1899 in poetry

Events

• February 4 – Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" is first published in The Times. A response to the United States occupation of the Philippine Islands, and exhorting members of the White race to be responsible for benevolent civilising of the world's "non-white" people, the poem is reprinted in The New York Sun the next day.
• March 20 – Welsh "tramp-poet" W. H. Davies loses his foot trying to jump a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario.
• William Hughes Mearns writes "Antigonish" this year; it won't be published until 1922.
• Romesh Chunder Dutt's translation of the Ramayana into English verse is first published, in London.Shinshisha founded by Yosano Tekkan in Japan.

Works published

Australia">Australian poetry">Australia

• W. T. Goodge, ''Hits! Skits! and Jingles!''

Canada">Canadian poetry">Canada

• Frances Jones Bannerman, Milestones. London.
• William Wilfred Campbell, Beyond the Hills of Dream. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.
• Fidelis, Lays of the "True North," and Other Canadian Poems.
• John Frederic Herbin, The Marshlands
• Archibald Lampman, Alcyone, including "City of the End of Things", the author died while the book was being printed.
• Thomas O'Hagan, Songs of the Settlement
• Frederick George Scott, Poems Old and New.
• Francis Sherman, 'The Deserted City: Stray Sonnets. Boston: Copeland and Day.
• Arthur Stringer, The Loom of Destiny.

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• Hilaire Belloc, A Moral Alphabet
• Laurence Binyon, Second Book of London Visions
• Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Satan Absolved
• Gordon Bottomley, Poems at White-Nights
• Robert Buchanan, The New Rome: Poems and ballads of our empire
• John Davidson, The Last Ballad, and Other Poems
• Lord Alfred Douglas, The City of the Soul
• Ernest Dowson, Decorations: in Verse and Prose
• Rudyard Kipling:
• * "The Absent-Minded Beggar"
• * "The White Man's Burden", appears first in McClure's Magazine in the United States; it is parodied this same year in "The Brown Man's Burden", by Henry Labouchère in Truth, a publication in London; the parody is reprinted in the United States in Literary Digest 18
• Dora Sigerson, Ballads and Poems
• Arthur Symons:
• * Images of Good and Evil
• * The Symbolist Movement in Literature, first collected edition of essays
• W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds including "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"; Irish poet published in the United Kingdom,

United States">American poetry">United States

• Stephen Crane, War is Kind
• Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of the Hearthside, which included his poem "Sympathy"
• Hamlin Gillette, The Trail of the Goldseekers
• Louise Imogen Guiney, The Martyrs' Idyl
• Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden", appears first in McClure's; it is parodied this same year in "The Brown Man's Burden", by Henry Labouchère in Truth, a publication in London; the parody is reprinted in the United States in Literary Digest 18
• Edwin Markham, The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems
• Howard Llewellyn Swisher, Briar Blossoms: Being a Collection of a Few Verses and Some Prose
• Henry Timrod, ''Complete Poems''

Other in English

• John Le Gay Brereton, Landlopers, mostly prose, based on a walking tour with Dowell Philip O'Reilly; Australia
• W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds including "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"; Irish poet published in the United Kingdom, The Wind Among the Reeds,

Works published in other languages

France">French poetry">France

• Francis Jammes:
• *Le Poète et l'oiseau
• * La Jeune Fille nue, France
• Stéphane Mallarmé, Poésies, originally published 1877, new edn with commentary by the poet
• Oscar Milosz, also known as O. V. de L. Milosz, ''Le Poème des décadences''

Other languages

• José Santos Chocano, La epopeya del Morro, Peru
• Stefan George, Teppich des Lebens ; German
• Gregorio Martínez Sierra, Diálogos fantásticos, Spain

Births

• January 23 – Carlo Betocchi, Italian poet
• January 26 – May Miller African American poet, playwright and educator
• February 17 – Jibanananda Das, popular Bengali poet
• March 7 – Jun Ishikawa 石川淳 pen name of Ishikawa Kiyoshi, Ishikawa, Japanese, Shōwa period modernist author, translator and literary critic
• March 25 – Jacques Audiberti, French playwright, poet, novelist and exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd
• March 27 – Francis Ponge, French academic, journalist and poet
• May 18 – D. Gwenallt Jones, Welsh poet
• May 24
• * Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengali poet and composer best known as the Bidrohi Kobi, popular among Bengalis and considered the national poet of Bangladesh
• * Henri Michaux, Belgian, French-language artist, writer and poet who became a French citizen
• May 27 – Raymond Knister died, Canadian poet, novelist and short story writer
• June 6 – Hildegarde Flanner, American poet, author and activist
• June 8 – Kaoru Maruyama 丸山 薫, Japanese
• July 4 – Benjamin Péret, French poet and writer
• July 7 – Margaret Larkin, American poet
• July 21 – Hart Crane, American poet
• August 1 – F. R. Scott, Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert
• September 30 – Hendrik Marsman, Dutch poet
• August 5 – Sakae Tsuboi 壺井栄, Japanese novelist and poet
• November 19 – Allen Tate, American poet and member of the Fugitives and later the Southern Agrarians.
• December 9 – Léonie Adams, American poet and Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress
• Date not known:
• * Jammuneshwar Khataniyar, Indian, Assamese-language poet; a woman
• * Dimbeshwar Neog, Indian, Assamese-language poet
• * Constance Woodrow, English-born Canadian poet

Deaths

• February 10 – Archibald Lampman, 37, Canadian poet who dies while his book, Alcyone, is being printed
• April 16 – Emilio Jacinto, 23 Filipino revolutionary general and poet, of malaria
• April 26 – Dragotin Kette, 23, Slovene poet, of TB
• July 20 – Frances Laughton Mace, 63 American poet
• November 16 – Vincas Kudirka, 40, Lithuanian physician, poet and national hero, of TB
• November 25 – Robert Lowry, 73, American hymnodist
• December 1 – Dolores Cabrera y Heredia, 71, Spanish Romantic poet and novelist, member of Hermandad Lírica