1930 in poetry

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

Events

 * Frost Medal inaugurated by the Poetry Society of America
 * John Masefield becomes Poet Laureate
 * British poet Basil Bunting, in Europe, contacts American poet Louis Zukofsky in New York City on the recommendation of Ezra Pound; Bunting and Zukofsky will become friends and members of the Objectivist poets group.

Canada

 * Alfred Bailey, Tao: A Ryerson Poetry Chap Book, (Ryerson).
 * Wilson MacDonald, Caw-Caw Ballads Montclair, NJ: Pine Tree Publishing.
 * E.J. Pratt:
 * The Roosevelt and the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan.
 * Verses of the Sea, Toronto: Macmillan. intr. by Charles G.D. Roberts.
 * W.W.E. Ross, Laconics.

United Kingdom

 * Richard Aldington, editor, Imagist Anthology
 * An Anthology of War Poems, compiled by Frederick Brereton
 * W.H. Auden, Poems, his first published book (accepted by T. S. Eliot on behalf of Faber & Faber, which remained Auden's publisher for the rest of his life); English poet living and publishing in the United States
 * Samuel Beckett, Whoroscope, his first separately published work; Irish poet published in the United Kingdom
 * Hilaire Belloc, New Canterbury Tales, illustrated by Nicholas Bentley
 * Edmund Blunden, The Poems of Edmund Blunden
 * Roy Campbell, a South African native published in the United Kingdom:
 * Adamastor,
 * Poems
 * Basil Bunting, Redimiculum Matellarum, his first book of poems, published in Milan.
 * T.S. Eliot:
 * Ash Wednesday
 * Marina
 * Translator (and writer of the introduction), Anabasis, translation from the original French of Saint-John Perse's Anabase 1924; London: Faber
 * William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book of criticism
 * Stella Gibbons, The Mountain Beast, and Other Poems
 * Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Charles Williams (see also Poems 1918)
 * D.H. Lawrence (both posthumous ):
 * Nettles
 * The Triumph of the Machine
 * Hugh MacDiarmid, pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve, To Circumjack Cencrastus; or, The Curly Snake, written and published in English and Scots
 * AE, pen name of George William Russell, Enchantment, and Other Poems
 * Edith Sitwell, Collected Poems
 * Stephen Spender, Twenty Poems
 * Humbert Wolfe, The Uncelestial City

United States

 * W.H. Auden, Poems
 * Hart Crane, The Bridge
 * I'll Take My Stand a collection of essays considered the manifesto of the Southern Agrarians school of poetry and literature
 * Babette Deutsch, Fire for the Night
 * Richard Eberhart, A Bravery of Earth
 * Robert Frost, Collected Poems
 * Horace Gregory, Chelsea Rooming House
 * Stanley J. Kunitz, Intellectual Things
 * William Ellery Leonard, This Midland City
 * Archibald MacLeish, New Found Land
 * Edgar Lee Masters, Leechee Nuts
 * Ezra Pound, A Draft of XXX Cantos, American poet writing in Europe
 * Lizette Woodworth Reese, White April
 * Edward Arlington Robinson, The Glory of the Nightingales
 * Allen Tate, Three Poems
 * Sara Teasdale, Stars To-night
 * Yvor Winters, The Proof

Other in English

 * Samuel Beckett, Whoroscope, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom
 * Una Marson, Tropic Reveries, the first "noted" collection of poems by a West Indian woman
 * Q. Pope, editor, Kowhai Gold, anthology, New Zealand

France

 * René Char, Ralentir travaux
 * Paul Claudel, Le Soulier de satin, France
 * Michel Deguy, French academic, essayist, translator and poet
 * Robert Desnos, Corps et biens: poemes 1919–1929
 * Léon-Paul Fargue, Sous la lampe
 * Henri Michaux, Un Certain Plume ("A Person Called Plume"), in which the character Plume, a symbolic, alienated underdog, first appears
 * Pierre Reverdy, Pierres blanches
 * Jules Supervielle, Le Forçat innocent

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:
 * Ananta Pattanayak, Raktasikha, Oriya-language
 * Dimbeshwar Neog, Indradhanu, Assamese-language
 * Kazi Nazrul Islam, translator, Rubaiyat-i-Haphij, translated from the Persian quartrians of the poet Shiraji Hafiz into Bengali
 * Maraimalai Atikal, Manikkavacakar Varalarum Kalamum, a two-volume study of Manikkavacakar, a saint-poet of the Saivaite sect, in Tamil; criticism
 * Mathuranatha Shastri, adaptor, Sahitya-Vaibhava, various Hindi poems translated into Sanskrit and adapted
 * T. P. Meenakshisundaram, Valluvarum Makalirum, on the concept of womanhood in the works of ancient Tamil poets; scholarship
 * Yatindranath Sengupta, Marumaya, Bengali

Spanish language

 * Enrique Bustamante y Ballivián, Junin, Peru
 * Federico García Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York written this year, published posthumously in 1940, first translation into English as "A Poet in New York", 1988)
 * León Felipe, Veersos y oraciones del caminante ("Verses and Prayers of the Walker"), second volume (first volume, 1920); Spain
 * Luis Fabio Xammar, Pensativamente, Peru

Other

 * Jacob Anker-Paulsen, Sangen om kjerligheten og andre ungdomsvers, Denmark
 * Gonzalve Desaulniers, Les bois qui chantent; French language;, Canada
 * Jens August Schade, Hjertebogen ("The Heart Book"), Denmark

Awards and honors

 * John Masefield becomes Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Conrad Aiken: Selected Poems
 * Frost Medal: Jessie Rittenhouse and (posthumously) to Bliss Carman, and George Edward Woodberry

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 1 – Jean-Pierre Duprey, French poet and sculptor (d. 1959)
 * January 23 – Derek Walcott, native of St. Lucia, poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who writes in English
 * February 28 – Bruce Dawe, Australian poet
 * March 26 – Gregory Corso (died 2001), American
 * April 8 – Miller Williams, American poet, translator and editor
 * May 8 – Gary Snyder, American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist
 * May 11 – Edward Brathwaite, Barbadian writer, poet and dramatist
 * May 12 – Mazisi Kunene (died 2006), South African poet
 * August 17 – Ted Hughes (died 1998), English poet and children's writer
 * September 25 – Shel Silverstein (died 1999), American writer of children's verse
 * October 10 – Harold Pinter, (died 2008), English playwright, poet, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, human rights activist, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature
 * October 24 – Elaine Feinstein, English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator
 * November 16 – Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer and poet
 * Also:
 * Adonis or "Adunis", pen name of Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, Syrian-born poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France and who writes in Arabic
 * Alvin Aubert, African American
 * Tony Connor, English poet and playwright
 * Adolph Endler, German
 * Roy Fisher, English poet and jazz pianist
 * Shang Qin, Chinese
 * Jon Silkin (died 1997), British poet.
 * Anthony Thwaite, English poet and writer married to the writer Ann Thwaite

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * March 2 – D. H. Lawrence (born 1885), English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic, from tuberculosis
 * April 14 – Vladimir Mayakovsky (born 1893), Russian poet, committed suicide
 * April 21 – Robert Bridges (born 1844), English Poet Laureate
 * Maria Polydouri, Greek