1572 in poetry

• George Whetstone joined an English regiment on active service in the Low Countries, where he met fellow English poets George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard.

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

• June 8 – Honorat de Porchères Laugier (died 1653), French poet
• June 11 – Ben Jonson, date not certain (died 1637), English poet and playwright
• January 22 – John Donne (died c. 1631), English poet and Anglican cleric
• December 27 – Johannes Vodnianus Campanus (died 1622), Czech poet and playwright
• Also:
  • Thomas Dekker, birth year not certain (died 1632), English playwright, writer, pamphleteer and poet
  • James Mabbe (died 1642), English poet and translator
  • Nef'i (died 1635), Ottoman poet and satirist
  • Benjamin Rudyerd (died 1658), English politician and poet

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

• March 13 – Petar Hektorović (born 1487), Croatian writer, poet and collector
• March 27 – Girolamo Maggi (born 1523), Italian scholar, jurist, poet, military engineer, urban planner, philologist, archaeologist, mathematician and naturalist
• July 25 – Rabbi Isaac Luria (born 1534), Jewish mystic and poet in Palestine
• November 23 – Agnolo di Cosimo, better known as "Il Bronzino" or "Agnolo Bronzino" (born 1503), Italian Mannerist painter and poet
• December 12 – (born unknown), Loredana Marcello, Venetian poet and letter writer
• Giovanni Bona de Boliris (born 1520), Humanist, poet and writer, writing in Latin and Italian

• Poetry
• 16th century in poetry
• 16th century in literature
• Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age literature
• Elizabethan literature
• French Renaissance literature
• Renaissance literature
• Spanish Renaissance literature