Poetry International Poetry International
Article

Poetry newslog July 2003

January 18, 2006
Roberto Bolano, 1953-2003 Rare sonnet manuscripts on display in NY Library Billy Collins leads Forward list Motion offers funeral speech advice Kathleen Raine, 1908-2003 New Jersey abolishes poet laureate position
July 16, 2003
Roberto Bolano, 1953-2003
Chilean writer and poet Roberto Bolano has died of liver failure while awaiting a liver transplant in a Barcelona hospital, the BBC reports. He was 50 years old. Bolano has won several literary awards in Spain, where he had settled after fleeing Chile. In the 1970s, Bolano founded the avant-garde group ‘infrarealism’ in Mexico.

Rare sonnet manuscripts on display in NY Library
A 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Petrarch’s Italian poems, the first three Shakespeare folios, the Westmoreland Manuscript of Donne’s sonnets, and many more rare manuscripts are on display in an exhibition titled "Passion’s Discipline: The History of the Sonnet in the British Isles and America" in the Public Library, New York. Among the first editions and manuscripts are works by Dante, Milton, Shelley, Keats and Yeats, according to a review in the New York Times.

July 14, 2003
Billy Collins leads Forward list
American poet laureate Billy Collins has been nominated for the Forward Prize for the best published poetry collection, the BBC writes. Also on the shortlist for the £10,000 prize are Ciaran Carson, Ian Duhig, Lavinia Greenlaw and Paul Muldoon. The winner will be announced on October 8.

Motion offers funeral speech advice
Andrew Motion, Britain’s poet laureate, has written the foreword to a book produced by British Co-operative Funeralcare. Well Chosen Words offers advice on how to deliver eulogies and funeral speeches. The Co-operative, which has printed 100,000 of the free guides, hopes this will help mourners who find themselves stuck for words at funerals, The Guardian writes.

July 10, 2003
Kathleen Raine, 1908-2003
Visionary British poet Kathleen Raine has died in London at the age of 95, the New York Times reports. A "grande dame of European letters", Raine could count the Prince of Wales among her admirers. Under his patronage she founded the mystically inclined Temenos Academy of Integral Studies. The Royal Society of Literature in 1991 named Raine one of the ten greatest living writers.

New Jersey abolishes poet laureate position
The New Jersey Assembly has approved a bill that will eliminate the position of poet laureate of New Jersey. The current poet laureate, Amiri Baraka, created a {id="283" title="controversy"} last September over his poem ‘Someone blew up America’, containing the lines

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay at home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?


Baraka told AP he will sue the state for violating his First Amendment rights and for slander.
Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Prins Bernhard cultuurfonds
Lira fonds
Versopolis
J.E. Jurriaanse
Gefinancierd door de Europese Unie
Elise Mathilde Fonds
Stichting Verzameling van Wijngaarden-Boot
Veerhuis
VDM
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère