Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
Events
Celebrated Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer (right) signs Vecka nr.II, a reflection of his poem "Galleriet," an artist book by multi-award Iraqi-Swedish Modhir Ahmed (left)
April 4 – Canadian poet Christian Bök announces a significant break-through in his 9-year project to engineer "a life-form so that it becomes not only a durable archive for storing a poem, but also an operant machine for writing a poem".[2][3] On April 3, Bök said that he
"received confirmation from the laboratory at the University of Calgary that my poetic cipher, gene X-P13, has in fact caused E. coli to fluoresce red in our test-runs—meaning that, when implanted in the genome of this bacterium, my poem (which begins “any style of life/ is prim...”) does in fact cause the bacterium to write, in response, its own poem (which begins “the faery is rosy/ of glow...”)."[4]
June 12 – A poet and student, Ayat al-Ghermezi of Bahrain, is sentenced to a year in prison as part of that kingdom's crackdown on Shiite protesters calling for greater rights.[5] Ayat was arrested on March 30 for reciting a poem critical of the government and cursing the current prime minister, Khalifa ibn Salman Al Khalifa, during the Bahraini uprising in Pearl Square, the main gathering place for demonstrators, in February 2011.
Matthew Zapruder, Glühend: Gedichte, a bilingual English/German edition; translated into German by Ron Winkler, 145 pages, Luxbooks, ISBN978-3-939557-41-8
Edwin Honig, 91 (born 1919), American poet, critic and translator known for his English renditions of seminal works of Spanish and Portuguese literature[37]
May 27 – Gil Scott-Heron, 62 (born 1949), American poet, spoken-word musician and author who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry[38]
Gil Scott Heron on stage in front of a packed house at the Regency Ballroom, Friday, October 3, 2009, in San Francisco
May 29 – Da Real One, 46, American poet (Def Poetry) gunned down in North Miami[39]
June 2 – Josephine Hart, 69 (born 1942), Irish-born British novelist and poetry promoter. As director of Haymarket Publishing, a founder of Gallery Poets and West End Poetry Hour[40]
August 26 – Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, 71 (born 1940), American novelist and poet, finalist for 1975 National Book Award in poetry for Granite Lady[45][46]
September 4 – Hugh Fox, 79 (born 1932), prolific American novelist and poet, a founder of the Pushcart Prize
December 30 – Eleanor Ross Taylor, 91, American poet who received the 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize of $100,000 which honors poets whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition"[51]
^"Starrett poetry prize winner announced". University Times. Vol. 44, no. 9. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh. January 12, 2012. Retrieved January 13, 2012.
^"Poet Gunned Down in North Miami". cbs miami.com. CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. May 29, 2011. Archived from the original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-12.