1890 in poetry

• Rhymers' Club founded in London by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys as a group of like-minded poets who meet regularly and publish anthologies in 1892 and 1894; attendees include Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Richard Le Gallienne, John Davidson, Edwin Ellis, Victor Plarr, Selwyn Image, A. C. Hillier, John Todhunter, Arthur Symons, Ernest Radford and Thomas William Rolleston; Oscar Wilde attends some meetings held in private homes
• Dove Cottage, Grasmere in the English Lake District acquired by the Wordsworth Trust.

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

• 2 January (21 December 1889 O.S.) – Henrik Visnapuu (died 1951), Estonian poet and dramatist
• 11 January – Oswald de Andrade (died 1954), Brazilian poet and polemicist
• 12 January (31 December 1889 O.S.) – Johannes Vares (Barbarus) (committed suicide 1946), Estonian poet, doctor and radical politician
• 10 February – Boris Pasternak (died 1960), Russian novelist, writer and poet
• 22 February – Hinatsu Kōnosuke 日夏耿之介, a pen-name of Higuchi Kunito (died 1971), Japanese poet, editor and academic known for romantic and gothic poetry patterned after English literature; fervent Roman Catholic, co-founder, with Horiguchi Daigaku and Yaso Saijō, of Shijin ("Poets") magazine
• 18 May – Zora Cross (died 1964), Australian poet, novelist and journalist
• 31 May – James Devaney (died 1976), Australian poet, novelist, and journalist
• 15 August – Tsugi Takano 鷹野 つぎ (died 1943), Japanese novelist and poet (a woman)
• 28 August – Ivor Gurney (died 1937), English composer and poet
• 31 August (19 August O.S.) – August Alle (died 1952), Estonian writer and poet
• 10 September
  • Marie Heiberg (died insane 1942), Estonian poet
  • Franz Werfel (died 1945), Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet writing in German
• 24 September – A. P. Herbert, (died 1971), English writer, humorist, writer of light verse, most of it appearing in Punch, lawyer and independent politician
• 15 October – Álvaro de Campos (died 1935?), Portuguese poet and marine engineer, heteronym of Fernando Pessoa (born 1888)
• 25 November – Isaac Rosenberg, (killed 1918), English war poet
• 13 December – Dulcie Deamer (died 1972), Australian novelist, poet, journalist and actor
• Full date unknown:
  • Balakavi, pen name of Tryambak Bapuji Thomare (died 1918), Indian, Marathi-language poet^[10]
  • Ramanlal Vasantlal Desai (died 1954), Indian, Gujarati-language novelist, short-story writer and poet^[11]
  • Sumatiben Mehta (died 1911), Indian, Gujarati-language woman poet^[11]
  • Henriette Sauret (died 1976), French poet, political writer, journalist
  • Jun Tanaka 田中純 (died 1966), Japanese, Shōwa period poet

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

• 2 January – George Henry Boker, 66 (born 1823), American poet, playwright, and diplomat
• 10 August – John Boyle O'Reilly, 46 (born 1844), Irish-born poet, novelist and newspaper editor, transported as a convict to Australia and escaped to the United States
• 11 August – John Henry Newman, 89 (born 1801), English Roman Catholic cardinal, theologian, author and poet
• 25 August – Emily Manning ("Australie"), 45 (born 1845), Australian poet and journalist
• 7 September – Mary Mackellar, 55 (born 1834), Scottish poet and translator^[12]

• 19th century in literature
• 19th century in poetry
• French literature of the 19th century
• List of years in literature
• List of years in poetry
• Poetry
• Symbolist poetry
• Victorian literature
• Young Poland (Polish: Młoda Polska) a modernist period in Polish arts and literature, roughly from 1890 to 1918