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", in which he originally emphasized eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart (next year he will compress the list to four points).
 * Wilfred Owen, a soldier in World War I, writes Dulce et Decorum Est (published posthumously in 1921). The work's horrifying imagery later made it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written.
 * Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" and is sent by the military authorities to Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh, where he meets Wilfred Owen.
 * July &mdash; last issue of Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, founded by Alfred Kreymborg in 1915 and publishing poetry and other writing, as well as visual art; contributors included: William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, T. S. Eliot, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, Skipwith Cannell, and Lola Ridge
 * July &mdash; with the United States not yet fighting in World War I, Americans John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings and Robert Hillyer volunteer for the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.
 * November &mdash; publication of The Muse in Arms, an anthology of British war poetry.
 * T.S. Eliot takes over as editor of The Egoist, a London literary monthly, when Richard Aldington leaves for the British Army
 * The Little Review moves from Chicago to New York City with the help of Ezra Pound

Australia
===Canada
 * Arthur Henry Adams, Australian Nursery Rimes, Australia
 * C. J. Dennis:
 * The Glugs of Gosh
 * Doreen
 * Henry Lawson, "Scots of the Riverina", Australia
 * E.J. Pratt, Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, private. Canada.

United Kingdom

 * Rupert Brooke, Selected Poems
 * Richard Church, The Flood of Life
 * Walter de la Mare, The Sunken Garden, and Other Poems
 * John Drinkwater, Tides
 * Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), The Tribute And Circe: Two Poems American poet published in the United Kingdom
 * T.S. Eliot:
 * Prufrock and Other Observations
 * Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, criticism
 * Robert Graves, Fairies and Fusiliers
 * Ivor Gurney, Severn and Somme
 * Thomas Hardy:
 * Collected Poems
 * Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous
 * John Masefield, Lollingdon Downs, and Other Poems
 * Alice Meynell, A Father of Women, and Other Poems
 * George William Russell ("AE"), Salutation
 * Vita Sackville-West, Poems of East and West
 * Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems
 * Edward Thomas, Poems (posthumous) (including Adlestrop)
 * Sir William Watson, The Man Who Saw, and Other Poems Arising Out of the War
 * Charles Williams, Poems of Conformity
 * William Butler Yeats, The Wild Swans at Colle, Other Verses and a Play in Verse, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom
 * Some Imagist Poets third and final anthology; this effectively marks the end of the Imagist movement

United States

 * Conrad Aiken, Nocturne of Remembered Spring
 * John Peale Bishop, Green Fruit
 * Witter Bynner, grenstone Poems
 * Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927), Pro Patria A 16-page pamphlet of seven war poems published privately in Philadelphia in support of American involvement in World War I.
 * Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), The Tribute And Circe: Two Poems American poet published in the United Kingdom
 * Edgar A. Guest, Just Folks
 * Archibald MacLeish, Tower of Ivory
 * Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems
 * James Oppenheim, The Book of Self
 * Edward Arlington Robinson, Merlin
 * George Sterling, Thirty-five Sonnets
 * Sara Teasdale, Love Songs
 * William Carlos Williams, A Book of Poems: Al Que Quiere!

Other in English

 * Nizamat Jung, Sonnets, London: Erskine Macdonald; India, Indian poetry in English, published in the United Kingdom
 * Sarojini Naidu, The Broken Wing, London; India, Indian poetry in English, published in the United Kingdom

France

 * Guillaume Apollinaire, pen name of Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, Vitam impendere amori
 * Max Jacob, Le cornet a dés
 * Philippe Soupault, Aquarium
 * Paul Valéry, La Jeune Parque

Indian subcontinent
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname:
 * Balawantrai Thakore, Bhanakar, Gujarati language
 * Ci. Subrahamaniya Bharati, Kannan Pattu, Tamil language
 * C.R. Sahasrabuddha, Kakaduta, a parody (a book with the same name by a different author was published in 1940), Sanskrit language
 * Daulat Ram, Raja Gopi Cand, long narrative poem in the traditional genre of "Kissa", about the legend of Raja Gopi Chand, Punjabi language
 * Duvvuri Rami Reddi, Nalajaramma agnipravesamu, Telugu language
 * Hiteshwar Bar Barua, Desdimona Kavya, narrative poem inspired by Shakespeare's ' 'Othello' ', Assamese language
 * Hiteshwar Barua, Angila, Assamese language
 * Vallathol Narayana Menon, also known simply as "Vallathol", Sahityamanjari, Part I, Malayalam language

Other

 * Jacob Anker-Paulsen, Faunedans, Denmark
 * Gottfried Benn, Fleisch, Germany
 * Stefan George, Der Krieg ("The War"); German
 * Ulric-L. Gingras, La chanson du paysans; French language;, Canada
 * Juan Ramón Jiménez, Diario de un poeta recién casado ("Diary of a Newly Married Poet"; later retitled Diario de poeta y mar ["Diary of Poet and Sea"), Spain
 * Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla ("Fields of Castile"), enlarged edition (first edition 1912); Spain
 * Julio Molina Núñez and Juan Agustín Araya. Selva lírica, preparada, anthology, including work by Gabriela Mistral; Chile

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * March 1 – Robert Lowell, American
 * April 19 – Johannes Bobrowski (died 1965), German poet, narrative writer, adaptor and essayist
 * October 12 – James McAuley (dies 1976), Australian poet
 * December 30 – Yun Dong-ju, (died 1945), Korean poet (surname: Yoon; also spelled "Yoon Dong-joo" and "Yun Tong-ju")
 * Also:
 * Samuel W. Allen, African American
 * Margaret T.G. Burroughs African American
 * Judson Crews, American
 * Takis Sinopoulos, Greek
 * Rainer Brambach (died 1983), German
 * Abdus Sattar Ranjoor Kashmiri (died 1990), Indian, Kashmiri-language
 * Gopal Prasad Rimal (died 1973), Indian, Nepali-language poet and playwright
 * Kamakshi Prasad Chattopadhyay (died 1976), Indian, Bengali-language poet and fiction writer
 * P.N. Pushp, Indian, Kashmiri-language
 * Mario Augusto Rodriguez Velez (died 2009), journalist, essayist, dramatist, poet and storyteller (surname: Rodriguez Velez)
 * Sampath (poet), pen name of Raghavacharya Sankhavaram, Indian, Telugu poet
 * Themis (poet), Indian poet in the Aurobindoean School

Deaths
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:


 * May 25 – Maksim Bahdanovič, 25, Belarusian poet, journalist and literary critic, of tuberculosis.
 * Also:
 * Madhavanuj, pen name of Kashinath Hari Modak (born 1871), Indian, Marathi-language poet and translator; a physician
 * Ismail Merathi (born 1844), Indian

Killed in World War I

 * April 9:
 * Edward Thomas, poet and prose writer, killed in action during the Battle of Arras, soon after he arrived in France.
 * R. E. Vernède, war poet, died after being wounded by machine gun fire while leading an advance at Havrincourt
 * July 31, both killed in the Battle of Passchendaele near Ypres, Belgium:
 * Francis Ledwidge, 25 (born 1887), Irish war poet sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds"; killed in action
 * Hedd Wyn, Welsh-language poet, killed while serving with 15th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, at Pilckem Ridge
 * September 28 – T. E. Hulme, 30 (born 1883), influential English poetry critic

Awards and honors

 * Nobel Prize for Literature: Karl Adolph Gjellerup, a Danish poet and novelist, shares the award with fellow Dane Henrik Pontoppidan