January 31 – A Chinese court sentences poet and political dissident Zhu Yufu to a seven-year prison term for "inciting subversion of state power". During Yufu's trial hearing, prosecutors cited a poem and messages he had sent on the internet.
February 13 – In a ceremony at the White House, John Ashbery was awarded the National Humanities Medal and Rita Dove was awarded the National Medal of Arts. The honors were bestowed to 15 artists in all by President Barack Obama.
April 4 – Günter Grass's poem "What Must Be Said" was first published. Four days later, Eli Yishai, the Israeli Minister for the Interior, declared Grass persona non grata.
June 7 – Natasha Trethewey is chosen by the Library of Congress to be the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate.
November 29 - A Qatari poet, Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, age 36, sentenced to life imprisonment for "comments said to be critical of the Qatari leadership," and "attempts to destabilise the country." In February 2013, his sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison.
Poetry of the Taliban, an anthology translated from Pashto, is published in English.
Les Wicks - Barking Wings (PressPress)
Barry McKinnon, Into the Blind World, above/ground press,
rob mclennan, Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep, above/ground press,
Lisa Robertson, Nilling: Prose, Toronto: BookThug
Robert Bringhurst, Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press,
Basil Bunting, Bunting's Persia: Translations by Basil Bunting, edited by Don Share, Flood Editions
Ben Parker, The Escape Artists, Tall Lighthouse
Andy Croft, Nineteen Forty-Eight, Five Leaves
Kathleen Jamie, The Overhaul, Scottish poet
Ralph Pordzik, Night Passage Across the Sea. A Dramatic Duologue, International Poetry Editions
Robert Sheppard, The Only Life, Knives Forks & Spoons, Le Willows
Dennis B. Wilson, Elegy of a Common Soldier, and Other Poems, Kultura
Peter Cole and Aminadav Dykman, editors. Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition, Yale University Press,
Ryan G. Van Cleave, editor. City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, Iowa, . Includes: Rane Arroyo, Marvin Bell, Allen Braden, John Bradley, Curtis L. Crisler, Mary Cross, James D’Agostino, Stuart Dybek, Susan Elbe, Dina Elenbogen, Martín Espada, Beth Ann Fennelly, Bob Hicok, Edward Hirsch, Philip Jenks & Simone Muench, Thomas L. Johnson, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Viola Lee, Francesco Levato, Campbell McGrath, Paul Martínez Pompa, Adrian Matejka, Erika Mikkalo, Julie Parson Nesbitt, Johanny Vázquez Paz, James Plath, Christina Pugh, Maya Quintero, Robyn Schiff, Patricia Smith, Tony Trigilio, Alpay Ulku, Judith Valente, Nicole Walker, Ellen Wehle, Brenda Yates
Cary Nelson, editor. The Oxford Handbook of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, Oxford University Press, . Includes essays by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Robert Dale Parker, Melissa Girard, John Marsh, Linda A. Kinnahan, Peter Nicholls, Charles Altieri, Edward Brunner, Tim Newcomb, Susan Rosenbaum, Mike Chasar, Philip Metres, Karen Jackson Ford, Josephine Park, Walter Kalaidjian, Jahan Ramazani, Michael Thurston, Al Filreis, Lytle Shaw, Mark W. Van Wienen, Michael Davidson, Lynn Keller, Timothy Yu, James Smethurst, Adalaide Morris
Charles Henry Rowell, editor. Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, W.W. Norton, .More than 70 poets are represented in this anthology of African-American poetry since the 1960s
Joshua Corey and G.C. Waldrep, editors – The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, Ahsahta Press. – Contributors: Emily Abendroth, Will Alexander, Rae Armantrout, Eric Baus, Dan Beachy-Quick, John Beer, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Sherwin Bitsui, Kamau Brathwaite, Susan Briante, Oni Buchanan, Heather Christle, Stephen Collis, Jack Collom, Phil Cordelli, T. Zachary Cotler, Brent Cunningham, Christopher Dewdney, Timothy Donnelly, Michael Dumanis, Camille Dungy, Marcella Durand, Lisa Fishman, Rob Fitterman, Forrest Gander, Merrill Gilfillan, C. S. Giscombe, Peter Gizzi, Jody Gladding, Johannes Göransson, Chris Green, Arielle Greenberg, Richard Greenfield, Sarah Gridley, e. tracy grinnell, Gabriel Gudding, Joshua Harmon, Nathan Hauke, Lyn Hejinian, Mary Hickman, Brenda Hillman, Kevin Holden, Paul Hoover, Erika Howsare & Kate Schapira, Brenda Iijima, Sally Keith, Karla Kelsey, Amy King, Melissa Kwasny, Brian Laidlaw, Maryrose Larkin, Ann Lauterbach, Karen An-hwei Lee, Paul Legault, Sylvia Legris, Dana Levin, Eric Linsker, Alessandra Lynch, J. Michael Martinez, Nicole Mauro, Aaron McCollough, Joyelle McSweeney, K. Silem Mohammad, Laura Moriarty, Rusty Morrison, Erin Mouré, Jennifer Moxley, Laura Mullen, Melanie Noel, Kathryn Nuernberger, Peter O'Leary, Patrick Pritchett, Bin Ramke, Stephen Ratcliffe, Matt Reeck, Marthe Reed, Evelyn Reilly, Karen Rigby, Ed Roberson, Lisa Robertson, Elizabeth Robinson, Craig Santos Perez, Leslie Scalapino, Standard Schaefer, Brandon Shimoda, Eleni Sikelianos, Jonathan Skinner, Gustaf Sobin, Juliana Spahr, Jane Sprague, Fenn Stewart, Adam Strauss, Mathias Svalina, Arthur Sze, John Taggart, Michelle Taransky, Brian Teare, Tony Tost, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Cathy Wagner, Elizabeth Willis, Jane Wong, and C. D. Wright
Nonfiction, criticism, scholarship and biography in the United States
Dan Beachy-Quick - Wonderful Investigations: Essays, Meditations, Tales, Milkweed Editions
Rachel Blau DuPlessis – Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry, University of Iowa Press.
Lisa Jarnot – Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography, University of California Press.
Kenneth Rexroth – In the Sierra: Mountain Writings, New Directions Publishing.
Dale M Smith – Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960, University of Alabama Press.
John Yau – Further Adventures in Monochrome, Copper Canyon Press.
The following poets appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012. David Lehman, general editor, and Mark Doty, guest editor (who selected the poetry):
Anthologies in France
Poland
Jerzy Jarniewicz – Na dzień dzisiejszy i chwilę obecną (Biuro Literackie)
Jerzy Kronhold – Epitafium dla Lucy (Zeszyty Literackie)
Piotr Matywiecki – Widownia (Wydawnictwo Literackie)
Anna Piwkowska – Lustrzanka (Zeszyty Literackie)
Krystyna Rodowska – Wiersze przesiane 1968–2011 (Podkarpacki Instytut Książki i Marketingu
Bengali :
Rahman Henry – Brojosundoeer Kotha (February 2012) Collection of Poems.
Rahman Henry – Kobitar Tribhuban (February 2012) a collection of Translated poems.×
Ukrainian :
Urdu
Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi – The Qat'aat o Rubaiyat of Zia Fatehabadi (May 2012) with translation from Urdu to English in free verse.
Awards and honors by Country
Awards announced this year:
Canada awards and honors
Archibald Lampman Award: Michael Blouin, Wore Down Trust
Atlantic Poetry Prize: Sue Goyette, Outskirts
2012 Governor General's Awards: Julie Bruck, Monkey Ranch (English); Maude Smith Gagnon, Un drap. Une place. (French)
Griffin Poetry Prize:
Canadian: Ken Babstock, Methodist Hatchet
International, in the English Language: David Harsent, Night
Lifetime Recognition Award: Seamus Heaney
Gerald Lampert Award: Yi-Mei Tsiang, Sweet Devilry
Pat Lowther Award: Sue Goyette, Outskirts
Prix Alain-Grandbois: Antoine Boisclair, Le bruissement des possibles
France awards and honors
Prix Goncourt de la Poésie:
United Kingdom awards and honors
Cholmondeley Award:
Costa Award (formerly "Whitbread Awards") for poetry: Kathleen Jamie, The Overhaul
Shortlist: Sean Borodale, Bee Journal; *Julia Copus, The World's Two Smallest Humans; Selima Hill, People Who Like Meatballs
English Association's Fellows' Poetry Prizes:
Eric Gregory Award (for a collection of poems by a poet under the age of 30):
Forward Poetry Prize:
Best Collection:
Shortlist:
Best First Collection:
Shortlist:
Best Poem:
Shortlist:
Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for poetry:
Shortlist:
Manchester Poetry Prize:
National Poet of Wales:
National Poetry Competition 2011:
T. S. Eliot Prize (United Kingdom and Ireland): Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap She is the first American to win this award.Shortlist (announced in November 2012): 2012 Short List
The Times/Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation:
United States awards and honors
Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: to Kasey Jueds for Keeper
AML Award for Poetry awarded to Karen Kelsay for Amytis Leaves Her Garden
Kate Tufts Discovery Award: Katherine Larson — Radial Symmetry
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award: Timothy Donnelly — The Cloud Corporation
Lambda Literary Award:
Gay Poetry: Tim Dlugos (David Trinidad, ed.), A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos
Lesbian Poetry: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Love Cake
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize: David Wojahn for World Tree
Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize awarded to Dan Vera for The Guide to Imaginary Monuments and William Archila for The Gravedigger's Archeology
National Book Award for Poetry: David Ferry for Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry: D. A. Powell for Useless Landscape, or A Guide for BoysThe NBCC shortlist in poetry included – David Ferry for Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press); Lucia Perillo for On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths (Copper Canyon Press); Allan Peterson for Fragile Acts (McSweeney's Books); and A. E. Stallings for Olives (Triquarterly)
The New Criterion Poetry Prize: George Green for Lord Byron's Foot
North Carolina Poet Laureate: Joseph Bathanti appointed.
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation: Jen Hofer for Negro Marfil/Ivory Black by Myriam Moscona
PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry: Toi Derricotte
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (United States): to Tracy K. Smith for Life on Mars
Finalists for Pulitzer: Forrest Gander for Core Samples from the World, and Ron Padgett for How Long. – (selected by the Jury: Philip Schultz, Arthur Sze, and Jean Valentine)
Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award: Jennifer Scappettone for Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose by Amelia Rosselli
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize: W. S. Di Piero
Wallace Stevens Award: Gary Snyder
Whiting Awards: Ciaran Berry, Atsuro Riley
Frost Medal: Marilyn Nelson
Shelley Memorial Award: – Judges:
Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award: – Judge:
Lyric Poetry Award: – Judge:
Lucille Medwick Memorial Award: – Judge: ; finalist:
Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award: – Judge: ; finalists:
Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award: – Judge: ; finalists:
George Bogin Memorial Award: – Judge:
Robert H. Winner Memorial Award: – Judge: ; finalists:
Cecil Hemley Memorial Award: – Judge:
Norma Farber First Book Award: – Judge:
William Carlos Williams Award: Bruce Smith for Devotions, Judge: Elizabeth Macklin – ; finalists:
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 6 – Basil Payne, 88 (born 1923), Irish poet.
January 31 – Stacy Doris, 48 (born 1962), U.S. poet and translator.
February 1 – Wisława Szymborska, 88 (born 1923), Polish poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1996).
February 4 – Irene McKinney, 72 (born 1939), American poet who was the Poet Laureate of West Virginia since 1994
February 6 – Colleen Thibaudeau, 86 (born 1925), a Canadian poet who published her first volume of poetry in 1965. The Canadian Encyclopedia praised her poetry for celebrating “the extraordinary nature of ordinary life by combining the everyday with the otherworldly.”
February 13:
Akhlaq Mohammed Khan, 75 (born 1936), Indian poet, lyricist and academic, lung cancer.
Fred Moramarco, 73 (born 1938), U.S. poet and academic and founding editor, Poetry International, SDSU Press.
February 21 – Barney Rosset, 89 (born 1922), American publisher (Grove Press) and free speech advocate.
February 23 – Joydeb Basu, 49 (born 1929), Indian poet, heart attack.
March 2 – James A. "Jim" Hazard, 76 (born ?), U.S. poet, journalist, teacher, and musician who was a native of Indiana
March 4 – Felícia Fuster, 91, Catalan painter and poet
March 8 – Elio Pagliarani, 84, Italian poet and literary critic
March 9 – Leonard Cirino (born 1943), U.S. poet and the author of twenty other chapbooks and fourteen full-length collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses
March 16 – Takaaki Yoshimoto (吉本 隆明, Yoshimoto Takaaki), 87 (born 1924), also known as Ryūmei Yoshimoto, was a Japanese poet, literary critic, and philosopher from Tokyo. He is the father of Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto and of cartoonist Yoiko Haruno.
March 21:
Tonino Guerra, 92 (born 1920), an Italian concentration camp survivor, poet, writer and screenwriter who collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world
Derick Thomson, 90, Scottish poet
March 26 – Sadaharu Motohashi, 91, Japanese haiku poet (reference is in Japanese)
March 27 – Adrienne Rich, 82 (born 1929), National Book Award-winning poet
March 30 – Emrys Roberts, 82, Welsh poet and author
April 1 – Chūichi Mukawa, 92, Japanese tanka poet (Waseda University) (reference is in Japanese)
April 6 – Reed Whittemore, 92, American poet
April 12:
Mohit Chattopadhyay, 77, Indian playwright, dramatist, and poet
Steinbjørn B. Jacobsen, 74, Faroese poet and writer
April 17 – Nityananda Mohapatra, 99, Indian politician, poet and journalist
June 27:
Rosemary Dobson, 92, Australian poet
Peter Steele, 72, Australian poet and academic
November 4 – Anne-Marie Albiach, 75, French poet who influenced a generation of American poets that came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Acclaimed for her own poetry and translations of American poetry including Louis Zukofsky.
November 11 – Jack Gilbert, 87, American poet who received the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award.
December 28 – Jayne Cortez, 78 (born 1934) African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist
