2008 in Poetry - Deaths

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding " in poetry" article:

• January 1 – Wanda Sieradzka de Ruig, 85, Polish author, poet, journalist and translator. (Polish)
• January 3:
  • Henri Chopin, 85, French poet
  • Petru Dugulescu, 62, Romanian Baptist pastor, poet and politician, heart attack.
  • John O'Donohue, 52, Irish poet, philosopher and priest
• January 4 – Stig Claesson (born 1928), Swedish
• January 5 – Rowan Ayers (born 1922) English television producer and poet
• January 12:
  • Ángel González Muñiz, 82, Spanish
  • Adriano González León, 76, Venezuelan writer and poet
• January 16 – Hone Tuwhare, 85, New Zealander
• January 21 – Burton Hatlen, 71, American scholar, founding member of the National Poetry Foundation, mentor and teacher to Stephen King, who promoted the work of the Objectivist poets
• February 7 – Frank Geerk (born 1946), German
• February 13 – Raúl Salinas, 73, American poet, complications of liver cancer
• February 28 – Max Nord (born 1916)) Dutch
• March 10 – Ana Kalandadze, 83, Georgian
• March 16 – Jonathan Williams, 79, American poet, publisher and founder of The Jargon Society
• March 19 – Hugo Claus (born 1929), Flemish novelist, poet, playwright, painter, film director writing primarily in Dutch
• March 23 – E. A. Markham, 68, Montserrat-born British poet and writer.
• March 26 – Robert Fagles, 74, American professor, poet and translator of ancient epics, prostate cancer.
• April 3 – Andrew Crozier, 64, English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival, with connections to American poetry, who edited volumes by American poet Carl Rakosi After Rakosi's Selected Poems, published in 1941, Rakosi dedicated himself to social work and apparently neither read nor wrote any poetry at all. A letter from Crozier to Rakosi asking about his early poetry was the trigger that started Rakosi writing again. His first book in 26 years, Amulet was published by New Directions in 1967 and his Collected Poems in 1986 by the National Poetry Foundation; of a brain tumour.
• April 13 – Robert Greacen, 87, Irish poet
• April 14 – Horst Bingel (born 1933), German writer, poet, graphic artist and publisher
• April 15 – Parvin Dowlatabadi, 84, Iranian children's author and poet, of heart attack
• April 17:
  • Aimé Césaire, 94, French-Martiniquan poet and politician
  • April 17 – Werner Dürrson (born 1932), German
  • Mikhail Tanich, 84, Russian poet, kidney problems
• April 24 – Jason Shinder, 53 (born 1955), American poet, editor, anthologist and teacher who founded the Y.M.C.A. National Writer’s Voice program, one of the country’s largest networks of literary-arts centers, at one time an assistant to Allen Ginsberg
• May 1 – Alberto Estima de Oliveira, 74, Portuguese poet (Portuguese)
• May 2 – Ilyas Malayev, 72, Uzbek musician, wedding entertainer and poet. "His performances in stadiums drew tens of thousands of Uzbeks, and his appeal reached beyond his native republic", according to The New York Times.
• May 19 – Rimma Kazakova, 76, Russian poet.
• May 25:
  • George Garrett, 78, American novelist and poet, cancer
  • Alejandro Romualdo, 82, Peruvian
• May 29 – Paula Gunn Allen, 68, Native American poet, novelist, and activist, lung cancer
• June 5:
  • Angus Calder (born 1942) Scottish academic, writer, historian, poet and literary editor
  • Eugenio Montejo, 70, Venezuelan poet, essayist and ambassador, of stomach cancer
• June 8 – Peter Rühmkorf (born 1929), German writer and poet
• June 11 – James Reaney (born 1926) Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic
• June 16 – Aleda Shirley (born 1955) American poet
• June 29 – William Buchan, 3rd Baron Tweedsmuir, also known as "William Tweedsmuir" (born 1916), an English peer and author of novels, short stories, memoirs and verse
• July 4 – Thomas M. Disch, 68, American poet and novelist; suicide
• July 16 – Richard Exner (born 1929) German and American poet, academic and translator who moved to the United States in 1950, then moved to Germany after his retirement
• July 19 – Samudra Gupta, 62, Bangladeshi poet, gallbladder cancer
• July 9 – Kilin (poet), pen name of Mikiel Spiteri, 90, Maltese poet and novelist; fluent in six languages and published in English, Spanish and other languages
• July 24 – Alain Suied, 51 (born 1951), French poet, from cancer
• August 9 – Mahmoud Darwish, 67, Palestinian poet; complications following heart surgery.
• August 24 – Wei Wei, 88, Chinese poet and writer, liver cancer
• August 25 – Ahmed Faraz, pseudonym of Syed Ahmad Shah, 77 (born 1931), Pakistani Urdu-language poet and son of Agha Syed Muhammad Shah Bark Kohati, a leading traditional poet, from kidney failure
• August 28 – İlhan Berk, 89, Turkish
• September 10 – Reginald Shepherd, 44, American poet, complications from colon cancer
• September 15 – John Matshikiza, 53, South African actor, writer and poet; heart attack
• September 20 – Duncan Glen, 75, British poet, critic and literary historian
• September 28 – Konstantin Pavlov, 75 (born 1933), Bulgarian poet and screenwriter who was defiant against his country's communist regime; When censors prevented his works from being published officially in the country from 1966 to 1976, his popularity didn't wane, as Bulgarians clandestinely copied and read his poems.
• September 29 – Hayden Carruth, 87, American poet and literary critic
• September 30 – Christa Reinig (born 1926), German
• October 6 – Paavo Haavikko, 77, Finnish poet and playwright, after long illness
• October 15 – Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, 94, Turkish poet; chronic renal failure
• October 25 – Tahereh Saffarzadeh, 72, Iranian poet and academic, cancer
• November 10 – Fries de Vries (1931–2008) Dutch
• November 15, – Donald Finkel, 79 (born 1929), American poet, husband of poet and novelist Constance Urdang, complications from Alzheimer’s disease
• November 16 – Tibor Gyurkovics, 77, Hungarian poet, writer and publicist
• November 20 – Gyula Takáts, 97, Hungarian poet, writer and translator
• December 1 – Peter Maiwald (born 1946) German
• December 2 – Ann Darr (born 1920) American poet and World War II pilot.
• December 5 – Altaf Nia, 44, Kashmiri poet and academic
• December 10 – Dorothy Porter, 54, Australian
• December 14 – Tajal Bewas, pen name of Taj Mohammed Samoo, 70 (born 1938), bucolic Sufi poet, novelist, short-story writer, teacher and Pakistani government official
• December 15 – Jwalamukhi (pen name of Akaram Veeravelli Raghavacharya), 71 (born 1938), Indian poet and president of the India-China Friendship Association
• December 20 – Adrian Mitchell, 74, (born 1934), English poet, playwright, children's author, journalist and political activist, of heart failure
• December 22 – Nanao Sakaki (born 1923), Japanese poet and leading personality of "the Tribe", a counter-cultural group
• December 24 – Harold Pinter, 78 (born 1930), English playwright, poet, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, human rights activist, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature