Contemporary Poetry

xx contemporary poetry

Date Historical Events Literary Events

1990 German Federal Republic Chancellor Derek Walcott, Omeros;

Helmut Kohl proceeds with the early Joy Harjo, In Mad Love

reunifi cation of Germany; John Major and War

replaces Margaret Thatcher as Prime

Minister of the UK; the Iraqi forces

of Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait.

1991 The Gulf War, militarily codenamed Anne Szumigalski, Rapture

Operation Desert Storm, begins as of the Deep

American, British, Saudi and

Egyptian forces succeed in dislodging

the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein

from Kuwait.

1992 Democratic candidate William Derek Walcott wins the

Jefferson Clinton becomes forty- Nobel Prize for Literature;

second President of the USA, Maya Angelou, ‘On the

defeating President George Bush and Pulse of Morning’;

third party candidate Ross Perot in Benjamin Zephaniah, City

the Presidential election, Clinton won Psalms

43 per cent of the popular vote.

1993 The European Union is established Carolyn Forché, Against

by the Treaty of Maastricht. Forgetting: Twentieth

Century Poetry of Witness;

Jackie Kay, Other Lovers;

Paul Durcan, A Snail in my

Prime: New and Selected

Poems

1995 The US-led war against the ruling Seamus Heaney wins the

Taliban begins in Afghanistan. Nobel Prize for Literature;

Gwyneth Lewis, Parables

& Faxes; Sujata Bhatt, The

Stinking Rose

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