March 23 – German-born writer Assia Wevill, a mistress of English poet Ted Hughes (and ex-wife of Canadian poet David Wevill), gasses herself and their daughter at her London home.
FIELD magazine founded at Oberlin College.
Charles Bukowski quits his day job as a Post Office clerk in Los Angeles to embark on a writing career after being promised a $100 stipend from Black Sparrow Press. He said at the time: "I have one of two choices — stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I decided to starve."
Howard Nemerov named Edward Mallinckrodt Distringuished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, posts which he will hold until his death in 1991.
The Kenyon Review is closed by Kenyon College after 30 years; it will be restarted by the college in 1979
Sir Arthur Bliss writes a cantata "The world is charged with the grandeur of God", from Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet of the same first line.
Louise Bogan retires after 38 years as poetry critic for The New Yorker.
Tish literary magazine, founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1961 and published intermittently thereafter, prints its last issue. Poets associated with the magazine included Frank Davey, Fred Wah, George Bowering, and, briefly, bpNichol when he lived in Vancouver.
First issue of poetry magazine The Lace Curtain founded and edited by Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce under their New Writers Press imprint in Dublin. It will publish six issues until 1978
Alexander Tvardovsky, editor of Novy Mir, a Soviet literary magazine, is under attack this year and threatened with dismissal for "spreading cosmopolitan ideas", for "mocking the Soviet peoples' most sacred feelings" and for "denigrating Soviet patriotism". He responds that he was the "real patriot" and was opposed to "reactionary, nationalistic, neo-Slavophil" literary currents
Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
Milton Acorn, I've Tasted My Blood
Earle Birney. The poems of Earle Birney: a New Canadian Library selection. (New Canadian library original N06.) Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
George Bowering, The Gangs of Kosmos
Phyllis Gotlieb, Ordinary, Moving
Ralph Gustafson, Ixion's Wheel
Irving Layton, Selected Poems. Wynne Francis ed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Irving Layton, The Whole Bloody Bird: Obs, Aphs & Pomes. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Gwendolyn MacEwen, The Shadow Maker
Tom Marshall, The Silences of Fire
Alden Nowlan, The Mysterious Naked Man
Michael Ondaatje, The Man with Seven Toes, Toronto: Coach House Press
Raymond Souster, So Far So Good: Poems, 1938/1968. Ottawa: Oberon Press.
Miriam Waddington, Say Yes
P. Lal, editor, Modern Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology and Credo, Calcutta, Writers Workshop, India, anthology (second, expanded edition, 1971, however, on page 597 of the second edition, an "editor's note" states contents "on the following pages are a supplement to the first edition" and is dated "1972")
Daisy Aldan, editor, Poems of India; New York, United States.
W. H. Auden, City Without Walls
Alan Bold, A Perpetual Motion Machine
Alan Brownjohn, Sandgrains on a Tray
Basil Bunting, Collected Poems
Charles Causley, Figure of 8
Barry Cole, Moonsearch
Donald Davies, Essex Poems 1963–67
Douglas Dunn, Terry Street
James Fenton, Put Thou Thy Tears Into My Bottle, poetry
Padraic Fiacc, Northern Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
By the Black Stream
(edited) The Wearing of the Black
Roy Fisher, Collected Poems
Thom Gunn, Poems 1950–1966
David Harsent, A Violent Country
Seamus Heaney, Northern Irish poet published in the United Kingdom:
Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber
A Lough Neagh Sequence, Phoenix
Adrian Henri, Tonight at Noon
John Hewitt, Northern Irish poet published in the United Kingdom, Collected Poems, 1932-1967
Molly Holden, To Make me Grieve
Anselm Hollo, The Coherences
Elizabeth Jennings, The Animals' Arrival
Tom Leonard, Scottish dialect poet, Six Glasgow Poems
Laurence Lerner, Selves
Christopher Logue, Numbers
Michael Longley, No Continuing City
Hugh MacDiarmid, pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve, A Clyack-Sheaf
Roger McGough, Watchwords
Brian Patten, Notes to the Hurrying Man
J. H. Prynne, The White Stones
Iain Crichton Smith, From Bourgeois Land
Jon Stallworthy, Root and Branch
Edward Storey, North Bank Night
David Sutton, Out on a Limb
Charles Tomlinson, The Way of a World
Sydney Tremayne, The Turning Sky
Vernon Watkins, Uncollected Poems, introduction by Kathleen Raine; Welsh poet, posthumous
Kenneth White, translator, Selected Poems, translated from the original French of André Breton; publisher: Jonathan Cape
Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, edited by Michael Horovitz, was the first anthology to present a wide-ranging selection of the new British Poetry Revival movement. Poems from these writers were included in it:
W. H. Auden, City without Walls
Ted Berrigan, Peace: Broadside
John Berryman:
The Dream Songs (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
His Toy, His Dream His Rest (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Paul Blackburn, Two New Poems
Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries
Lucille Clifton, Good Times, selected as one of the year's best books by The New York Times
Robert Creeley, Pieces
Ed Dorn:
Gunslinger: Book II, Black Sparrow Press
The Midwest Is That Space Between the Buffalo Statler and the Lawrence Eldridge, T. Williams
The Cosmology of Finding Your Spot, Cottonwood
Twenty-four Love Songs, Frontier Press
Ed Dorn and Gordon Brotherston, translators, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Tree Between Two Walls, Black Sparrow Press
LeRoi Jones, editor, Black Magic: Poetry, 1961-1967
Hugh Kenner, The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (revised from the 1959 edition), Canadian writing and published in the United States (criticism)
James Merrill, The Fire Screen
W. S. Merwin:
Animae, San Francisco: Kayak
Translator, Transparence of the World, poems by Jean Follain, New York: Atheneum (reprinted in 2003, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press)
Translator, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda; London: Cape (reprinted in 2004 with an introduction by Christina Garcia, New York: Penguin Books)
Translator, Voices: Selected Writings of Antonio Porchia, Chicago: Follett (reprinted in 1988 and 2003, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press)
Vladimir Nabokov, Poems and Problems, ISBN 0-07-045724-7
Lorine Niedecker, T & G: Collected Poems, 1936-1966
Ron Padgett, Great Balls of Fire, Holt, Rinehart & Winston
Charles Reznikoff, By the Well of Living & Seeing and The Fifth Book of the Maccabees
Aram Saroyan, Pages, Random House
James Schuyler, Freely Espousing
Charles Simic, Jim Harrison, George Quasha, Dan Gerber, J.D. Reed, Five Blind Men, (Sumac Press)
Gary Snyder, Smokey the Bear Sutra
Louis Zukofsky, in collaboration with his wife, Celia, publishes an experimental Latin translation Catullus
James K. Baxter, Rock Woman, New Zealand
Charles Brasch: Not Far Off: Poems, Christchurch: Caxton Press, New Zealand
Edward Brathwaite, Islands, third part of his The Arrivants trilogy, which also includes Rights of Passage (1967) and Masks (1968), Caribbean
Sam Hunt, From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69 New Zealand
Donagh MacDonagh, A Warning to Conquerors, Ireland
Les Murray, The Weatherboard Cathedral, Australia
Wole Soyinka, Poems from Prison (Nigeria)
Derek Walcott, The Gulf, Caribbean
Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
André Major, Poèmes pour durer
Pierre Chatillon, Soleil de bivouac
Jean-Guy Pilon:
Comme Eau retenue (Paris), a republishing of all of his previous books of poems in one volume
Saisons pour la continuelle, Paris: Seghers
Guy Robert, five books of poems
Jean Royer, Nos corps habitables, Sillery: Éditions de l'Arc
André Saint-Germain, Sens unique
Gemma Tremblay, Les Seins gorgés
Louis Aragon, Les Chambres
M. Beguey, La Rose ardente
G. Belloni, La Route du feu
Luc Bérimont, Un Feu vivant
M. Berry, Isabelle
Philippe Chabaneix, Les matins et les soirs
René Char, La Pluie giboyeuse
Andrée Chedid:
Contre-chat
Seul le Visage
Michel Deguy, Figurations
P. Dumaine, Inscriptions
Jacques Dupin, L'embrasure
Pierre Emmanuel, pen name of Noël Mathieu, Notre Père
Gérard Genette, Figures II, one of three volumes of a work of critical scholarship in poetics – general theory of literary form and analysis of individual works — the Figures volumes are concerned with the problems of poetic discourse and narrative in Stendhal, Flaubert and Proust and in Baroque poetry (see also Figures I 1966, Figures III 1972)
Eugene Guilleveic, Ville
R. Houdelot, Amour en profil perdu
Philippe Jaccottet:
Leçons
L'Entretien des muses, a prose account of poetry writing
Edmond Jabès, Elya
Michel Leiris, Note sans mémoire, Gallimard
Loys Masson, La Croix de rose rouge (posthumous)
Saint-John Perse, Chanté par celle qui fut là [...], Paris: privately printed by Robert Blanchet
Raymond Queneau, Fendre les flots
Jean-Claude Renard, La Braise et la Rivière
S. de Ricard, Les Chemins perdus
Robert Sabatier won the Grand Prix de Poésie for:
Les Poisons délectables
Les Châteaux des millions d'années
Anthologies
Marc Alyn, editor, La Nouvelle Poésie française
J. Loisy, editor, Un Certain Choix de poèmes
Hilde Domin, editor, Doppelinterpretationen: Das zeitgenössische deutsche Gedicht zwischen Autor und Leser, Frankfurt and Bonn: Athenaum (scholarship)
H. Lamprecht, editor, Deutschland, Deutschland: Politische Gedichte, anthology
Albrecht Schöne, Über politische Lyrik im 20. Jahrhundert, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (scholarship)
P.Naveh, editor, Lol Shirai Yaakov Frances, the works of a seventeenth-century Italian Hebrew poet
Rachel u-Michtaveha, Shirai Rachel u-Michtaveha (posthumous)
A. Broides, Mivhar Shirim
D. Chomsky, ba-Et u-Veona
K. A. Bertini, Bakbuk Al Pnai ha-Mayim
Y. Amichai, Ahshav be-Raash
Y. Mar, Panim le-Kan (posthumous)
D. Ravikovich, ha-Sefer ha-Shelishi
N. Stuchkoff, compiler, Otzar ha-Safa ha-Ivrit (United States)
G. Churgin, Ojkai Mahshava (United States)
R. Ben-Yosef, (An American Jew living in Israel) Derech Eretz
Listed in alphabetical order by first name:
Devarakonda Balagangadhara Tilak, Amrutham Kurisina ratri, ("The Night When Nectar Rained"); Telugu-language, posthumously published, it became the author's best-known work, called a "milestone in modern Telugu" by Sisir Kumar Das
Nirendranath Chakravarti; Bengali-language:
Kolkata,r Jishu, Kolkata: Aruna Prokashoni
Nirendranath Chakravarti, Nokhotro Joyer Jonno, Kolkata: Surabhi Prokashoni
Thangjam Ibopishak Singh, Apaiba Thawai ("The Hovering Soul"), Imphal: Naharol Sahitya Premee Samiti; Meitei language
Guido Ceronetti, Poesie, frammenti, poesie separate
Giuseppe Favati, Controbuio
Albino Pierro, Eccò 'a morte ("Why Death?"), in the Tursi language (Lucania)
Miguel de Unamuno, edited by Roberto Paoli, Poesie, scholarly survey of his verse, with a selection of his Spanish poems with Italian translations
Paal Brekke, editor, Norsk lyrikk nå (anthology of Norwegian poetry of the 1960s)
Tarjei Vesaas, collected poems
Georg Johannesen, collected poems
Poland
Edward Balcerzan – Granica na moment
Stanisław Grochowiak - Nie było lata
Zbigniew Herbert – Napis
Tadeusz Różewicz - Regio
Gregório de Matos (1633–1696), edited by James Amado, Obras Completas
Décio Pignatari, Exercicio Findo
Ruy de Moura Belo, Homem de palavra[s] ("A Man of [His] Word[s]")
Evgeni Vinokurov, Selected Poems
Vladimir Sokolov, Snow in September
Konstantin Vanshenkin, Experience
Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Lyrical Poems
Andrei Voznesensky, "I Can't Write" a poem published in Phoenix, a broadsheet newspaper
Robert Rozhdestvenski, Poem About Different Points of View, a long poem published in Yunost
Matilde Camus:
Voces (Voices)
Vuelo de estrellas (Stars flight)
Octavio Paz, Ladera Este
R. Bonifaz Nuño, El ala del tigre
Rosario Castellanos, Materia memorable
Carlos Pellicer, Antología
Efraín Huerta, a collection
M. Michelena, a collection
M. Guardia, a collection
Gabriel Zaid, a book of new poetry
Homero Aridjis, a book of new poetry
M. A. Montes de Oca, a book of new poetry
Juan Bañuelos, a book of new poetry
José Emilio Pacheco, a book of new poetry
Jorge Luis Borges:
Nueva antología personal
Elogio de las sombras
A. Pizarnik, Extracción de la piedra de la locura
F. Urondo, Adolecer
Pablo Neruda, Fin de mundo
Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Dibujos de ciego (Guatemala)
Ernesto Cardenal, Homenaje a los indios americanos (Nicaragua)
P. A. Cuadra, Poesía escogida (Nicaragua)
César Velejo, Obra poética completa (Peru)
Roque Dalton, Taberna y otros lugares (El Salvador)
Lars Norén, Revolver
Majken Johansson, Omtal
Elsa Grave, Vid nödläge
Reidar Ekner, Andhämtning, builder
Avrom Sutskever, Poems from the Dead Sea
Chaim Grade, On My Way to You
Moyshe Knaphcys, a new collection
Leyb Morgentory, a new collection
Kh. L. Fuks, a new collection
I. Emiot, a new collection
L. Kusman, a new collection
J. A. Rontsh, a new collection
M. M. Shafir, a new collection
Poet Yankev Glatshteyn in an essay, said the poet should be a spokesman for his generation, and his poetry should be a poetry of involvement.
Inger Christensen, it (det, later translated into English by Susanna Nied); Denmark
Syed Shamsul Haque, Boishekhe Rochito Ponktimala ("Verses of Boishakh") and Birotihin Utsob ("The ceaseless festival"), Bengali published in East Pakistan
Kurt Marti, Leichenreden (Switzerland) in German, a collection of humorous verse variations of death notices and conventional funeral orations.
Kirsten Thorup, Love from Trieste; Denmark
See 1969 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
Bollingen Prize: John Berryman and Karl Shapiro
Cholmondeley Award: Derek Walcott, Tony Harrison
Eric Gregory Award: Gavin Bantock, Jeremy Hooker, Jenny King, Neil Powell, Landeg E. White
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Stevie Smith
National Book Award for Poetry: John Berryman, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: George Oppen: Of Being Numerous
Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: Richard Eberhart and Anthony Hecht
Stephanie Bolster, Canadian poet
Anthony Butts, American poet
Matthias Goritz, German poet
Ranjit Hoskote, Indian poet
Hauke Huckstadt, German poet
Davis McCombs, American poet
C. Dale Young, American poet
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
February 19 – Kazimierz Wierzynski, 74, Polish poet
March 12 – André Salmon, 87, French poet, critic and novelist
March 25 – Max Eastman, 86, American poet and editor
April 22 – Rolfe Humphries, 74, American poet, of emphysema
May 4 – Sir Osbert Sitwell, 76, English writer, of a heart attack
May 26 – Henry Rago, 53, American poet and editor of Poetry
July 11 – Guilherme de Almeida, 78, "prince of Brazilian poetry"
July 23 – Floyd Bell, 82, of a heart ailment
July 27 – Vivian de Sola Pinto, 73, British poet, memoirist, literary critic and historian
October 21 – Jack Kerouac, 47, influential American Beat Generation poet, writer and novelist, of internal hemorrhage and cirrhosis
Also:
Loys Masson (born 1915), French poet
W. R. Rodgers (born 1909), Irish poet, essayist, book reviewer, radio broadcaster, script writer, lecturer, teacher and Presbyterian minister
