# 1930 in poetry

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

## Events

* Samuel Minturn Peck becomes first Poet Laureate of Alabama, a title created for him.

## Works published
### 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 remains Auden's publisher for the rest of his life)
* Samuel Beckett, Whoroscope, his first separately published work; Irish poet published in France
* Julian Bell, Winter Movement
* Hilaire Belloc, New Canterbury Tales, illustrated by Nicholas Bentley
* Edmund Blunden, The Poems of Edmund Blunden
* Basil Bunting, Redimiculum Matellarum, his first book of poems, published in Milan
* Roy Campbell, South African native published in the United Kingdom:
** Adamastor
** Poems
* Catherine Carswell, The Life of Robert Burns, biography
* Elizabeth Daryush, Verses
* 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)
* Brian Howard, God Save the King
* 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
* 'Æ', pen name of George William Russell, Enchantment, and Other Poems
* Edith Sitwell, Collected Poems
* Stephen Spender, Twenty Poems
* Katharine Tynan, Collected Poems
* Humbert Wolfe, The Uncelestial City
* D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Lee, compilers, The Stuffed Owl: an anthology of bad verse

### United States

* W. H. Auden, Poems
* Hart Crane, The Bridge
* 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 writer published in the United Kingdom
* Una Marson, Tropic Reveries, the first "noted" collection of poems by a West Indian woman
* Brian O'Nolan, "Ad Astra", in Blackrock College Annual, Irish writer (his first published work)
* Quentin Pope, editor, Kowhai Gold, anthology of New Zealand poetry (published in London & New York)

## Works published in other languages
### 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 quatrains of the poet Shiraji Hafiz into Bengali
* Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Muna Madan, मुनामदन, Nepali
* 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
* León de Greiff, Libro de signos, precedido de Los pingüinos peripatéticos; seguido de Fantasías de nubes al viento (Segundo Mamotreto), Columbia
* 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

* Gonzalve Desaulniers, Les bois qui chantent; French language;, Canada
* Jens August Schade, Hjertebogen ("The Heart Book"), Denmark
* J. Slauerhoff, Serenade, Dutch

## Awards and honors

* John Masefield becomes Poet Laureate of the UK.
* 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
** Adunis or "Adonis" (Ali Ahmad Said Esber), Syrian-born Arabic poet and essayist who makes his career largely in Lebanon and France
** Jean-Pierre Duprey (died 1959), French poet and sculptor
* January 5 – Jesús Rosas Marcano (died 2001), Venezuelan poet
* January 23 – Derek Walcott (died 2017), Caribbean St. Lucian-born English-language poet, playwright, writer and visual artist
* February 15 – Bruce Dawe (died 2020), Australian poet
* March – Alvin Aubert (died 2014), African-American poet and scholar
* March 21 – Roger-Arnould Rivière (suicide 1959), French poet
* March 26 – Gregory Corso (died 2001), American poet
* April 8 – Miller Williams (died 2015), American poet, translator and editor
* May 3 – Juan Gelman (died 2014), Argentine poet
* May 8 – Gary Snyder, American poet, essayist, lecturer and environmental activist
* May 11 – Kamau Brathwaite (died 2020), Caribbean native of Barbados, writer, poet, dramatist and academic
* May 12 – Mazisi Kunene (died 2006), South African poet
* May 23 – Friedrich Achleitner (died 2019), Austrian architect and poet
* June 9 – Roberto Fernández Retamar (died 2019), Cuban poet and literary critic
* June 11 – Roy Fisher (died 2017), English poet and jazz pianist
* June 23 – Anthony Thwaite (died 2021), English poet, writer and editor, married to the writer Ann Thwaite
* August 17 – Ted Hughes (died 1998), English poet and children's writer, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1984
* 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 in Literature
* October 24 – Elaine Feinstein (died 2019), English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator
* November 16 – Chinua Achebe (died 2013), Nigerian writer and poet
* November 19 – Bernard Noel (died 2021), French poet and writer
* November 20 – Bai Hua (died 2019), Chinese poet, dramatist and novelist
* December 2 – Jon Silkin (died 1997), English poet
* December 27 – Attoor Ravi Varma (died 2019), Indian Malayalam poet and translator
* Also:
** Tony Connor, English poet and playwright
** Adolph Endler, German
** Brian Higgins (died 1965), British poet, mathematician and rugby league player

## 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 10 – Alfred Williams (born 1877), English "hammerman poet"
* April 14 – Vladimir Mayakovsky (born 1893), Russian poet, committed suicide
* April 21 – Robert Bridges (born 1844), English Poet Laureate
* April 29 – Maria Polydouri (born 1902), Greek poet, from tuberculosis