1803 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

 * October – First appearance of the Literary Magazine and American Register, a United States monthly published in Philadelphia and edited by Charles Brockden Brown until 1807, when it becomes a semiannual almanac, American Register, which ceases publication in 1810.
 * December 31 – "Sitting on the very sheepfold, dear William (Wordsworth) read to me (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) his divine poem, 'Michael'".

United Kingdom

 * Peter Bayley, Poems, includes parodies of works by William Wordsworth, including "The Fisherman's Wife," a parody of "The Idiot Boy"; "The Ivy Seat" parodying the Lucy poems; "Evining in the Vale of Festinog", parodying "Tintern Abbey"; "The Forest Fay" parodies Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner";  London: printed for William Miller by W. Bulmer and Co.
 * Sir Alexander Boswell, The Spirit of Tintoc; or, Johnny Bell and the Kelpie, published anonymously
 * William Lisle Bowles, The Picture
 * Thomas Campbell, Poems, includes the 7th edition of The Pleasures of Hope (1799) and new works, including "Lochiel's Warning", "Hohenlinden" and "The Soldier's Dream"
 * Thomas Chatterton, The Works of Thomas Chatterton, Containing His Life, by G. Gregory, D.D., and Miscellaneous Poems, three volumes, London: printed by Briggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman and O. Rees, posthumous
 * Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems: Third Edition, a reprint of Poems ... Second Edition (1797) omitting poems by Charles Lamb and Lloyd London: printed by N. Biggs for T. N. Longman and O. Rees
 * Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society
 * Charles Dibdin, The Professional Life of Mr. Dibdin
 * Henry Kirke White, Clifton Grove

United States

 * J. Warren Brackett, The Ghost of Law, or Anarchy and Despotism, A Poem, Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa, Dartmouth College, at Their Anniversary, August 23, 1803, Hanover, New Hampshire: printed by Moses Davis (24 pages)
 * Thomas Fessenden, A Terrible Tractoration, a satire on medical quackery, vivisection, animal crossbreeding and scientific theories of some French and English naturalists, including Comte Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon and Erasmus Darwin

Other

 * C. Stanislaus Bouflers, Oeuvres ("Works"), Paris: L. Pelletier, France
 * Adam Oehlenschlager, Digte ("Poems"), Denmark

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 1 – Richard Henry Horne (died 1884), English poet and critic
 * January 19 – Sarah Helen Whitman (died 1878), American poet, essayist, transcendentalist, spiritualist and a romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe
 * May 1 – James Clarence Mangan (died 1849), Irish
 * May 25 – Ralph Waldo Emerson (died 1882), American essayist, philosopher, poet and leader of the Transcendentalist movement
 * June 25 – Sumner Lincoln Fairfield (died 1844), American poet and teacher
 * June 30 – Thomas Lovell Beddoes (died 1849) English poet and playwright
 * December 3 – Robert Stephen Hawker, also known as Stephen Hawker (died 1875), English Anglican clergyman, poet, antiquarian of Cornwall and eccentric
 * December 6 – Susanna Moodie (died 1855), English-born Canadian author and poet
 * December 26 (December 14 O.S.) – Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (died 1882), Estonian author and poet

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 18 – Ippolit Bogdanovich (born 1743), Russian classicist author of light poetry, best known for his long poem Dushenka
 * February 9 – Jean François de Saint-Lambert, French poet (born 1716)
 * February 18 – Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim (born 1719), German poet
 * March 14 – Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (born 1724), German poet
 * May 14 – William Smith (born 1727), Scottish American Episcopalian priest, educator, theologian, poet and historian
 * June 22 – Wilhelm Heinse (born 1746), German author and poet
 * August 18 – James Beattie (born 1735), Scottish scholar, writer and poet
 * August 25 – Johann Gottfried Herder (born 1744), German philosopher, poet and literary critic
 * September 23 – Joseph Ritson (born 1752), English antiquary and anthologist
 * Also – Erika Liebman (born 1738), Swedish poet and academic