2003 in poetry

	This is part of the List of years in poetry
Years in poetry:	2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Years in literature:	2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
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Centuries:	20th century · 21st century · 22nd century
Decades:	1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s
Years:	2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

[edit] Events

January 29 — Poet Dana Gioia, who had retired early from his career as a corporate executive at General Foods to write full time, becomes chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States government's arts agency.
After First Lady Laura Bush invited a number of poets to the White House, one of them, Sam Hamill started organizing a protest in which poets would bring anti-war poems. The February 12 conference was postponed, but Hamill organized a "Poets Against the War" Web site with contributions from others. More than 5,000 poems were contributed, including work by John Balaban, Gregory Orr, Rita Dove, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz, Marilyn Nelson, Jay Parini, Jamaica Kincaid, Grace Paley and even U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Also on the Web site, W.S. Merwin contributed the highly emotional statement: "To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein." The new group, "Poets Against the War", organized poetry readings for February 12 across the country, demonstrating the strong links between many established poets and left-wing pacifism.^[1]
Early November — Carl Rakosi celebrates his 100th birthday with friends at the San Francisco Public Library.
Call: Review, an American little magazine, is founded by poet John Most.

Pam Brown, Dear Deliria (New & Selected Poems), winner of the 2004 NSW Premier’s Award for Poetry.^[2]
Alison Croggon, The Common Flesh: Poems 1980-2002, Arc, ISBN 1900072726
Geoff Page, editor The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, Indigo (anthology)
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, A Representative Human, Brunswick: Gungurru Press

Anne Compton, Opening the Island
Tim Lilburn, Kill-site, winner of the Governor General’s Award
Don McKay, Varves, a chapbook
Anne Simpson Loop, shortlisted for the 2003 Governor General's Award, winner of the 2004 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, ISBN 0-7710-8075-1

Jenny Bornholdt, Summer
Robin Hyde, Young Knowledge: the poems of Robin Hyde, edited and introduced by Michele Leggott, Auckland: Auckland University Press, posthumous

Poems from these 25 poet s were selected by Elizabeth Smither for Best New Zealand Poems 2002, published online this year:

Ciarán Carson: Breaking News, Gallery Press, Wake Forest University Press, awarded the 2003 Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection
James Fenton: The Love Bomb, verse written as a libretto for a composer who rejected it; Penguin / Faber and Faber^[3]
Lavinia Greenlaw, Minsk, Faber and Faber
Peter Redgrove, Sheen

Dick Allen, The Day Before: New Poems (Sarabande Books)
Charles Bukowski, sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way (Ecco)
Henri Cole, Middle Earth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
Cid Corman, Now/Now
Annie Finch, Calendars
Wi lliam Logan, Macbeth in Venice
Howard Nemerov, The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov, edited by Daniel Anderson (Swallow/Ohio University) published posthumously); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
Mary Oliver, Owls a nd Other Fantasies: poems and essays
Kenneth Rexroth, Complete Poems (posthumous}
C. J. Sage, editor, And We The Creatures: Fifty-one Contemporary American Poets on Animal Rights and Appreciation (Dream Horse Press)
Charles Simic, The Voice at 3:00 a.m.: Selected Late & New Poems (Harvest Books)(Harcourt)); a New York Times "notable book of the year"
Tracy K. Smith, The Body’s Question won the 2002 Cave Canem Prize for best first book by an African American poet (Graywolf Press)
Rosmarie Waldrop, Love, Like Pronouns (Omnidawn Publishing)
William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky, The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams & Louis Zukofsky, edited by Barry Ahearn (Wesleyan University Press)
Kirby Wright, Before the City (Lemon Shark Press); winner of the San Diego Book Award for Poetry