2002 in poetry

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

Events

• March 16: Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested and jailed poet Abdul Mohsen Musalam and fired a newspaper editor following the publication of Musalam's poem The Corrupt on Earth that criticized the state's Islamic judiciary. In it, the poet accused some judges of being corrupt and issuing unfair rulings for their own personal benefit.
• The office of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate is instituted (see "Awards and honors" section below)
• August 22 — Poet Ron Silliman starts his popular and controversial weblog, Silliman's Blog, which will become one of the most popular blogs devoted largely to contemporary poetry and poetics. (By August 2006, the blog will reach a total of 800,000 hits and get its next 100,000 by early November.)^[1].
• Fulcrum, An annual of poetry and aesthetics is founded in the United States.
• August 27 in the United States; December 8 in Europe — Avril Lavigne's pop song Sk8er Boi comes out — about the award-winning Irish performance poet Gerard McKeown, whom she had not met, but had seen performing in Belfast, Northern Ireland while on tour there. The single reached number ten on the United States Billboard Hot 100, number eight in the United Kingdom, number three in Australia, number thirteen in Canada and number one in Spain. Lavigne confirmed the connection in a 2008 interview.
• Influential Chinese literary magazine Tamen ("They/Them") revived as a webzine at www.tamen.net.^[2]

Works published

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

Australia

• Alison Croggon, Attempts at Being, Salt Publishing, ISBN 1876857420.
• Robert Gray, Afterimages
• Emma Lew, Anything the Landlord Touches, won the 2003 C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry and was short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry that same year
• Chris Mansell:
  • Stalking the Rainbow (PressPress, 2002)
  • Fickle Brat (IP Digital, Brisbane, 2002)
• Les Murray:
  • Poems the Size of Photographs, Duffy & Snellgrove and Carcanet^[3]
  • New Collected Poems, Duffy & Snellgrove; Carcanet, 2003^[3]

Canada

• Margaret Avison, Concrete and Wild Carrot
• Christian Bök, ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science ISBN 978-0-8101-1877-5
• Michael Boughn, Dislocations in Crystal (Coach House Books) ISBN 9781552451113
• Louis Cabri, The Mood Embosser (Coach House Books) ISBN 9781552450956
• Margaret Christakos, Excessive Love Prostheses (Coach House Books) ISBN 9781552451021
• Lise Downe, Disturbances of Progress (Coach House Books) ISBN 9781552451120
• Rob Fitterman, Metropolis (Book 2) (Coach House Books) ISBN 9781552451045
• Laura Lush:
  • The First Day of Winter: Poetry, Vancouver: Ronsdale Press
  • Going to the Zoo, Winnipeg: Turnstone Press
• Don McKay, Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness
• Jay Millar, Mycological Studies (Coach House Books) ISBN 9781552451038
• P. K. Page, Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New, edited and with an introduction by Eric Ormsby, Erin, Ontario: Porcupine's Quill^[4]

Ireland

• Vona Groarke, Flight, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, Ireland
• Justin Quinn:
  • Fuselage Oldcastle: The Gallery Press,
  • Gathered Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens, Nature and Community, University College of Dublin Press, 2002 (criticism)

New Zealand

• James K. Baxter, The Tree House: James K. Baxter's Poems for Children (posthumous), the first illustrated edition of his work for children
• Janet Charman, Snowing Down South, Auckland: Auckland University Press^[5]
• Alan Brunton, Fq, a sequence of 144 poems (posthumous)^[6]
• Cilla McQueen, Soundings, Otago University Press^[7]
• Mike Minehan, O Jerusalem: James K. Baxter an Intimate Memoir
• Kendrick Smithyman, posthumous:
  • Last Poems, Auckland: Holloway Press, designed by Tara hir poi a pek fhj nbb a: Auckland University Press

Poets in Best New Zealand Poems

Best New Zealand Poems series, an annual online anthology, is started this year with Iain Sharp as the first annual editor. Twenty-five poems by 25 New Zealand poets are selected from the previous year. The first selection is called Best New Zealand Poetry 2001. Unlike The Best American Poetry series, the year named in each edition refers to the year the poems were originally published, not the following year, when the collection is put together and made public. Sharp chose poems published in 2001 from these poets:

United Kingdom

• Ciarán Carson: The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (translator), Granta, awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
• Carol Ann Duffy, Feminine Gospels Picador^[8]
• Elaine Feinstein, Collected Poems and Translations, Carcanet
• James Fenton: An Introduction to English Poetry^[9]
• Paul Henry, The Slipped Leash, Seren
• Ted Hughes, Selected Poems, 1957-1994 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Glyn Maxwell, The Nerve (Houghton Mifflin); a New York Times "notable book of the year" (British poet living in America, poetry editor of The New Republic magazine)
• Sean O'Brien:
  • Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976-2001 (Picador)
  • With John Kinsella and Peter Porter, Rivers (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Australia)
• Alice Oswald:
  • Dart, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21410-X
  • Co-editor, with Peter Oswald and Robert Woof), Earth Has Not Any Thing to Shew More Fair: A Bicentennial Celebration of Wordsworth's "Sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge" Shakespeare's Globe & The Wordsworth Trust, ISBN 1-870787-84-6
• John Heath-Stubbs, The Return of the Cranes
• Peter Redgrove, From the Virgil Caverns
• R.S. Thomas, Residues (posthumous)
• Hugo Williams, Collected Poems, Faber and Faber

United States

• John Ashbery, Chinese Whispers
• Frank Bidart, Music Like Dirt (Sarabande Books), the only poetry chapbook ever nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
• Billy Collins, Nine Horses: Poems (Random House); a New York Times "notable book of the year" (ISBN 0-375-50381-1)
• Robert Creeley edits The Best American Poetry 2002
• Alan Dugan, Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry (Seven Stories); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Michael S. Harper, Selected Poems, ARC Publications^[10]
• Paul Hoover, Winter Mirror, (Flood Editions)
• Kenneth Koch:
  • Sun Out: Selected Poems, 1952-1954, New York: Knopf^[11]
  • A Possible World, New York: Knopf^[11]
• Abba Kovner, Sloan-Kettering: Poems (Schocken); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Brad Leithauser, Darlington's Fall: A Novel in Verse (Knopf); a 5,700-line verse novel in 10-line stanzas, irregularly rhymed; a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Glyn Maxwell, The Nerve (Houghton Mifflin); a New York Times "notable book of the year" (British poet living in America, poetry editor of The New Republic magazine)
• J.D. McClatchy, Hazmat: Poems (Knopf); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Czesław Miłosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 (Ecco/HarperCollins); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Paul Muldoon, Moy Sand and Gravel, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and Griffin Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the 2002 T. S. Eliot Prize
• Lorine Niedecker, Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works, edited by Jenny Penberthy (University of California Press), posthumous
• Mary Oliver, What Do We Know
• Molly Peacock, Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems
• Carl Phillips, Rock Harbor^[12]
• Marie Ponsot, Springing: New and Selected Poems (Knopf); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Margaret Reynolds, editor, The Sappho Companion (scholarship) Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 9780312295103 ISBN 0312295103
• W. G. Sebald, After Nature (Random House); a book-length poem; a New York Times "notable book of the year"
• Aharon Shabtai, Artzenu (Hebrew: "Our Land")
• Adam Zagajewski, Without End: New and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); a New York Times "notable book of the year"

Poets in The Best American Poetry 2002

Poems from these 75 poets were in The Best American Poetry 2002, David Lehman, editor; Robert Creeley, guest editor:

Works published in other languages

• Rami Saari, Kamma, Kamma milxama ("So Much, So Much War"), Israel^[13]
• Wisława Szymborska: Chwila ("Moment"), Poland
• Chris Wallace-Crabbe, La Poésie Australienne, Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires, (with Simone Kadi), French translation of the work of this Australian poet

China

• Han Dong:
  • Baba zai tianshang kan wo ("Daddy's Watching Me in Heaven"), Hebei: jiaoyu chubanshe,^[2]
  • Jiaocha paodong ("Running Criss-cross"), Dunhuang: wenyi chubanshe^[2]
• He Xiaozhu, 6 ge dongci, huo pingguo ("6 Verbs, or Apples"), Hebei: jiaoyu chubanshe^[14]
• Jimu Langge, Jingqiaoqiao de zuolun ("The silent revolver"), Hebei: jiaoyu chubanshe^[15]

Awards and honors

Australia

• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Robert Gray, Afterimages
• Dinny O'Hearn Poetry Prize: After Images by Robert Gray
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Alan Wearne, The Lovemakers
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Geraldine McKenzie, Duty

Canada

• Gerald Lampert Award
• Archibald Lampman Award
• Atlantic Poetry Prize
• The office of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate is instituted, George Bowering is the first appointee and will serve until 2004
• See 2002 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Griffin Poetry Prize: Canada: Christian Bök, Eunoia; International, in the English Language: Alice Notley, Disobedience
• Pat Lowther Award
• Prix Alain-Grandbois
• Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award

New Zealand

• Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement:
• Montana New Zealand Book Awards (no poetry category winner this year) First-book award for poetry: Chris Price, Husk, Auckland University Press

United Kingdom

• Cholmondeley Award: Moniza Alvi, David Constantine, Liz Lochhead, Brian Patten
• Eric Gregory Award: Caroline Bird, Christopher James, Jacob Polley, Luke Heeley, Judith Lal, David Leonard Briggs, Eleanor Rees, Kathryn Simmonds
• Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection): Peter Porter, Max is Missing (Picador); Best First Collection: Tom French, Touching the Bones (The Gallery Press)
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Peter Porter
• T. S. Eliot Prize (United Kingdom and Ireland): Alice Oswald, Dart
• Whitbread Award for poetry (United Kingdom):

United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize awarded to Shao Wei for Pulling a Dragon's Teeth
• Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, Grace Schulman
• Arthur Rense Prize for poetry awarded to B.H. Fairchild by the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry, Timothy Donnelly, "His Long Imprison'd Thought"
• Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Alice Fulton for Felt
• Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Anna George Meek, Acts of Contortion
• Frost Medal: Galway Kinnell
• National Book Award for poetry (United States): Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Carl Dennis, Practical Gods
• Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award: Paul Fussell
• Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize: Lisel Mueller
• Wallace Stevens Award: Ruth Stone
• William Carlos Williams Award: Li-Young Lee, Book of My Nights (American Poets Continuum), Judge: Carolyn Kizer
• Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: Sharon Olds

Other

• Austrian State Prize for Literature (2001 prize given this year): Gert Jonke

Deaths

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

• June 14 – June Jordan, American poet, of breast cancer
• June 27 – Alan Brunton (born 1946), New Zealand poet and scriptwriter^[6]
• July 6 – Kenneth Koch, American poet, of leukemia
• July 14 – Nabakanta Barua, also known as Ekhud Kokaideu, (born (1926), Assamese-language Indian novelist and poet
• August 25 – Dorothy Hewett (born 1923), Australian poet and playwright
• September 27 – Charles Henri Ford, 89, American novelist, poet, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist
• October 21 – Harbhajan Singh (born 1920), Punjabi poet, critic, cultural commentator, and translator
• October 28 – Annadashankar Roy (born 1905), Bengali poet
• December 9 – Stan Rice, American painter, educator, poet, husband of author Anne Rice

Notes

1. ^ In his blog entry for Saturday, November 04, 2006 link here Silliman takes note of the following statistics: "In 2002-03, it took 50 weeks to get the first 50,000 visits. The last 100,000 came in just 14 (weeks)".
2. ^ ^{a b c} Simon Patten, "Han Dong", article, Poetry International website, retrieved November 22, 2009
3. ^ ^{a b} [1]Les Murray Web page at The Poetry Archive Web site, accessed October 15, 2007
4. ^ Web page titled "Canadian Poets / P.K. Page, Published Works", at the University of Toronto Library website, retrieved January 3, 2009
5. ^ Robinson, Roger and Wattie, Nelson, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, 1998, "Janet Charman" article
6. ^ ^{a b} Robinson, Roger and Wattie, Nelson, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, 1998, pp. 75-76, "Alan Brunton" article by Peter Simpson
7. ^ Cilla McQueen - NZ Literature File - LEARN - The University Of Auckland Library
8. ^ O’Reilly, Elizabeth (either author of the "Critical Perspective" section or of the entire contents of the web page, titled "Carol Ann Duffy" at Contemporary Poets website, retrieved May 4, 2009. Archived 2009-05-08.
9. ^ [2]Web page titled "Books by Fenton" at the James Fenton Web site, accessed October 11, 2007
10. ^ Web page titled "Michael S. Harper" at the Academy of American poets website, accessed April 23, 2008
11. ^ ^{a b} Web page titled "Archives / Kenneth Koch (1925 - 2002)" at Poetry Foundation website, accessed May 15, 2008
12. ^ McClatchy, J. D., editor, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, second edition, Vintage Books (Random House), 2003
13. ^ Page titled "Rami Saari" at the Modern Hebrew Literature Bio-Bibliographical Lexicon, 2007
14. ^ Daton, D., "He Xiaozhu", article at the Poetry International website, retrieved November 22, 2008
15. ^ Dayton, D., "Jimu Langge", article at the Poetry International website, retrieved November 22, 2008

• [3] "A Timeline of English Poetry" Web page of the Representative Poetry Online Web site, University of Toronto

See also

Poetry portal

• Poetry
• List of years in poetry
• List of poetry awards