1970 in poetry

• May – "La nuit de la poésie", a poetry reading in Montreal bringing together poets from French Canada to recite before an audience of more than 2,000 in the Théâtre du Gesu, lasting until 7 a.m.[1]
• Release of Tomfoolery, an animated film directed by Joy Batchelor and John Halas, based on the nonsense verse of Edward Lear (especially "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo") and Lewis Carroll
• First issue of Tapia (later named the Trinidad & Tobago Review) published[2]
• In the United Kingdom, "My Enemies Have Sweet Voices", a poem by Pete Morgan, is set to music by Al Stewart and included in his "Zero She Flies" album this year.[3]

Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:

United Kingdom

Seamus Heaney in 1970

• Dannie Abse, Selected Poems
• Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie
• George Barker, At Thurgarton Church
• R. H. Bowden, Poems from Italy
• Frederick Broadie, My Findings
• Michael Dennis Browne, The Wife of Winter
• Charles Causley, Figgie Hobbin
• Donald Davie, Six Epistles to Eva Hesse
• C. Day-Lewis, The Whispering Roots[15]
• Patric Dickinson, More Than Time[15]
• Clifford Dyment, Collected Poems
• D.J. Enright, Selected Poems
• W.S. Graham, Malcolm Mooney's Land
• Ian Hamilton, The Visit
• Tony Harrison, The Loiners[15]
• Seamus Heaney, Northern Ireland poet published in the United Kingdom:
  • Night Drive, Gilbertson
  • A Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press
• Glyn Hughes, Neighbours
• Ted Hughes, Crow
• C. Day-Lewis, The Whispering Roots
• George MacBeth, The Burning Cone[15]
• Norman MacCaig, A Man in My Position
• Hugh MacDiarmid, Selected Poems
• Sorley MacLean, George Campbell Hay, William Neill and Stuart MacGregor, Four Points of a Saltire (includes some poems in Scottish Gaelic)
• Derek Mahon, Beyond Howth Head[15] Northern Ireland poet published in the United Kingdom
• Walter de la Mare, The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare
• Stuart Montgomery, Circe
• Brian Patten, The Homecoming[15]
• Christopher Pilling, Snakes and Girls, won the new Poets Award sponsored by Leeds university and the Yorkshire Post
• Peter Porter, The Last of England[15]
• Burns Singer, Collected Poems (posthumous)
• Iain Crichton Smith, Selected Poems
• Charles Tomlinson, The Way of a World
• John Wain, Letters to Five Artists
• Ted Walker, The Night Bathers
• Hugo Williams, Sugar Daddy[15]
• Mary Wilson (wife of Prime Minister Harold Wilson), Selected Poems, "easily the 'best selling'" poetry book of the year.[17]
• Clive Young, Ashdragons, Flowerdeath and Sun

Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:

• February 27 – Rachel Mann, English trans woman poet and Anglican priest
• September 10 – Phaswane Mpe (died 2004), South African novelist and poet
• September 16 – Nick Sagan, American poet, novelist and screenwriter
• September 24 – Gemma Moraleja Paz, Spanish poet and novelist
• Also:
  • Malika Booker, British poet
  • Victoria Chang, American poet[30]
  • Tim Kendall, English poet, editor, critic and academic
  • David Roderick, American poet
  • Faruk Šehić, Bosnian poet and fiction writer
  • Brenda Shaughnessy, Japanese-born American poet

The grave of Paul Celan at the Thiais cemetery near Paris

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• January 10 – Charles Olson, 59 (born 1910), American poet, of cancer
• January 15 – Leah Goldberg, 58 (born 1911), Israeli poet who wrote in Hebrew
• January 24 – Caresse Crosby, also known as "Mary Phelps Jacob", 78 (born 1891), American poet and New York socialite, who, in 1927, founded Black Sun Press with her husband Harry Crosby (also a poet) and who in 1910[31] invented the first modern bra to receive a patent and gain wide acceptance
• February 4 – Louise Bogan, 72 (born 1897), American poet, United States Poet Laureate
• February 19 – Edsel Ford, 41 (born 1928), American poet
• March 26 – Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni, 82 (born 1888), American poet
• March 28 – Nathan Alterman, 59 (born 1910), Israeli poet, journalist and translator
• March 29 – Vera Brittain, 76 (born 1893) English novelist and poet
• about April 20 – Paul Celan, 49 (born 1920), Romanian-born poet who wrote in German and became a French citizen, suicide
• May 12 – Nelly Sachs, 78 (born 1891), German-Swedish poet and dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966
• June 2 – Giuseppe Ungaretti, 82 (born 1888), Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic
• June 18 – N. P. van Wyk Louw, 64 (born 1906), South African Afrikaans poet and critic
• July 3 – James Douglas Morrison, 27
• August 18 – Humayun Kabir (Bengali: হুমায়ুন কবির), 63 (born 1906), Bengali poet, educationist, politician, writer and philosopher
• September 23 – John Gawsworth, 58 (born 1912), English poet, anthologist, Fitzrovian and King Juan I of Redonda
• September 28 – John Dos Passos, 74 (born 1896), American novelist, poet and artist
• November 25 – Yukio Mishima 三島 由紀夫, pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka 平岡 公威, 45 (born 1925), Japanese author, poet and playwright, by public ritual suicide
• December 11 – Arthur Nortje, 27 (born 1942), South African poet, of a drug overdose
• December 31 – Lorine Niedecker, 67 (born 1903), American Objectivist poet

• 1971 Britannica Book of the Year (covering events of 1970), "Literature" article and "Obituaries of 1970" article; source of many of the books in the "Works published" list and some deaths.
• Lal, P., Modern Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology & a Credo, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, second edition, 1971 (however, on page 597 an "editor's note" states contents "on the following pages are a supplement to the first edition" and is dated "1972"); hereafter: "P. Lal (1971)"

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