Contemporary Poetry

chronology xxiii

Date Historical Events Literary Events

2006 A few months after test fi ring Charles Bernstein, Girly

missiles, North Korea announces it Man; Joshua Clover, the

has tested its fi rst nuclear weapon. totality for kids; John

Kinsella, ‘The Ocean

Forests’

2007 Opening of Northern Irish Assembly Laynie Browne, Daily

Stormont with First Minister Ian Sonnets; Lawrence

Paisley and Deputy First Minister Ferlinghetti, Insurgent

Martin McGuinness; former Art; Jennifer Moxley, The

Pakistani prime minister Benazir Line; Robert Hass, Time

Bhutto is assassinated. and Materials Poems 1997 –

2005

2008 President of Cuba Fidel Castro Robert Minhinnick, King

resigns; Lehman Brothers fi le for Driftwood; Geraldine

bankruptcy, acting as a catalyst for a Monk, Ghost & Other

global fi nancial crisis. Sonnets; M. NourbeSe

Philip, Zong!; Daljit Nagra

Look We Have Coming to

Dover

2009 Barack Hussein Obama becomes the Carol Ann Duffy becomes

fi rst African-American President of the fi rst woman, fi rst Scot

the United States of America. and fi rst openly bisexual

person to become British

Poet Laureate; Elizabeth

Alexander, ‘Praise Song

for the Day’; Paula

Meehan, Painting Rain;

Mark Nowak, Coal

Mountain Elementary

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