1899 in poetry

• February 4 – Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" is first published in The Times. A response to the United States occupation of the Philippine Islands, and exhorting members of the White race to be responsible for benevolent civilising of the world's "non-white" people, the poem is reprinted in The New York Sun the next day.^[1]
• March 20 – Welsh "tramp-poet" W. H. Davies loses his foot trying to jump a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario.^[2]
• William Hughes Mearns writes "Antigonish" this year; it won't be published until 1922.
• Romesh Chunder Dutt's translation of the Ramayana into English verse is first published, in London.
• Shinshisha ("New Poetry Society") founded by Yosano Tekkan in Japan.

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

• January 23 – Carlo Betocchi (died 1986), Italian poet
• January 26 – May Miller (died 1995) African American poet, playwright and educator
• February 17 – Jibanananda Das (died 1954), popular Bengali poet
• March 7 – Jun Ishikawa 石川淳 pen name of Ishikawa Kiyoshi, Ishikawa (died 1987), Japanese, Shōwa period modernist author, translator and literary critic
• March 25 – Jacques Audiberti (died 1965), French playwright, poet, novelist and exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd
• March 27 – Francis Ponge (died 1988), French academic, journalist and poet
• May 18 – D. Gwenallt Jones (died 1968), Welsh poet
• May 24
  • Kazi Nazrul Islam (died 1976), Bengali poet and composer best known as the Bidrohi Kobi ("Rebel Poet"), popular among Bengalis and considered the national poet of Bangladesh
  • Henri Michaux (died 1984), Belgian, French-language artist, writer and poet who became a French citizen
• May 27 – Raymond Knister died (1932), Canadian poet, novelist and short story writer
• June 6 – Hildegarde Flanner (died 1987), American poet, author and activist
• June 8 – Kaoru Maruyama 丸山 薫 (died 1974), Japanese
• July 4 – Benjamin Péret (died 1959), French poet and writer
• July 7 – Margaret Larkin (died 1967), American poet
• July 21 – Hart Crane (died 1932), American poet
• August 1 – F. R. Scott (died 1985), Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert
• September 30 – Hendrik Marsman (died 1940), Dutch poet
• August 5 – Sakae Tsuboi 壺井栄 (died 1967), Japanese novelist and poet
• November 19 – Allen Tate (died 1979), American poet and member of the Fugitives and later the Southern Agrarians.
• December 9 – Léonie Adams (died 1988), American poet and Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress
• Date not known:
  • Jammuneshwar Khataniyar (died 1920), Indian, Assamese-language poet; a woman^[18]
  • Dimbeshwar Neog (died 1966), Indian, Assamese-language poet^[18]
  • Constance Woodrow (died 1937), English-born Canadian poet

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

• February 10 – Archibald Lampman, 37 (born 1861), Canadian poet who dies while his book, Alcyone, is being printed (see "Works", above)
• April 16 – Emilio Jacinto, 23 (born 1875) Filipino revolutionary general and poet, of malaria
• April 26 – Dragotin Kette, 23 (born 1876), Slovene poet, of TB
• July 20 – Frances Laughton Mace, 63 (born 1836) American poet^[19]
• November 16 – Vincas Kudirka, 40 (born 1858), Lithuanian physician, poet and national hero, of TB
• November 25 – Robert Lowry, 73 (born 1826), American hymnodist
• December 1 – Dolores Cabrera y Heredia, 71 (born 1828), Spanish Romantic poet and novelist, member of Hermandad Lírica

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