1922 in poetry

''April is the cruellest month, breeding

''Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

''Memory and desire, stirring

''Dull roots with spring rain.

''Winter kept us warm, covering

''Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

''A little life with dried tubers.

— Opening lines from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, first published this year

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

Events

 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry established
 * The Criterion appears
 * Who Goes with Fergus? by W. B. Yeats (first published in 1892) is the song that haunts James Joyce's autobiographical character Stephen Dedalus in the novel Ulysses, published this year. Stephen sings it to his mother as she lies dying, and her ghost returns to taunt him with it. The poem was Joyce's favorite lyric, and he composed his own musical setting.
 * November: Robert Bridges publishes his essay on free verse: 'Humdrum and Harum-Scarum'.

Canada

 * William Wilfred Campbell, The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell, W.J. Sykes ed. (London). posthumously published
 * William Douw Lighthall, Old Measures (collected verse) (Montreal: A.T. Chapman).
 * Marjorie Pickthall, The Woodcarver’s Wife, and Later Poems]. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Indian poetry in English
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal:
 * Swami Ananda Acharya:
 * The Comrade: Poems on Philosophical Themes ( Poetry in English ), Alvdal, Norway: Gaurisankar Brahmakul, 105 pages
 * Usarika, Dawn-Rhythms ( Poetry in English ), Alvdal, Norway: Gaurisankar Brahmakul
 * Christina A. Albers, Ancient Tales of Hindustan
 * Sri Aurobindo, Baji Prabhou ( Poetry in English ), Pondicherry: Arya Office
 * N.M. Chatterjee, Parvati
 * Harindranath Chattopadhyaya:
 * The Magic Tree ( Poetry in English ), Madras: Shama's Publishing House (another source gives the publisher as: Madras: Theosophical Publishing House )
 * Perfume of Earth ( Poetry in English ), Madras: printed at Huxley Press
 * Joseph Furtado, Lays of Goa and Lyrics of Goan, a sourvenir of the exposition of St. Francis Xavier; Bombay: Furtado and Sons
 * Puran Singh, At His Feet ( Poetry in English ), Gwalior ,

United Kingdom



 * Edmund Blunden, The Shepherd, and Other Poems of Peace and War
 * Hilda Conkling, Shoes of the Wind
 * John Drinkwater, Preludes 1921–1922
 * T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land first published in Criterion i (October) and in The Dial (November) without notes; and in The Dial, 73, with notes; published in book form in 1923, with notes
 * Wilfrid Gibson, Krindlesdyke
 * Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses
 * A.E. Housman, Last Poems
 * Hughes Mearns, "Antigonish" (written in 1899, published in 1922)
 * Alfred Noyes, The Watchers of the Sky, Volume i of the "Torch-Bearers Trilogy", followed by The Book of the Earth (1925), The Last Voyage (1930), published as The Torch-Bearers (1937)
 * Marjorie Pickthall, The Wood Carver's Wife, including "Marching Men"
 * Poems of Today, British poetry anthology, second series
 * Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (posthumous)
 * Edith Sitwell, Facade, the concert version, with music by William Walton, performed January 1922
 * Sacheverell Sitwell, The Hundred and One Harlequins, and Other Poems
 * J.C. Squire, Poems: Second Series
 * Sir William Walton's composition, Façade, a musical setting of 21 poems by Edith Sitwell
 * W.B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
 * Later Poems, Macmillan's Collected Edition of Yeats's Works, volume i
 * Plays in Prose and Verse, Macmillan's Collected Edition of Yeats's Works, volume ii

United States

 * Conrad Aiken, Priapus and the Pool
 * John Peale Bishop, with Edmund Wilson, The Undertaker's Garland
 * John Dos Passos, A Pushcart at the Curb
 * James Weldon Johnson, Book of American Negro Poetry
 * Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows
 * Hughes Mearns, Antigonish, often called "The Little Man Who Wasn't There"; inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; first published on March 22 by Franklin Pierce Adams in his New York World column; later a popular song
 * Louise Pound, American Ballads and Songs
 * Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Under the Tree
 * Carl Sandburg, Slabs of the Sunburnt West
 * George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies
 * John Hall Wheelock, The Black Panther
 * William Carlos Williams, Spring and All, including "The Red Wheelbarrow"
 * Yvor Winters, The Magpie's Shadow

Other

 * W.B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
 * Later Poems, Macmillan's Collected Edition of Yeats's Works, volume i
 * Plays in Prose and Verse, Macmillan's Collected Edition of Yeats's Works, volume ii

France

 * Paul Claudel, Poèmes de guerre (1914-1916)
 * Francis Jammes, Livres des quatrains, published each year from this year to 1925
 * Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz-Milosz, also known as O. V. de L. Milosz, La Confession de Lemuel
 * Alphonse Métérié, Le Livre des soeurs
 * Pierre Reverdy, Cravates de chanvre
 * Philippe Soupault, Westwego
 * Paul Valéry, Charmes

Germany

 * Rainer Marie Rilke completes both the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus; Germany
 * Kurt Schwitters:
 * Anna Blume, Dichtungen, including "An Anna Blume" ("To Anna Flower" also translated as "To Eve Blossom"); a second, revised edition with nine instead of the original 20 poems, and with the addition of translations of Anna Blume into English, French and Russian; published by Verlag Paul Steegemann, Hanover (first edition 1919, a second edition with the only change being eight more pages of advertising, published in 1920), Germany
 * Memoiren Anna Blumes in Bleie, a chronicle and parody of reactions to the original Anna Blume, Dichtungen of 1919

Spanish language

 * Xavier Abril, Hollywood, Peru
 * Gerardo Diego, Manual de espumas ("Manual of Foam"), Spain
 * Gabriela Mistral, Desolación ("Despair"), including "Decalogo del artista", New York : Instituto de las Españas; Chilean poet published in the United States
 * César Vallejo, Trilce, Peru

Other languages

 * Anna Akhmatova, Anno Domini MCMXXI, Soviet Union
 * Mário de Andrade, Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City), Brazil
 * Jacob Anker-Paulsen, Denmark:
 * I badedragt og andre nye erotiske digte fra et mondænt badested ("The Swimsuit and Other New Erotic Poems from a Modern Spa")
 * Sangbok for Smådjevle: Erotiske og andre Digte, ("Song book for Smadjevle: Erotic and Other Poems")
 * Tom Kristensen, Paafuglefjeren ("The Peacock Feather"), Denmark

Awards and honors

 * Edwin Arlington Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems (1921)
 * Hawthornden Prize for poetry: Edmund Blunden

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 22 – Vernon Scannell (died 2007), British poet, author and at one time a professional boxer who has written novels involving the sport
 * March 12 – Jack Kerouac (died 1969), American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and part of the Beat Generation school of poetry
 * April 16 – Kingsley Amis, English writer and poet
 * May 21 – Dorothy Hewett (died 2002), Australian feminist poet, novelist, librettist, and playwright
 * June 9 – John Gillespie Magee, Jr. (died 1941) Anglo–American aviator and poet
 * June 30 – Amulya Barua (died 1946), first published posthumously in 1964; Indian, writing in Assamese
 * July 17 – Donald Davie, English poet and critic who belonged to the Movement
 * August 9 – Philip Larkin (died 1985), English poet, novelist and jazz critic
 * August 26 – Elizabeth Brewster, Canadian poet and academic
 * September 12 – Jackson Mac Low, (died 2004) American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright
 * November 25 – Fumiko Nakajo 中城ふみ子, pen name of Noe Fumiko 野江富美子 (died 1954), Japanese tanka poet who died at age 32 after a turbulent life and struggle with breast cancer, as recorded in her poetry
 * December 3 – Eli Mandel (died 1992) was a Canadian poet and literary academic
 * Also:
 * Aris Alexandrou Άρης Αλεξάνδρου (died 1978), Greek) novelist, poet and translator
 * Peter Bladen, Australian
 * John Bruce
 * Alexander Craig (born 1923), Australian
 * Douglas Grant Lochhead
 * A. L. Hendricks (Jamaica)
 * Sidney Arthur
 * Kilworth Keyes
 * Tasos Livaditis (died 1988), Greek
 * Audrey Longbottom born about this year; ((died 1986), Australian
 * Demetris P. Papaditsas (died 1987), Greek

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 21 – John Kendrick Bangs, 59, American author, satirist, poet and the creator of Bangsian fantasy, a school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife
 * February 3 – John Butler Yeats, poet
 * March 18 – Tamura Ryuichi 田村隆 (died 1998), Japanese Showa period poet, essayist and translator of English-language novels and poetry
 * April 19 - Marjorie Pickthall (born 1883), was an English born Canadian writer.
 * May 13 – Walter Alexander Raleigh (born 1861), Scottish scholar, poet and author
 * July 8 – Mori Ōgai 森 鷗外 / 森 鴎外 (born 1862), Japanese physician, translator, novelist and poet
 * September 2 – Henry Lawson, 55, Australian writer and poet
 * September 10 – Wilfred Scawen Blunt, 82 (born 1840), British poet and writer
 * November 27 – Alice Meynell, 75 (born 1847), née Thompson, English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet
 * December 4 – Josephine Peabody (born c. 1874), American poet and playwright