1928 in poetry

• January 16 – English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy's ashes are interred in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London; pallbearers at the ceremony include Stanley Baldwin, J. M. Barrie, John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Ramsay MacDonald and George Bernard Shaw.^[1] At the same time, Hardy's heart is interred where he wished to be buried, in the grave of his first wife, Emma, in the churchyard of his parish of birth, Stinsford ("Mellstock") in Dorset.^[2] Later in the year, his widow Florence publishes the first part of a biography, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891 (Macmillan), in fact largely dictated by Hardy.^[3]
• September 21 – The Gorseth Kernow is set up at Boscawen-Un in Cornwall by Henry Jenner ("Gwas Myghal") and others.
• November 6 – Xu Zhimo writes his poem 再別康橋 (simplified Chinese 再别康桥, Zài Bié Kāngqiáo, "On Leaving Cambridge Once More").
• Russian poets Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky found OBERIU (a Russian acronym for "An Association of Real Art"), an avant-garde grouping of Russian post-Futurist poets in the 1920s-1930s
• American poets Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky meet in New York City; they will become some of the founders of the Objectivist poets group.
• The only surviving fragment of Erinna's Greek poem The Distaff (probably first half of the 4th century BCE) is found in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.^[4]
• The clerihew, the comic pseudo-biographical verse form associated with Edmund Clerihew Bentley, is mentioned in print for the first time.^[5]

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edwin Arlington Robinson wins his third Pulitzer Prize for Poetry this decade, this time for Tristram

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

• January 1 – Iain Crichton Smith (died 1998), Scottish poet and fiction writer in both English and Scottish Gaelic
• January 8 – Gaston Miron (died 1996), Canadian poet and author
• January 10 – Philip Levine (died 2015), American poet, educator and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• January 29 – Gene Frumkin (died 2007), American poet
• February 2 – Cynthia Macdonald (died 2015, American poet
• February 14 – Bruce Beaver (died 2004), Australian poet
• February 25 – Hushang Ebtehaj (H. E. Sayeh) (died 2022), Persian poet
• March 1 – Conrad Hilberry (died 2017), American poet
• March 4 – Alan Sillitoe (died 2010), English poet and writer, one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s
• March 13 – Bob Brissenden (died 1991), Australian poet
• March 18 – Dave Etter (died 2015), American poet
• March 28 – Vayalar Rama Varma (died 1975), Indian, Malayalam-language poet and film songwriter^[22]
• April 4 – Maya Angelou (died 2014), African-American poet
• April 7 – Gael Turnbull (died 2004), Scottish poet
• April 26 – Hertha Kräftner (died 1951), Austrian poet^[30]
• May 4 – Thomas Kinsella (died 2021), Irish poet, translator, editor and publisher
• May 11 – Luo Fu (or Lo Fu, pen name of Mo Luofu; died 2018), Chinese-language Taiwanese poet, writer and translator^[31]
• June 24 – ruth weiss (died 2020), German-born American poet of the beat generation
• June 27 – Peter Davison (died 2004), American poet, essayist, teacher, lecturer, editor and publisher
• July 4 – Ted Joans (died 2003) African-American trumpeter, jazz poet and painter
• September 20
  • Alberto de Lacerda (died 2007), Mozambique-born Portuguese poet
  • Donald Hall (died 2018), American poet and U.S. Poet Laureate
• September 22
  • Irving Feldman, American poet and educator
  • Édouard Glissant (died 2011), French-Martiniquan poet and writer.^[32]
• October 17 – Rosemary Tonks (died 2014), English poet and novelist
• October 28 – Yu Guangzhong (余光中) (died 2017), Chinese writer, poet, educator and critic
• November 9 – Anne Sexton (died 1974), American poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1967
• December 3 – Karin Bang (died 2017), Norwegian novelist and poet
• December 10 – Milan Rufus (died 2009), Slovak poet and academic^[33]
• December 15 – William Dickey (died 1994), American poet
• December 23 – Anthony Cronin (died 2016), Irish poet
• Also:
  • Carol Bergé (died 2006), American poet
  • Rasa Chughtai (died 2018), Indian-born Pakistani poet

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

• January 11 – Thomas Hardy (born 1840), English novelist and poet
• February 5 – David McKee Wright (born 1869), Irish-born poet and journalist, active in New Zealand and Australia
• February 19 – Ina Coolbrith (born 1841), American poet, writer and librarian
• March 18 – Paul van Ostaijen (born 1896), Belgian poet
• March 24 – Charlotte Mew (born 1869), English poet, from suicide
• May 16 – Edmund Gosse (born 1849), English poet and critic
• July 20 – Kostas Karyotakis (born 1896), Greek poet
• August 16 – Antonín Sova (born 1864), Czech poet and librarian
• September 17 – Bokusui Wakayama, 若山 牧水 (born 1885), Japanese "Naturalist" tanka poet
• December 16 – Elinor Wylie (born 1885), American poet and novelist

• Poetry
• List of years in poetry
• New Objectivity in German literature and art
• Oberiu movement in Russian art and poetry