Contemporary Poetry

chronology xix

Date Historical Events Literary Events

1984 The Miners’ Strike begins in the UK, Grace Nichols, The Fat

it ends with the defeat of the National Black Woman’s Poems;

Union of Mineworkers, led by Arthur Kamau Brathwaite,

Scargill; Ronald Reagan is re-elected ‘Nation Language’; Linton

President of the USA. Kwesi Johnson, Making

History

1985 Reagan and Gorbachev meet at Lyn Hejinian, ‘Rejection

summit and agree to arrange arms of Closure’; Liz Lochhead,

control talks. True Confessions and New

Clichés

1986 The Space Shuttle Challenger Mutabaruka The Mystery

explodes and disintegrates shortly Unfolds; Li-Young Lee,

after lift off in Cape Canaveral in Rose

Florida, killing all seven crew

members.

1987 Gestapo wartime chief Klaus Barbie, Paul Durcan, Going Home

aged 73 , sentenced to life for war to Russia; Jorie Graham,

crimes. The End of Beauty

1988 George Bush defeats the Democratic Michael Palmer, Sun

party candidate Michael Dukakis to Yusef Komunyakaa, Dien

become forty-fi rst President of the Cai Dau

USA; testimony to the US Congress

by NASA climatologist James Hansen

highlights the threat of climate change.

1989 Communist regimes collapse in The Ayatollah Khomeini

Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (the issues a fatwa against

Velvet Revolution), East Germany, Salman Rushdie’s novel

Bulgaria and Romania; the Berlin The Satanic Verses, forcing

Wall is dismantled and the year ends Rushdie to accept round-

with the execution of the Romanian the-clock protection.

dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

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