2009 in poetry

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

Events

• January 5 – The Turkish government announces it will posthumously restore the citizenship it had stripped from influential poet Nazim Hikmet, a Marxist who died in 1963 as an exile in the Soviet Union.^[1]
• January 20 – Poet Elizabeth Alexander reads "Praise Song for the Day" at presidential inauguration of President Barack Obama
• March 16 – Nicholas Hughes, 47, the son of the poets Ted Hughes (who later became the British poet laureate) and Sylvia Plath, who famously committed suicide in 1963 when her son was a year old, hanged himself in his home in Alaska. He had suffered from depression.^[2]
• May 1 – Carol Ann Duffy is appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, the first woman appointed to the position in its 341-year history, a position that has been held by, among others, John Dryden ( whom Charles II named the first official poet laureate )^[3], Tennyson, Wordsworth, Cecil Day-Lewis and Ted Hughes. Duffy is also the first Scot and the first openly gay occupant of the post^[4][5]
• September 18 - The film Bright Star, about John Keats and his relationship with Fanny Brawne, is released in the United States, and on November 6 in the United Kingdom. The film's title is a reference to a sonnet by Keats, Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art, written at the time of the love affair. Jane Campion directed the movie.

Works published in English

Seamus Heaney addresses the Law Society (University College Dublin), this year

United Kingdom

• Caroline Grigson, editor, The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter: Haydn's Tuneful Voice (Hunter, 1742–1821, wrote lyrics to much of Haydn's music) Liverpool University Press (Liverpool English Texts and Studies) ISBN 9781846311918 (May)

Anthologies in the United Kingdom

• Gerard Carruthers, editor, Scottish Poems (January)

Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United Kingdom

• Zachary Leader, editor, The Movement Reconsidere: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, and Their Contemporaries, Oxford University Press (April 2009)^[6]
• Contemporary Poetry: Poets and Poetry since 1990 (Cambridge Contexts in Literature) Cambridge University Press, 1st edition ISBN 9780521712484 (March)

Ireland

United States

• Sherman Alexie, Face the author's first collection in nine years, Hanging Loose Press (April)^[7]
• Philip Appleman, Karma, Dharma, Pudding & Pie Quantuck Lane Press (April)^[7]
• Jules Boykoff, Hegemonic Love Potion, Factory School, Brooklyn, NY
• Joel Brouwer, And So, Four Way, ISBN 9781884800917^[8]
• Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Apocalyptic Swing (August), Persea^[7]
• C. P. Cavafy, translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn:
  • Collected Poems, Knopf, ISBN 9780375400964^[8]
  • The Unfinished Poems, C.P. Cavafy, 30 poems, left in various stages of completion by Cavafy when he died in 1933, discovered in the Cavafy Archive in the 1960s by George Savidis, the poet's editor, and published in a scholarly Greek edition by Renata Lavagnini in 1994; Knopf, ISBN 9780307265463^[8]
• Florence Earle Coates (1850-1927), Victi Resurgunt. Published posthumously. A 26-page pamphlet of fifteen "fugitive" patriotic and war poems written by Mrs. Coates. The poems were originally published in various periodicals and texts between the years 1915 and 1922, and have been compiled and organized into pamphlet format.^[9] ISBN 9780615309262^[8]
• Arda Collins, It Is Daylight, Louise Glück's sixth pick as judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition; Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300148886 (April)^[8]
• Ben Doller, (né Doyle), FAQ, Ahsahta, ISBN 9780934103067^[8]
• Rita Dove, Sonata Mulattica, Norton, ISBN 9780393070088 (April)^[8]
• Brett Evans, Slosh Models, Brooklyn: Factory School^[8]
• Peter Ganick, arranger, White Sky Books, Puhos, Finland
• Jack Gilbert, The Dance Most of All, Knopf, ISBN 978-0-307-27076-4 (April)^[8]
• Jim Harrison, In Search of Small Gods, Copper Canyon Press (April)^[7]
• Michael Heller, Eschaton, Jersey City, New Jersey: Talisman House
• Ernest Hilbert, Sixty Sonnets, Boston: Red Hen.
• Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300121568; including "Mercian Hymns"^[8]
• Lucy Ives, My Thousand Novel, Iowa City, Iowa: Cosa Nostra Editions
• Simone dos Anjos, Comedies, Iowa City, Iowa: Cosa Nostra Editions
• Erica Kaufman, Censory Impulse, Factory School, Brooklyn, NY
• Jennifer Kronovet, Awayward, debut book of poetry, selected by Jean Valentine for BOA's A. Poulin Jr. prize; BOA, ISBN 9781934414187^[8]
• Timothy Liu, Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse, Talisman House, Jersey City, NJ
• Randall Mann, Breakfast with Thom Gunn, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226503448^[8]
• Deborah Meadows, Goodbye Tissues, Shearsman Books, Exeter, UK
• Didi Menendez, For Love of an Armadillo, GOSS 183:: Casa Menendez, Bloomington, IL
• Sheila Murphy & mIEKAL aND, How to Spell the Sound of Everything, Xerox Sutra Editions, West Lima, WI
• Mary Oliver, Evidence, 44 poems, Beacon Press (April)^[7]
• Simon Pettet, Hearth, Talisman House, Jersey City, NJ
• Kit Robinson, The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976 – 2003, Adventures in Poetry, Princeton, NJ
• Frederick Seidel, Poems 1959–2009, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, ISBN 9780374126551 (April)^[8]
• Mohammad Shaheen, translation from the original Arabic of the late Mahmoud Darwish, Almond Blossoms and Beyond, Interlink (March)^[7]
• Frank Sherlock, Over Here, Factory School, Brooklyn, NY
• Louis Simpson, Struggling Times. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions. ISBN 978-1-934414-20-0. This is the Jamaica-born Simpson's 18th collection.^[8]
• Elizabeth Swados, The One and Only Human Galaxy, Hanging Loose Press (April)^[7]
• Anne Waldman, Manatee/ Humanity, Penguin, ISBN 9780143115212 book-length poem taking its form and concerns from a Tibetan Buddhist ritual and from the poet's close encounter with a Manatee^[8]
• Keith Waldrop:
  • Translator from the original French of Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose, Wesleyan University Press (May) ^[7]
  • Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-25878-5 Waldrop has long been a major force in American avant-garde poetics, and this substantial new volume is big news indeed. Comprising three sequences—each almost a book in itself—plus an epilogue^[8]
• Emily Wilson, Micrographia, title from Robert Hooke's 1665 scientific study of the natural world through a microscope; University of Iowa Press, ISBN 9781587298011^[8]
• Jesse Lee Kercheval, Cinema Muto
• Kelly Cherry, The Retreats of Thought

Anthologies in the United States

• David Lehman, general editor, David Wagoner, editor, The Best American Poetry 2009 ISBN 9780743299763 (September 2009)
• Honor Moore, Poems from the Women's Movement (April), work from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Library of America

Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United States

• International Who's Who in Poetry 2009, Routledge, ISBN 9781857434835^[10]

Italic text

Canada

• Carolyn Smart, Hooked, Brick Books (Spring 2009)
  
• Barry Dempster, Love Outlandish, Brick Books (March 2009)
  
• Sina Queyras, Expressway, Coach House Books (March 2009)
  
• Carmine Starnino, This Way Out, Gaspereau Press (April 2009)
  
• David Zieroth, The Fly in Autumn, Harbour Publishing (May 2009)
  
• Jan Conn, Botero's Beautiful Horses, Brick Books (May 2009)
  
• Laisha Rosnau, Lousy Explorers, Nightwood Editions (May 2009)
  
• Chris Hutchinson, Other People's Lives, Brick Books (July 2009)
  
• Kim Goldberg, Red Zone, Pig Squash Press (September 2009)
  
• Stephen Rowe, Never More There, Nightwood Editions (October 2009)
  

Continental Europe

• R'Rtma, compilation of selected poems From Free Heart and Reason to Unconditional Love and Back ISBN 9781441444226 (stylistically innovative poetry written in English by a Continental European poet ^[11])

Works published in other languages

• Wisława Szymborska, Tutaj ("Here"), Poland

Awards and honors

Australia awards and honors

• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry:
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry:

Canada awards and honors

• Lampman-Scott Award:
• Atlantic Poetry Prize:
• Griffin Poetry Prize: Canadian:
• Griffin Poetry Prize: International, in the English Language:
  • Others on the shortlist:
• Pat Lowther Award:
• Prix Alain-Grandbois:
• Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award:

New Zealand awards and honors

• Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement:
• Montana New Zealand Book Awards (poetry category):

United Kingdom awards and honors

• Cholmondeley Award:
• Costa Award (formerly "Whitbread Awards") for poetry:
  • Shortlist:
• David Cohen Prize: Seamus Heaney
• English Association's Fellows' Poetry Prizes:
• Eric Gregory Award (for a collection of poems by a poet under the age of 30):
• Forward Poetry Prize:
  • Best Collection:
    • Shortlist:
  • Best First Collection:
    • Shortlist:
• Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for poetry:
  • Shortlist:
• Manchester Poetry Prize:
• National Poet of Wales:
• National Poetry Competition 2008:
• T. S. Eliot Prize (United Kingdom and Ireland): Jen Hadfield, Nigh-No-Place
  • Shortlist (announced in November 2008):
• The Times/Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation:

United States awards and honors

• Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize:
• National Book Award for Poetry:
• The New Criterion Poetry Prize:
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (United States): W.S. Merwin for The Shadow of Sirius
• Wallace Stevens Award:
• PEN Award for Poetry in Translation:
• Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize : Fanny Howe^[12]
• Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism: Ange Mlinko ^[13]

From the Poetry Society of America

• Frost Medal: X.J. Kennedy

• Shelley Memorial Award: Ron Padgett and Gary Young; Judges: John Koethe and Christopher Buckley

• Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award: Richard Robbins; Judge: Graham Foust

• Lyric Poetry Award: Susan Kinsolving; Judge: Lucie Brock-Broido

• Lucille Medwick Memorial Award: Wayne Miller; Judge: Elizabeth Alexander; finalist:

• Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award: Melissa Kwasny; Judge: Ed Roberson; finalists:

• Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award: Grace Dunhame; Judge: Matthew Rohrer; finalists:

• George Bogin Memorial Award: Rusty Morrison; Judge: John Yau

• Robert H. Winner Memorial Award: Eliot Khalil Wilson; Judge: Henri Cole; finalists:

• Cecil Hemley Memorial Award: Melissa Kwasny; Judge: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

• Norma Farber First Book Award: Richard Deming for Let's Not Call It Consequence; Judge: Martha Ronk
• William Carlos Williams Award: Linda Gregg for All of It Singing; Judge: James Longenbach; finalists:

Deaths

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

• January 2 – Inger Christensen, 73 (born 1935), Danish poet, writer, novelist, essayist and children's book author^[14]
• January 4 – Gert Jonke, 62, (born 1946), Austrian poet, novelist playwright and screenwriter, of cancer^[15]
• January 10 – Mario Augusto Rodriguez Velez, 92 (born 1917), Panamanian journalist, essayist, dramatist, poet and storyteller, of a heart ailment (surname: Rodriguez Velez)^[16]
• January 11 – Milan Rufus, 80 (born 1928), Slovak poet and academic^[17]
• January 12 – Mick Imlah, 52 (born 1956), British poet^[18]
• January 13 – W. D. Snodgrass, 83 (born 1926), American poet and academic^[19]
• January 15 – Maurice Chappaz, 92 (born 1916), Swiss, French-language poet, writer and translator^[20]
• January 18 – Grigore Vieru, 73 (born 1935), a Moldovan poet writing in Romanian, strong promoter of the Romanian language in Moldova; died from a car accident^[21]
• January 27 – John Updike, 76 (born 1932), American novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet and writer^[22]
• January 30 – James Schevill, 88 (born 1920), American poet, critic, playwright and professor at San Francisco State and Brown University ^[23]
• February 4 – Arnljot Eggen, (born 1923), Norwegian poet, playwright and author of children's books
• February 5 – Subedar Mahmoodmiya Mohammad Imam, popularly known as "Asim Randeri", 104 (born 1904), Indian, Gujarati-language ghazal poet^[24]
• February 9:
  • Kazys Bradūnas, 91, Lithuanian poet and editor ^[25]
  • Don Maclennan, 80 (born 1929), English-born South African poet, critic and academic^[26]
• February 13 – Bahtiyar Vahabzade (born 1925), Azerbaijani poet, philologist^[27]
• February 20 – Christopher Nolan, 43 (born 1965), Irish poet and author^[28]
• February 25 – Bill Holm, 65 (born 1943), American poet, writer and academic, from complications of pneumonia^[29]
• March 4 – Triztán Vindtorn (born 1942), Norwegian poet and performance artist
• March 12 – Blanca Varela, 82 (born 1926), Peruvian poet^[30]
• March 13 – James Purdy, 94, (born 1914), American novelist, poet and playwright^[31]
• March 17 – Jane Mayhall, 90, (born 1918), American poet and novelist^[32]
• April 3 – Alexei Parshchikov, 54,(born 1954), Russian poet, critic and translator^[33][34]
• April 8 – Henri Meschonnic, 77, (born 1932), French poet, linguist, translator and theoretician ^[35]
• April 10 – Deborah Digges (born 1950), American poet and academic^[36]
• April 12 – Franklin Rosemont (born 1943), American Surrealist poet, labor historian and co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group^[37]
• April 13 – Stefan Brecht (born 1924), 84, German-born American poet, critic and scholar of theater; son of Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel^[38]
• April 28 – U. A. Fanthorpe (born 1929), 79, English poet ^[39]
• April 29, but date uncertain – Craig Arnold (born 1967), 41, American poet, fell climbing a volcano in Japan while collecting material for his next book.
• May 1 –3 – Bantu Mwaura, 40, Kenyan human-rights activist, actor, director, poet and storyteller who wrote poetry in English, Kiswahili and Gikuyu^[40]
• May 7 – Robin Blaser, (born 1925), 83, American-born Canadian poet, Griffin Poetry Prize winner^[41]
• May 10 – James Kirkup, 91, English poet, translator and travel writer, from a stroke^[42]
• May 17 – Mario Benedetti, 88 (born 1920), Uruguayan, poet, author and journalist^[43]
• May 22 – Alexander Mezhirov, 86, (born 1923), Russian poet, translator and critic^[44]
• May 31 – Kamala Das, 75, (born 1934), Indian short-story writer and poet who wrote in English and Malayalam
• June 3 – David Bromige, 75, (born 1933), English-born Canadian-poet who resided in California, winner of the Pushcart Prize.^[45]
• June 8:
  • Harold Norse, 92, (born 1916), American poet and memoirist. Considered among Beat poets.
  • Habib Tanvir, 85 (born 1923), popular Hindi playwright, theatre director, poet and actor^[46]
• June 24 – Steven Wells, 49 (born 1960), English music critic, journalist, screenwriter, poet, novelist, film producer and publisher
• July 3 – Alauddin Al-Azad, 77 (born 1932), Bengali novelist, writer, poet, literary critic and academic^[47]
• August 6 – Wahyu Sulaiman Rendra, born Willibrordus Surendra Broto Rendra, popularly known as W. S. Rendra and also known as "Si Burung Merak" and "The Peacock", 74 (born 1935^[48]), Indonesian poet^[49]
• August 8 – Alfonso Calderon Squadritto, 78 (born 1930), Chilean poet, writer, memoirist and poetry anthologist^[50]
• August 16 – Alistair Campbell, 84 (born 1925), New Zealand poet, writer and editor, and once the husband of fellow poet Fleur Adcock^[51]
• August 19:
  • Dic Jones, 75, Welsh poet^[52]
  • Lina Kasdagli (also spelled "Lina Kasdaglē"),^[53] 88 (born 1912), Greek poet and translator^[54]
• August 27 – Sergey Mikhalkov, 96 (born 1913), Russian writer and poet, co-author of the lyrics of the National Anthem of the Soviet Union and National Anthem of Russia^[55]
• September 11 – Jim Carroll, 59 (born 1949), American poet, author and musician.^[56]

Notes

See also

Poetry portal

• Poetry
• List of poetry awards