1936 in poetry

• January – Canadian Poetry Magazine first published by the Canadian Authors Association, with E. J. Pratt's active involvement. It becomes associated with more traditional poetry, very popular in Canada at this time.^[2]
• May
  • In Nazi Germany, the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps attacks the expressionist and experimental poetry of German Gottfried Benn as degenerate, Jewish and homosexual.
  • Greek poet and Communist activist Yiannis Ritsos is inspired to write his landmark poem Epitaphios by a photograph of a dead protester during a massive tobacco-workers demonstration in Thessaloniki; it is published soon afterwards. In August, the right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas comes to power in Greece and copies are burned publicly at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens.^[3]
• August 18 – 38-year-old Spanish dramatist and poet Federico García Lorca is among those arrested by Francoist militia during the White Terror at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and is never seen again.
• James Laughlin founds New Directions Publishing in New York, which publishes many modern poets for the first time.
• A version of J. R. R. Tolkien's influential lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" is published in Proceedings of the British Academy.
• W. B. Yeats begins delivering broadcast lectures on the BBC (the lectures continue into 1937), and makes recordings of his own verse.^[4]

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert P. Tristram Coffin: Strange Holiness

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

• February 19 – Frederick Seidel, American poet
• March 19 – Anri Volokhonsky (died 2017), Russian poet
• March 24 – John Robert Colombo, Canadian poet, editor and humorist
• March 25 – Neelamperoor Madhusoodanan Nair (died 2021), Indian Malayalam language poet
• March 31 – Marge Piercy, American poet, novelist and social activist
• April 6 – John Pepper Clark (died 2020), Nigerian poet and playwright originally publishing under the name "J. P. Clark"
• April 17 – Brendan Kennelly (died 2021), Irish poet and novelist
• April 29 – Alejandra Pizarnik (suicide 1972), Argentinian poet
• May 28 – Fred Chappell (died 2024), American poet, author and academic
• June 24 – J. H. Prynne (died 2026), English poet, writer, academic, key figure in the British Poetry Revival and a major contributor to The English Intelligencer
• June 26 – Elisabeth Harvor (died 2024), Canadian novelist and poet
• June 27 – Lucille Clifton (died 2010), African-American poet and feminist
• July 9 – June Jordan (died 2002), African-American political activist, writer, poet and teacher
• July 11 – Al Mahmud (died 2019), Bengali poet
• August 24 – A. S. Byatt (died 2023), English novelist and poet
• September 11 – Sandra Hochman, American poet
• November 4 – C. K. Williams (died 2015), American poet
• November 17 – Tarapada Roy (died 2007), Bengali poet, essayist and short-story writer known for his satirical sense of humour
• November 23 – Mats Traat (died 2022), Estonian poet and writer
• November 25 – William McIlvanney (died 2015), Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet
• November 27 – Dahlia Ravikovitch (died 2005), Israeli poet
• December 1 – Saqi Farooqi (died 2018), Indian-born Pakistani Urdu poet
• December 4 – Ken Smith (died 2003), English poet, academic and an editor of the quarterly Stand from in 1963 to 1972
• December 17 – Frank Martinus Arion (died 2015), Curaçaoan novelist and poet
• December 26 – Tormod MacGill-Eain (died 2017), Scottish Gaelic comedian, novelist, poet, musician and broadcaster
• December 27 – Sandra Gilbert (died 2024), American poet, critic and academic
• December 28 – Rashid Hussein (died 1977), Palestinian Arabic poet
• December 31 – Clarence Major, American poet, novelist and painter
• Also:
  • Stewart Conn, Scottish poet and playwright
  • Christopher Wiseman, English-born Canadian poet
  • David Young, American poet and translator, editor and co-founder of FIELD magazine

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

• January – Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, 73, Arab poet, philosopher and champion of women's rights
• January 18 – Rudyard Kipling, 70 (born 1865), English author and poet, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1907
• March 1 – Mikhail Kuzmin, 64 (born 1872), Russian poet, novelist and composer
• March 3 – Govinda Krishna Chettur, 37 (born 1898), Indian poet writing in English, cancer
• March 6 – Carlos Oquendo de Amat, 31 (born 1905), Peruvian-born poet, author of 5 Meters of Poems (1927)
• April 30 – A. E. Housman, 77 (born 1859), English poet, writer and classical scholar, best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad
• June 11 – Robert E. Howard, 30 (born 1906), American pulp fiction writer and poet, suicide
• June 14 – G. K. Chesterton, 62 (born 1874), English writer, journalist, poet, biographer and Catholic apologist
• July 4 – Edappally Raghavan Pillai, 27 (born 1909), Indian, Malayalam-language poet,^[23] suicide
• August 19 – Federico García Lorca, 38 (born 1898), Spanish dramatist, poet, painter, pianist, composer and emblematic member of the Generation of '27, killed by Nationalist partisans at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (see "Works published" above)
• September 26 – Harriet Monroe, 75 (born 1860), American editor, scholar, literary critic and patron of the arts best known as founder and longtime editor of Poetry magazine, of a cerebral haemorrhage
• October 5 – J. Slauerhoff, 38 (born 1898), Dutch poet and novelist, of aggravated tuberculosis
• December 28 – John Cornford, 21 (born 1915), English Communist poet, in the Spanish Civil War
• December 31 – Miguel de Unamuno, 72 (born 1864), Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher
• Also – Kattakkayathil Cherian Mappila (born 1859), Indian, Malayalam-language poet^[23]

• Poetry
• List of poetry awards
• List of years in poetry