1931_in_poetry

1931 in poetry

Events

George Oppen and his wife, Mary, found To Publishers in Le Beausset, France; Louis Zukofsky is editor.

John Betjeman, Mount Zion
Edmund Blunden publishes Wilfred Owen's poems
E.E. Cummings, ViVa
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Red Roses for Bronze
T. S. Eliot, Coriolan
Federico García Lorca, Poema del cante jondo (Spanish for "Poem of Deep Song")
Giorgos Seferis, Strophe (Στροφή)
Louis Zukofsky edits the February issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. The issue eventually will be recognized as the founding document of the Objectivist poets. It features poetry by Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi, George Oppen, Basil Bunting, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, and many others. Also in the issue: Zukofsky's essay "Sincerity and Objectification".

February 2 — Judith Viorst, American author known for her children's books and poetry
April 19 — Etheridge Knight, (died 1991), an African-American poet
May 16 — Peter Levi, (died 2000), professor of poetry at Oxford University and an English poet, Jesuit priest, archaeologist, travel writer, biographer, scholar, prolific reviewer and critic
June 13 — Jay Macpherson, Canadian lyric poet and scholar; she is a member of the "mythopoeic school of poetry"
June 21 — Patricia Goedicke, poet
July 28 — Alan Brownjohn, English poet and novelist
date not known:
- P'Bitek, African poet
- Sonja Dunn,
- Ruth Fainlight, poet, short story writer, translator and librettist
- Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish writer, poet and translator

March 16 — Harold Edward Monro, 54, British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London
April 2 — Katharine Tynan, 70, Irish poet, novelist and writer
April 10 — Khalil Gibran, 48, poet artist, and writer born in Lebanon who spent much of his productive life in the United States
October 5 — Christopher Brennan, 61, Australian poet
December 5 — Vachel Lindsay (Nicholas Vachel Lindsay), 42, American poet and early advocate of jazz poetry, a suicide by poison
date not known:
- Gamaliel Bradford (poet)
- Hubert N. W. Church;
- Edmund Vance Cooke
- Raymond Knister, Canadian novelist, short story writer, and poet who drowned in a swimming accident
- Clinton Scollard