1894 in poetry

Events

• April — The Yellow Book first published.
• June 22 — Nina Davis' first published translation from medieval Hebrew poetry into English, of Abraham ibn Ezra's The Song of Chess, appears in The Jewish Chronicle.
• November 8 — Robert Frost's poem "My Butterfly" is published on this date in the New York Independent, marking the first sale of his poetry. He earns $15.
• December 22 — Claude Debussy's symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a free interpretation of Stéphane Mallarmé's 1876 poem, "L'après-midi d'un faune", is premièred in Paris.

Works published in English

Canada">Canadian poetry">Canada

• Bliss Carman, Low Tide on Grand Pré
• Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey, Songs from Vagabondia
• Frederick George Scott, My Lattice and Other Poems
• Arthur Stringer, ''Watchers of Twilight, and Other Poems''

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Laurence Binyon, Lyric Poems
• Robert Browning, Asolando
• Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey, Songs from Vagabondia
• John Davidson, Ballads and Songs, including "Thirty Bob a Week"
• Edmund Gosse, In Russet and Silver
• Selwyn Image, Poems and Carols
• Rudyard Kipling, "McAndrew's Hymn", first published in U.S.A.
• Robert Fuller Murray, Robert F. Murray: His Poems with a Memoir
• AE, pen name of George William Russell, Homeward
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, Astrophel and Other Poems
• Katharine Tynan, Cuckoo Songs
• William Watson, Odes and Other Poems
• Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx
• W. B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom, ''The Land of Heart's Desire''

United States">American poetry">United States

• Bliss Carman, Songs from Vagabondia, with Richard Hovey, a Canadian author published in the United States
• Ina Coolbrith, The Singer of the Sea
• Benjamin Franklin King Jr., Ben King's Verse
• George Santayana, Sonnets and Other Verses
• John B. Tabb, ''Poems''

Other in English

• Henry Lawson, Short Stories in Prose and Verse, Australia
• Kerala Varma Valiya Koil Thampuran, Mayura Sandesam, a sandesa kavya written on the model of Kalidasa's Meghaduta, India, Sanskrit
• W. B. Yeats, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom, ''The Land of Heart's Desire''

Works published in other languages

• Francis Jammes, Vers, ; France
• Henry Alfred Krishnapillai, Rakshanya Yatrikam, India, Tamil language
• Pierre Louÿs, Les Chansons de Bilitis, erotic prose poems; Paris
• Tekkan Yosano, Bokoku no on, a collection of literary criticism, Japan

Births

• January 2 – Robert Nathan, American poet and novelist
• January 10 – Bochō Yamamura 山村 暮鳥, Japanese vagabond Christian preacher who gains attention as a writer of tales and songs for children and as a poet
• May 21 – Eileen Duggan, New Zealand
• May 28 – Loa Ho, Taiwan
• June 14 – W. W. E. Ross, Canadian geophysicist and Imagist poet
• June 16 – Ogiwara Seisensui 荻原井泉水, pen name of Ogiwara Tōkichi, Japanese haiku poet in the Taishō and Shōwa periods
• August 31 – Charles Reznikoff, American poet, part of the Objectivist poetry movement
• October 4 – Jun Tsuji 辻 潤, Japanese author, poet, essayist, musician and bohemian
• October 7 – Doris Huestis Speirs, Canadian painter, ornithologist and poet
• October 14 – E. E. Cummings, American poet and painter
• October 18 – H. L. Davis, American fiction writer and poet
• October 22 – Paul Grano, Australian poet and journalist
• December 26 – Jean Toomer, American poet and novelist, part of the Harlem Renaissance
• Zahida Khatun Sherwani, writing as Zay Khay Sheen, Indian Urdu language woman poet

Deaths

• January 24 – Constance Fenimore Woolson, American novelist, short-story writer and poet; a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper
• April 7 – Benjamin Franklin King Jr., American poet and humorist
• April 18 – Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali poet, novelist, essayist and journalist
• May 16 – Kitamura Tokoku 北村透谷, pen-name of Kitamura Montaro, Japanese, late Meiji period poet, essayist and a founder of the modern Japanese romantic literary movement
• May 26 – Roden Noel, English poet
• July 5 – Betty Paoli, Austrian poet
• July 17 – Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle, French poet of the Parnassian movement
• August 25 – Celia Thaxter, American poet and story writer
• September 5 – Augusta Webster, English poet
• October 7 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, American physician, professor and poet
• October 28 – John Askham, English shoemaker and poet
• December 3 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, of a brain haemorrhage, in Samoa
• December 29 – Christina Rossetti, English poet, of cancer
• Also:
• * Robert Fuller Murray, American-born Scottish poet, of consumption
• * Perunnelli Krishnan Vaidyar, Indian, Malayalam-language poet