Events
- The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened at Queens University, Belfast, this year. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a unique record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, as well as a full catalogue of his radio and television presentations. That same year Heaney decided to lodge a substantial portion of his literary archive at Emory University.
- 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.
- Call: Review, an American little magazine, is founded by poet John Most.
- 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.
- Early November — Carl Rakosi celebrates his 100th birthday with friends at the San Francisco Public Library.
Read more about this topic: 2003 In Poetry
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“There are no little events in life, those we think of no consequence may be full of fate, and it is at our own risk if we neglect the acquaintances and opportunities that seem to be casually offered, and of small importance.”
—Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)
“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)