1930 in poetry

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

Events

 * Samuel Minturn Peck becomes first Poet Laureate of Alabama, a title created for him.

Canada

 * Alfred Bailey, Tao: A Ryerson Poetry Chap Book, (Ryerson).
 * Wilson MacDonald, Caw-Caw Ballads Montclair, NJ: Pine Tree Publishing.
 * E. J. Pratt:
 * The Roosevelt and the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan.
 * Verses of the Sea, Toronto: Macmillan. intr. by Charles G.D. Roberts.
 * W. W. E. Ross, Laconics.

United Kingdom

 * Richard Aldington, editor, Imagist Anthology
 * An Anthology of War Poems, compiled by Frederick Brereton
 * W. H. Auden, Poems, his first published book (accepted by T. S. Eliot on behalf of Faber & Faber, which remains Auden's publisher for the rest of his life)
 * Samuel Beckett, Whoroscope, his first separately published work; Irish poet published in France
 * Julian Bell, Winter Movement
 * Hilaire Belloc, New Canterbury Tales, illustrated by Nicholas Bentley
 * Edmund Blunden, The Poems of Edmund Blunden
 * Basil Bunting, Redimiculum Matellarum, his first book of poems, published in Milan
 * Roy Campbell, South African native published in the United Kingdom:
 * Adamastor
 * Poems
 * Catherine Carswell, The Life of Robert Burns, biography
 * Elizabeth Daryush, Verses
 * T. S. Eliot:
 * Ash Wednesday
 * Marina
 * Translator (and writer of the introduction), Anabasis, translation from the original French of Saint-John Perse's Anabase 1924; London: Faber
 * William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book of criticism
 * Stella Gibbons, The Mountain Beast, and Other Poems
 * Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Charles Williams (see also Poems 1918)
 * Brian Howard, God Save the King
 * D. H. Lawrence (both posthumous ):
 * Nettles
 * The Triumph of the Machine
 * Hugh MacDiarmid, pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve, To Circumjack Cencrastus; or, The Curly Snake, written and published in English and Scots
 * 'Æ', pen name of George William Russell, Enchantment, and Other Poems
 * Edith Sitwell, Collected Poems
 * Stephen Spender, Twenty Poems
 * Katharine Tynan, Collected Poems
 * Humbert Wolfe, The Uncelestial City
 * D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Lee, compilers, The Stuffed Owl: an anthology of bad verse

United States

 * W. H. Auden, Poems
 * Hart Crane, The Bridge
 * Babette Deutsch, Fire for the Night
 * Richard Eberhart, A Bravery of Earth
 * Robert Frost, Collected Poems
 * Horace Gregory, Chelsea Rooming House
 * Stanley J. Kunitz, Intellectual Things
 * William Ellery Leonard, This Midland City
 * Archibald MacLeish, New Found Land
 * Edgar Lee Masters, Leechee Nuts
 * Ezra Pound, A Draft of XXX Cantos, American poet writing in Europe
 * Lizette Woodworth Reese, White April
 * Edward Arlington Robinson, The Glory of the Nightingales
 * Allen Tate, Three Poems
 * Sara Teasdale, Stars To-night
 * Yvor Winters, The Proof

Other in English

 * Samuel Beckett, Whoroscope, Irish writer published in the United Kingdom
 * Una Marson, Tropic Reveries, the first "noted" collection of poems by a West Indian woman
 * Brian O'Nolan, "Ad Astra", in Blackrock College Annual, Irish writer (his first published work)
 * Quentin Pope, editor, Kowhai Gold, anthology of New Zealand poetry (published in London & New York)

France

 * René Char, Ralentir travaux
 * Paul Claudel, Le Soulier de satin, France
 * Michel Deguy, French academic, essayist, translator and poet
 * Robert Desnos, Corps et biens: poemes 1919–1929
 * Léon-Paul Fargue, Sous la lampe
 * Henri Michaux, Un Certain Plume ("A Person Called Plume"), in which the character Plume, a symbolic, alienated underdog, first appears
 * Pierre Reverdy, Pierres blanches
 * Jules Supervielle, Le Forçat innocent

Indian subcontinent
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname:
 * Ananta Pattanayak, Raktasikha, Oriya-language
 * Dimbeshwar Neog, Indradhanu, Assamese-language
 * Kazi Nazrul Islam, translator, Rubaiyat-i-Haphij, translated from the Persian quatrains of the poet Shiraji Hafiz into Bengali
 * Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Muna Madan, मुनामदन, Nepali
 * Maraimalai Atikal, Manikkavacakar Varalarum Kalamum, a two-volume study of Manikkavacakar, a saint-poet of the Saivaite sect, in Tamil; criticism
 * Mathuranatha Shastri, adaptor, Sahitya-Vaibhava, various Hindi poems translated into Sanskrit and adapted
 * T. P. Meenakshisundaram, Valluvarum Makalirum, on the concept of womanhood in the works of ancient Tamil poets; scholarship
 * Yatindranath Sengupta, Marumaya, Bengali

Spanish language

 * Enrique Bustamante y Ballivián, Junin, Peru
 * León de Greiff, Libro de signos, precedido de Los pingüinos peripatéticos; seguido de Fantasías de nubes al viento (Segundo Mamotreto), Columbia
 * Federico García Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York written this year, published posthumously in 1940, first translation into English as "A Poet in New York", 1988)
 * León Felipe, Veersos y oraciones del caminante ("Verses and Prayers of the Walker"), second volume (first volume, 1920); Spain
 * Luis Fabio Xammar, Pensativamente, Peru

Other

 * Gonzalve Desaulniers, Les bois qui chantent; French language;, Canada
 * Jens August Schade, Hjertebogen ("The Heart Book"), Denmark
 * J. Slauerhoff, Serenade, Dutch

Awards and honors

 * John Masefield becomes Poet Laureate of the UK.
 * Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Conrad Aiken: Selected Poems
 * Frost Medal: Jessie Rittenhouse and (posthumously) to Bliss Carman, and George Edward Woodberry

Births
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * January 1
 * Adunis or "Adonis" (Ali Ahmad Said Esber), Syrian-born Arabic poet and essayist who makes his career largely in Lebanon and France
 * Jean-Pierre Duprey (died 1959), French poet and sculptor
 * January 5 – Jesús Rosas Marcano (died 2001), Venezuelan poet
 * January 23 – Derek Walcott (died 2017), Caribbean St. Lucian-born English-language poet, playwright, writer and visual artist
 * February 15 – Bruce Dawe (died 2020), Australian poet
 * March – Alvin Aubert (died 2014), African-American poet and scholar
 * March 21 – Roger-Arnould Rivière (suicide 1959), French poet
 * March 26 – Gregory Corso (died 2001), American poet
 * April 8 – Miller Williams (died 2015), American poet, translator and editor
 * May 3 – Juan Gelman (died 2014), Argentine poet
 * May 8 – Gary Snyder, American poet, essayist, lecturer and environmental activist
 * May 11 – Kamau Brathwaite (died 2020), Caribbean native of Barbados, writer, poet, dramatist and academic
 * May 12 – Mazisi Kunene (died 2006), South African poet
 * May 23 – Friedrich Achleitner (died 2019), Austrian architect and poet
 * June 9 – Roberto Fernández Retamar (died 2019), Cuban poet and literary critic
 * June 11 – Roy Fisher (died 2017), English poet and jazz pianist
 * June 23 – Anthony Thwaite (died 2021), English poet, writer and editor, married to the writer Ann Thwaite
 * August 17 – Ted Hughes (died 1998), English poet and children's writer, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1984
 * September 25 – Shel Silverstein (died 1999), American writer of children's verse
 * October 10 – Harold Pinter (died 2008), English playwright, poet, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, human rights activist, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature
 * October 24 – Elaine Feinstein (died 2019), English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator
 * November 16 – Chinua Achebe (died 2013), Nigerian writer and poet
 * November 19 – Bernard Noel (died 2021), French poet and writer
 * November 20 – Bai Hua (died 2019), Chinese poet, dramatist and novelist
 * December 2 – Jon Silkin (died 1997), English poet
 * December 27 – Attoor Ravi Varma (died 2019), Indian Malayalam poet and translator
 * Also:
 * Tony Connor, English poet and playwright
 * Adolph Endler, German
 * Brian Higgins (died 1965), British poet, mathematician and rugby league player

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * March 2 – D. H. Lawrence (born 1885), English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic, from tuberculosis
 * April 10 – Alfred Williams (born 1877), English "hammerman poet"
 * April 14 – Vladimir Mayakovsky (born 1893), Russian poet, committed suicide
 * April 21 – Robert Bridges (born 1844), English Poet Laureate
 * April 29 – Maria Polydouri (born 1902), Greek poet, from tuberculosis