1656 in poetry

• This year in England, John Phillips, a nephew of John Milton, is summoned before the privy council for his share in a book of licentious poems, Sportive Wit, suppressed by the authorities but almost immediately replaced by a similar collection, Wit and Drollery.
• Hallgrímur Pétursson begins work on his Passion Hymns

• Margaret Cavendish, Lady Newcastle, Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, fiction, poetry and prose^[1]
• Abraham Cowley:
  • Miscellanies, including "On the Death of Mr. Crashaw"
  • Poems^[1]
  • Pindaric Odes^[2]
• Sir John Denham, translator, The Destruction of Troy, published anonymously, partial translation of Virgil's Aeneid, Book 2^[1]
• William Davenant, Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems
• William Drummond, Poems^[1]
• John Evelyn, translator, An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Carus, translation of the Latin of Lucretius' De rerum natura, with both English and Latin; including commendatory poems by Sir Richard Brown, Edmund Waller and Christopher Wase (in Latin);^[1] this work was the first attempt to translate the work into English; Evelyn translated only the first book after realizing that he didn't have the ability to write a translation, as he put it, "to equal the elegancy of the original", although some of his friends warned him of the danger of the atheistic work to his morals, spirituality and reputation^[3]
• Richard Flecknoe, The Diarium, or Journall, anonymously published^[1]
• Mary Oxlie, authored a commendatory poem of fifty-two lines, To William Drummond of Hawthornden

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

• Lady Mary Chudleigh (died 1710), English poet and essayist
• Henry Hall (died 1707), English poet and composer

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

• Joseph Hall (born 1574), English bishop, satirist, moralist, and poet
• Johan van Heemskerk (born 1597), Dutch poet
• Johann Klaj (born 1616), German poet

• Poetry
• 17th century in poetry
• 17th century in literature