2014 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Events

January – Five fragments of nine poems, some previously unknown, by Greek poet Sappho are discovered on ancient papyrus, including the Brothers Poem. This news is being reported by multiple news sources by the end of the month.
January 7 – Michel Pleau is named Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, beginning a two-year mandate to "draw Canadians’ attention to the reading and writing of poetry."
January 29 – Hashem Shabani, an Arab–Iranian poet, was executed by hanging in an unidentified Iranian prison after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani approved the sentences.
March 7 – For the first time ever, all five poets laureate of the British Isles are women and for the first time all five perform together at the Women of the World festival in London on the eve of International Women's Day. The poets are: Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead, Gillian Clarke, Paula Meehan, and Sinéad Morrissey.
March 19 – PEN International comes out with an action appeal protesting the two-year prison sentence handed down to Egyptian poet Omar Hazek. PEN states that this poet has been "imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and assembly." Hazek, who has won several poetry awards and is a former employee of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, has been held in custody since early December 2013.
April 22 – The Writers' Trust of Canada announces the new Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize, a new Canadian literary award to honour the body of work of a Canadian poet who has published at least three volumes of poetry. The award is slated to be presented for the first time in November.
May 22 – The translation of Beowulf by J. R. R. Tolkien, which he had first completed in 1926, is published in England as Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary.
June 12 – The Library of Congress selects Charles Wright as the new United States Poet Laureate, succeeding Natasha Trethewey.
August 22 – New Zealand celebrates its own National Poetry Day, now in its 17th year, with more than 60 events held around the country. Included among the various readings and contests are events sponsoring the current New Zealand Poet Laureate, Vincent O’Sullivan, who reads poetry in Dunedin, and 2007–2009 Poet Laureate, Michele Leggott, who MCs the annual Auckland Library event.

Anniversaries

January 28 – On this day 75 years ago, W. B. Yeats died in Menton, France.
February 21 – Christopher Marlowe's 450th birthday celebrated.
March 9 – On this day 20 years ago, Charles Bukowski died.
March 31 – On this day 100 years ago, Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz was born.
April 23 – It is assumed that William Shakespeare was born on this day 450 years ago.
May – The 100th anniversary of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons.
September 4 – On this day 100 years ago, French poet and essayist Charles Péguy, 41 was killed in action near Villeroy, Seine-et-Marne, in the early months of World War I
October 10 – On this day 100 years ago, German poet Ernst Stadler, 31 was killed in battle at Zandvoorde near Ypres.
– On this day 200 years ago Mikhail Lermontov was born; he is sometimes referred to as "Russia's second-greatest poet."
October 25 – On this day 100 years ago, American poet John Berryman was born.
October 27 – On this day 100 years ago, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea.
October 30 – On this day 100 years ago, American poet and publisher James Laughlin, founder of New Directions Publishers, was born.
November 3 – On this day 100 years ago, Austrian poet Georg Trakl, 27, committed suicide.

Works published in English

Australia

Benedict Andrews. Lens Flare. Sydney: Pitt Street Poetry
Louis Armand. Indirect Objects. Sydney: Vagabond Press
Judith Beveridge. Devadatta's Poems. Artarmon: Giramondo Publishing Company
a.j. carruthers. AXIS Book 1: Areal. Tokyo: Vagabond Press
Paul Carter. Ecstacies and Elegies. Perth: UWAP
Melinda Bufton. Girlery. Hobart: Inken Publisch
Nandi Chinna. Swamp. Fremantle: Fremantle Press
Eileen Chong. Peony. Sydney: Pitt Street Poetry
Dan Disney. Mannequin’s Guide to Utopias. Macau: ASM,
Benjamin Dodds. Regulator. Glebe: Puncher and Wattmann
Laurie Duggan. Allotments. Bristol: Shearsman Books
Anne Elvey. Kin. Parkville: Five Islands Press
Geoff Goodfellow. Opening the Windows to Catch the Sea Breeze. Kent Town: Wakefield Press
Libby Hart. Wild. Sydney: Pitt Street Poetry
Vrasidas Karalis and Helen Nickas, editors. Antigone Kefala: a writer’s journey. Brighton: Owl Publishing
Jacinta Le Plastrier. The Book of Skins. St Kilda: John Leonard Press
Alan Loney. eMailing flowers to Mondrian. Malvern East: Hawk Press
Kent MacCarter. Sputnik’s Cousin. Yarraville: Transit Lounge Publishing
John Mateer. Emptiness: Asian Poems, 1998 – 2012. Fremantle: Fremantle Press
Page, Geoff, The Best Australian Poems 2014, Black Inc.
Paul Scully. An Existential Grammar. North Hobart: Walleah Press
Marie Slaight & Terrence Tasker. The Antigone Poems. Potts Point: Altaire Publications
Maria Takolander. The End of the World. Artarmon: Giramondo Publishing Company
Tim Thorne. The Unspeak Poems and Other Verses. North Hobart: Walleah Press
Ann Vickery & John Hawke, editors. Poetry and The Trace. Glebe: Puncher and Wattmann
Chris Wallace-Crabbe. My Feet Are Hungry. Sydney: Pitt Street Poetry
Lucy Williams. Internal Weather. North Hobart: Walleah Press

Canada

Joanne Arnott – Halfling Spring
John Barton – Polari
Shane Book – Congotronic
Christopher Levenson – Night Vision
Garth Martens – Prologue for the Age of Consequence
Arleen Paré – ''Lake of Two Mountains''

Anthologies in Canada

Why Poetry Sucks: Humorous Avant-Garde and Post-Avant English Canadian Poetry, Jonathan Ball & Ryan Fitzpatrick, editors.
Under the Mulberry Tree: poems for & about Raymond Souster, James Deahl, editor.

India

Ranjit Hoskote, Central Time, Penguin India,

New Zealand

Airini Beautrais, Dear Neil Roberts, Victoria University Press
Kay McKenzie Cooke, Born to a Red-Headed Woman, Otago University Press
Chris Tse, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, Auckland University Press

Poets in ''Best New Zealand Poems''

Poems from these 25 poets were selected by Mark Williams and Jane Stafford for Best New Zealand Poems 2013, published online this year:

United Kingdom

England

Liz Berry, Black Country
Colette Bryce, The Whole & Rain-domed Universe
John Burnside, All One Breath
Yrsa Daley-Ward, Bone
Lavinia Greenlaw, A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde
Selima Hill, The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism
Kei Miller, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
Joss Sheldon, Involution & Evolution: A rhyming anti-war novel
Rosemary Tonks, Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems
Hugo Williams, ''I Knew the Bride''

Ireland

Harry Clifton, ''The Holding Centre: Selected Poems 1974–2004''

Scotland

Stewart Conn, ''The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems''

Wales

Jonathan Edwards, ''My Family and Other Superheroes''

Anthologies in the United Kingdom

Ten: the new wave, edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf – new poetry voices in Britain including Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Kayo Chingonyi, Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Inua Ellams, Sarah Howe, Adam Lowe, Eileen Pun and Warsan Shire

Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United Kingdom

Laura Jansen – The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers.

United States

James Baldwin, Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems
Jared Carter, Darkened Rooms of Summer,
Kendra DeColo, Thieves in the Afterlife
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Endarkment: Selected Poems, edited by Eugene Ostashevsky, translated by Lyn Hejinian, Genya Turovskaya, Eugene Ostashevsky, Bela Shayevich, Jacob Edmund & Elena Balashova
Tarfia Faizullah, Seam
Lizzie Harris, STOP WANTING
Matthea Harvey, If The Tabloids Are True, What Are You?
Chloe Honum, The Tulip-Flame
Fanny Howe, Second Childhood
Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise
Keetje Kuipers, The Keys to the Jail
Cathy Linh Che, Split
Sally Wen Mao, Mad Honey Symposium
Michael Mlekoday, The Dead Eat Everything
Eugenia Leigh, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows
D. A. Powell, Repast
George Quasha, Speaking Animate
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
Spencer Reece, The Road to Emmaus
Nicholas Samaras, "American Psalm, World Psalm"
Danez Smith, Boy
Ron Silliman – Northern Soul,
R. A. Villanueva, Reliquaria
Caki Wilkinson, The Wynona Stone Poems
Jake Adam York, Abide
Kevin Young – ''Book of Hours,''

Anthologies in the United States

David Biespiel, editor. Poems of the American South
Carolyn Forché & Duncan Wu, editors. ''Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500–2001''

Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United States

John Drury – Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert.
Tom Hawkins – Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire
Ron Silliman – ''Against Conceptual Poetry''

Works published in other languages

German

Antony Theodore, Gottliche Augenblicke : Eine Reise durch das Jahr,

Awards and honors by country

Awards announced this year:

International

Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Laureate: to Ko Un

Australia awards and honors

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Jennifer Maiden, Liquid Nitrogen
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Fiona Hile, Novelties
Prime Minister's Literary Awards: Melinda Smith, ''Drag Down to Unlock or Place an Emergency Call''

Canada awards and honors

Archibald Lampman Award: David O'Meara, A Pretty Sight
Atlantic Poetry Prize: Don Domanski, Bite Down Little Whisper
2014 Governor General's Awards: Arleen Paré, Lake of Two Mountains ; José Acquelin, Anarchie de la lumière
Griffin Poetry Prize:
*Canada: Anne Carson, Red Doc>
*International: Brenda Hillman, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire
*Lifetime Recognition Award to Adelia Prado
Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize: Ken Babstock
Gerald Lampert Award: Murray Reiss, The Survival Rate of Butterflies in the Wild
Pat Lowther Award: Alexandra Oliver, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway
Prix Alain-Grandbois: Michaël Trahan, Nœud coulant
Raymond Souster Award: Anne Compton, Alongside
Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize: Jordan Abel, The Place of Scraps
Prix Émile-Nelligan: Roxanne Desjardins, ''Ciseaux''

France awards and honors

Prix Goncourt de la Poésie: William Cliff

New Zealand awards and honors

Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement:
New Zealand Post Book Awards:
* Poetry Award winner: Vincent O'Sullivan, Us, then. Victoria University Press
* NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry: Marty Smith, Horse with Hat. Victoria University Press

India awards and honors

Sahitya Akademi Award : Adil Jussawalla for ''Trying to Say Goodbye''

United Kingdom awards and honors

Cholmondeley Award: W. N. Herbert, Jeremy Hooker, John James, Glyn Maxwell, Denise Riley
Costa Book Awards poetry award: Jonathan Edwards, My Family and Other Superheroes
* Shortlist: Colette Bryce, The Whole & Rain-domed Universe; Lavinia Greenlaw, A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde; Kei Miller, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
English Association's Fellows' Poetry Prizes:
Eric Gregory Award :
Forward Prizes for Poetry:
*Best Collection: Kei Miller, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
**Shortlist: Colette Bryce, The Whole & Rain-domed Universe; John Burnside, All One Breath; Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night; Hugo Williams, I Knew the Bride
*Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection: Liz Berry, Black Country
**Shortlist:
*Best Poem: Stephen Santus, "In a Restaurant"
**Shortlist:
Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for poetry:
*Shortlist:
Manchester Poetry Prize:
National Poet of Wales: Gillian Clarke
National Poetry Competition : Roger Philip Dennis for Corkscrew Hill Photo
T. S. Eliot Prize : David Harsent, Fire Songs
*Shortlist : 2014 Short ListThe Times/Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation:

United States awards and honors

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Nate Marshall for Wild Hundreds
AML Award for Poetry awarded to Kristen Eliason for Picture Dictionary
*Finalists: Kimberly Johnson, Uncommon Prayer and Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England; Laura Stott, In the Museum of Coming and Going
Arab American Book Award : Philip Metres, A Concordance of Leaves
*Honorable mentions: Farid Matuk, My Daughter La Chola; Fady Joudah, AlightBest Translated Book Award :
Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books: Richie Hofmann, Second Empire
Bollingen Prize:
Jackson Poetry Prize: Claudia Rankine.
*Judges: Tracy K. Smith, David St. John, and Mark Strand
Lambda Literary Award:
* Gay Poetry: Rigoberto González, Unpeopled Eden
* Lesbian Poetry: Ana Božičević, Rise in the Fall
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize:
Los Angeles Times Book Prize:
*Finalists: Joshua Beckman, The Inside of an Apple ; Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Hello, the Roses ; Ron Padgett, Collected Poems ; Elizabeth Robinson On Ghosts ; Lynn Xu, Debts & Lessons
National Book Award for Poetry :
*NBA Finalists:
**Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night
**Fanny Howe, Second Childhood
**Maureen N. McLane, This Blue
**Fred Moten, The Feel Trio
**Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
*NBA Longlist:
**Linda Bierds, Roget's Illusion
**Brian Blanchfield, A Several World
** Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: A Poem
**Spencer Reece, The Road to Emmaus
**Mark Strand, Collected Poems
National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry: The New Criterion Poetry Prize: Fix Quiet by John Poch
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry : Vijay Seshadri, 3 Sections
*Finalists: Morri Creech, The Sleep of Reason and Adrian Matejka, The Big Smoke
Wallace Stevens Award:
Whiting Writers' Award :
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation: – Judge:
PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry: Frank Bidart
Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award:
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize: Nathaniel Mackey
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award:
Walt Whitman Prize – Hannah Sanghee Park for The Same-Different. – Judge: Rae Armantrout
Yale Younger Series:

From the Poetry Society of America

Frost Medal: Gerald Stern
Shelley Memorial Award: Bernadette Mayer
Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award: Tom Thompson
Lyric Poetry Award: Meghan Kemp-Gee
Alice Fay di Castagnola Award: Timothy Donnelly
Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award: Helen Ross
George Bogin Memorial Award: Gary Young
Robert H. Winner Memorial Award: Dore Kiesselbach – Judge: Alberto Rios
Cecil Hemley Memorial Award: Ari Banias – Judge:
Norma Farber First Book Award: r. erica doyle
Lucille Medwick Memorial Award: David Welch
William Carlos Williams Award: Ron Padgett, Collected Poems
*Finalists for WCW Award:

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:

January 7 – Alvin Aubert, African-American poet and scholar
January 8 – Madeline Gins, 72, American poet, architect and long-time collaborator with artist Arakawa
January 9 – Amiri Baraka, 79, controversial African-American poet and writer of drama, fiction, essays and music criticism, and former Poet Laureate of New Jersey
January 14 – Juan Gelman, 83, exiled Argentine poet and recipient of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 2007
February 1 – René Ricard, 67, American poet, art critic, painter, and actor in Andy Warhol's films
February 6 – Maxine Kumin, 88, U. S. American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, and wrote some seventeen books of poetry, novels, story collections, and memoirs
March 12 – Bill Knott, 74,, U. S. American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry between his first book in 1968 and his death
March 30 – Colleen Lookingbill, 63, U. S. American who edited, with Elizabeth Robinson, the EtherDome Chapbook series for 12 years, which published emerging women poets. She also co-edited Instance Press
April 2 – Vern Rutsala, 80, U.S. author and poet
April 14 – Nina Cassian, 89, Romanian poet, journalist, film critic, and translator. She translated works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan into Romanian. She published more than fifty books of her own poetry
April 15 – Rosemary Tonks, 85, English poet and novelist
April 24 – Tadeusz Różewicz, 92, Polish poet and playwright, recipient of the Austrian State Prize for European Literature
April 28 – Gerard Benson, 83, English poet.
April 29 – Russell Edson, 76-86, American poet, novelist, writer and illustrator
May 10 – Hillary Gravendyk, 35, American poet and twice winner of the Eisner Prize in Poetry and author of Harm She lived with Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and had a double lung transplant five years before her death.
May 21 – Ruth Guimarães, 93, Afro-Brazilian classicist, fiction writer and poet
May 28 – Maya Angelou, 86, American author, poet and civil rights activist*June 22 – Felix Dennis, 67, English publisher and poet
June 27 – Allen Grossman, 82, American poet, critic and professor, winner of the Bollingen Prize in 2009
June 29 – Dermot Healy, 66, Irish poet, playwright, short story writer, memoirist and novelist
August 5 – Diann Blakely, 57, American poet, who won the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award among many other honors
August 19 – Samih al-Qasim, 75, Palestinian Druze poet and journalist
*Simin Behbahani, 87, Iranian writer and poet
*Richard Dauenhauer, 72, American poet and translator
August 27 – Zaccheus Jackson, 36, Vancouver based Canadian Spoken word and Slam poet who was the 2013 Vancouver Grand Slam Champ
September 21 – Alastair Reid, 88, Scottish poet, essayist, and scholar
September 28 – Dannie Abse, 91, Welsh poet and doctor
October 9 – Carolyn Kizer, 89, American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1985
October 14 – Ron Loewinsohn, 76, American poet and university professor Since his inclusion in Donald Allen's 1960 poetry anthology, The New American Poetry 1945–1960, numerous volumes of his poetry were published
October 28 – Galway Kinnell, 87, American poet, Pulitzer Prize winner, a MacArthur Fellow and a former State Poet of Vermont; also served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
November 5 – Abdelwahab Meddeb, 68, Tunisian-born poet, Islamic scholar, essayist, novelist; lung cancer
November 13 – Manoel de Barros, 97, Brazilian poet who, before his death, considered by many authors, critics and readers to be Brazil's greatest living poet
November 19 – Jon Stallworthy, 79, English academic, poet and literary critic. Biographer of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice
November 29 – Mark Strand, 80, Canadian-born American poet and writer, United States Poet Laureate
December 4 – Claudia Emerson, 57, American poet
December 27 – Tomaž Šalamun, 73, Slovenian poet