1843 in poetry

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

Events

 * April 4 – William Wordsworth accepts the office of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom (following the death of Robert Southey on March 21) on being assured that it is regarded as a purely honorific position.

United Kingdom

 * R. S. Hawker, Reeds Shaken with the Wind
 * Thomas Hood, "The Song of the Shirt", a poem (published in the Christmas issue of Punch)
 * Richard Henry Horne, Orion: An epic poem

United States

 * William Ellery Channing (poet), Poems, published at the expense of the author's friend Samuel Gray Ward; the volume is admired by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau but condemned by Edgar Allan Poe in "Our Amateur Poets", an essay in Graham's
 * Thomas Dunn English, "Ben Bolt", a popular ballad written for the New York Mirror and later set to music numerous times
 * William Lloyd Garrison, Sonnets
 * James Russell Lowell, Miscellaneous Poems
 * Cornelius Mathews, Poems on Man in His Various Aspects under the American Republic
 * William Gilmore Simms, Donna Florida, a verse tale; Charleston
 * James Gates Percival, The Dream of a Day
 * John Pierpont, The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont
 * Elizabeth Oakes Smith, The Sinless Child and Other Poems, acclaimed by critics, including Edgar Allan Poe
 * John Greenleaf Whittier, Lays of My Home and Other Poems, regional poetry, including "The Merrimack", "The Funeral Tree of the Sokokis", "The Ballad of Cassandra Southwick" and "Massachusetts to Virginia"
 * Nathaniel Parker Willis:
 * The Sacred Poems
 * Poems of Passion
 * The Lady Jane and Other Poems

Other

 * Hilario Ascasubi, El gaucho Jacinto Cielo con doce números, Argentina
 * Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Bouquets et prières, France
 * Christian Winther, Til Een ("To Someone"); see also revised edition 1849; Denmark
 * Gonçalves Dias, "Canção do exílio", Brazil
 * Mikhail Lermontov, "Valerik", Russia, posthumously in the anthology Dawn
 * Betty Paoli, Nach dem Gewitter ("After the Storm"), Austria

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * February 24 – Violet Fane, pen name of Lady Mary Currie, née Mary Montgomerie Lamb (died 1905), English novelist, poet and essayist
 * May 3 – Edward Dowden (died 1913), Irish-born poet and critic
 * August 19 – Charles Montagu Doughty (died 1926), English poet, writer and traveller
 * December 7 – Helena Nyblom, née Roed (died 1926), Danish-born poet and writer of fairy tales
 * December 21 – Thomas Bracken (died 1898), Irish-born New Zealander
 * December 24 (December 12 O.S.) – Lydia Koidula, born Lydia Jannsen (died 1886), Estonian
 * Undated – Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos (died 1873), Greek

Deaths
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 11 – Francis Scott Key (born 1779), American lawyer, author, and amateur poet who wrote the words to the United States' national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner"
 * March 21 – Robert Southey (born 1774), English Poet Laureate
 * June 6 – Friedrich Hölderlin (born 1770), German lyric poet
 * July 9 – Washington Allston, 63 (born 1779), American poet and painter
 * December 11 - Casimir Delavigne (born 1793), French poet and dramatist