Contemporary Poetry

xviii contemporary poetry

Date Historical Events Literary Events

1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan Lyn Hejinian, My Life

defeats Jimmy Carter in the US

Presidential election, George Bush

becomes Vice President; John Lennon

is shot dead in New York; the Iran–

Iraq War begins. It continues until

1988.

1981 American hostages in Iran are Lorna Dee Cervantes,

released six minutes after the Emplumada

inauguration of Ronald Reagan as

fortieth President of the United

States of America; Provisional IRA

volunteer Bobby Sands dies after

sixty-six days on hunger strike in the

Maze prison; infl uential Jamaican

reggae singer-songwriter Bob Marley

dies at the age of 36 ; Brixton riots in

Lambeth, South London, England.

1982 The UK and Argentina fi ght the

Falklands War.

1983 South Korean Boeing 747 jetliner Paul Muldoon, Quoof; Rita

bound for Seoul apparently strays Dove, Museum; Cathy

into Soviet airspace and is shot down Song, Picture Bride;

by a Soviet SU- 15 fi ghter. Jorie Graham, Erosion;

Iain Sinclair, Flesh Eggs

and Scalp Metal; Anne

Szumigalski, Doctrine

of Signatures; Jerome

Rothenberg (ed.),

Symposium of the Whole: A

Range of Discourse Towards

an Ethnopoetics

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