1968 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France). January 1 – Cecil Day-Lewis is announced as the new Poet Laureate of the UK. May 19 – The Last Poets, originally comprising Felipe Luciano, Gylan Kain and David Nelson, form at Marcus Garvey Park in East Harlem, New York City, on Malcolm X's birthday. November 23 – Roy Fuller is elected professor of poetry at Oxford University (with 385 votes) to succeed Edmund Blunden, who unexpectedly left. Other nominees were Kathleen Raine, Enid Starkie and Yevgeni Yevtushenko. The Arvon Foundation is established by young poets John Fairfax and John Moat in the UK to promote creative writing. The Belfast Group, a grouping of poets in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was started in 1963 in poetry and lapsed in 1966 when founder Philip Hobsbaum left for Glasgow, is reconstituted this year by Michael Allen, Arthur Terry, and Seamus Heaney. At various times, the group also includes Michael Longley, James Simmons, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty and the critic Edna Longley. Meetings are held at Seamus and Marie Heaney's house on Ashley Avenue. The group will last until 1972. The first translations and book-length discussion of Enheduanna's work is published. She is a Sumerian priestess and poet of the 23rd century BC and the earliest named author known to history. The Honest Ulsterman, a long-running Northern Ireland literary magazine, is established this year by James Simmons. It is then edited for 20 years by Frank Ormsby. Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately: Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Irving Layton, The Shattered Plinths, 60 new poems. Dennis Lee, Civil Elegies. Toronto: Anansi. Dorothy Livesay, The Documentaries. Poems from the 1930s and 1940s, and including "Roots", a long poem Pat Lowther, This Difficult Flowering Jay Macpherson, The Boatman and Other Poems.