Contemporary Poetry

chronology xxi

Date Historical Events Literary Events

1996 John Howard leads the Liberal- Charles Bernstein, ‘Poetics

National coalition to victory to of the Americas’

become twenty-fi fth Prime Minister

of Australia.

1997 Labour leader Tony Blair becomes

British Prime Minister.

1998 President Bill Clinton is impeached Lee Harwood, Morning

by the House of Representatives but Light

is subsequently acquitted by the US

Senate; the Good Friday agreement

signed in Northern Ireland clears the

way for a power-sharing executive; a

bomb planted by the Republican

splinter group the Real IRA kills

twenty-nine people and injures two

hundred in Omagh, Co. Tyrone.

1999 Hugo Chávez becomes President of Jennifer Moxley,

Venezuela. Imagination Verses;

Li-Young Lee, The Winged

Seed; Simon Armitage,

Killing Time; Caroline

Bergvall, Goan Atom

2000 George W. Bush narrowly defeats Michael Palmer, The

Vice President Al Gore, after a Promises of Glass

number of recounts in Florida and a

case taken to the US Supreme Court,

to become forty-third President of the

United States of America.

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