2002 in Poetry - Events

Events

• After Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain, publishes a poem praising a suicide bomber who had killed himself and two Israelis after blowing himself up in a supermarket; the ambassador was recalled home.
• March 16: Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested and jailed poet Abdul Mohsen Musalam and fired a newspaper editor following the publication of Musalam's poem The Corrupt on Earth that criticized the state's Islamic judiciary. In it, the poet accused some judges of being corrupt and issuing unfair rulings for their own personal benefit.
• The office of Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate is instituted (see "Awards and honors" section below)
• August 22 — Poet Ron Silliman starts his popular and controversial weblog, Silliman's Blog, which will become one of the most popular blogs devoted largely to contemporary poetry and poetics. (By August 2006, the blog will reach a total of 800,000 hits and get its next 100,000 by early November.).
• Fulcrum, An annual of poetry and aesthetics is founded in the United States.
• August 27 in the United States; December 8 in Europe — Avril Lavigne's pop song Sk8er Boi comes out — about the award-winning Irish performance poet Gerard McKeown, whom she had not met, but had seen performing in Belfast, Northern Ireland while on tour there. The single reached number ten on the United States Billboard Hot 100, number eight in the United Kingdom, number three in Australia, number thirteen in Canada and number one in Spain. Lavigne confirmed the connection in a 2008 interview.
• Influential Chinese literary magazine Tamen ("They/Them") revived as a webzine at www.tamen.net.
• Bowery Poetry Club, a New York City poetry performance space, founded by Bob Holman.