Abstract The emergence of modern Kurdish poetry marks a period of great significance in the history of Kurdish literature since it witnessed the advent of modernity, the rise of Kurdish nationalism, the fall of the Persian and Ottoman Empires, and the creation of the Middle East with no country for Kurds. In this article I examine the complex process of the poetic modernisation which unfolded over the oeuvres of generations of poets from the late 19th century till its culmination in the 1940s. I illustrate that modern Kurdish poetry was an aesthetic response to the advent of modernity and its socio‐political implications such as nationalism in Kurdish society.