Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
—Opening lines of "Edge" by Sylvia Plath, written days before her suicide
Events January 26 – Raghunath Vishnu Pandit, an Indian poet who writes in both Konkani and Marathi languages, publishes five books of poems this day February 11 – American-born poet Sylvia Plath (age 30) commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in her London flat (in a house lived in by W. B. Yeats as a child) during the cold winter of 1962–63 in the United Kingdom about a month after publication of her only novel, the semi-autobiographical The Bell Jar and six days after writing (probably) her last poem, "Edge". July–August – The Vancouver Poetry Conference is held over a three-week period, involving about 60 people who attend discussions, workshops, lectures, and readings designed by Warren Tallman and Robert Creeley as a summer course at the University of British Columbia.Slought Foundation, Philadelphia: Contemporary Art and Theory According to Creeley:
"It brought together for the first time a decisive company of then disregarded poets such as Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Margaret Avison, Philip Whalen... together with as yet unrecognised younger poets of that time, Michael Palmer, Clark Coolidge and many more."
The Belfast Group, a discussion group of poets in Northern Ireland, is started by Philip Hobsbaum when he moves to Belfast this year. Before the meetings finally end in 1972, attendees at its meetings will include Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, James Simmons, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Stewart Parker, Bernard MacLaverty and the critics Edna Longley and Michael Allen. The Soviet government appears to begin removing freedoms previously granted to writers and artists in a process that began in November 1962 and continues this year. Yet the government proves uncertain and the writers persistent. In March 1963 "the gavel fell on the great debate", or so it appears, writes Harrison E. Salisbury, Moscow correspondent for The New York Times. Khrushchev announces that Soviet writers are the servants of the Communist Party and must reflect its orders. Among the authors he specifically targets are the poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky. Yevtushenko, on a tour of European cities earlier in the year, recites before large audiences, including a capacity audience at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, and then returns home. "Literary Stalinists took over almost all the key publishing positions", Salisbury writes. Yet the artists and writers who are criticized either refuse to recant or do so in innocuous language. Alexander Tvardovsky, editor of the magazine Novy Mir, publishes three brutally frank stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for instance. By midsummer, the effects of the announced crackdown appear nil, with authors publishing essentially as before.Britannica Book of the Year 1964 (covering events of 1963), published 1963 by The Encyclopædia Britannica, "Literature" article, pp 508-519 After the Union of Soviet Writers rebukes Voznesensky, he replies "with what is regarded as a classic nonconfessional confession", according to Voznesensky's 2010 obituary in the Times: "It has been said that I must not forget the strict and severe words of Nikita Sergeyevich [Khrushchev]. I will never forget them. He said 'work'. This word is my program." He continues, "What my attitude is to Communism — what I am myself — this work will show."Anderson, Raymond H., "Andrei Voznesensky, Poet, Dies at 77", obituary, June 2, 2010, The New York Times, retrieved June 7, 2010. Russian poet Anna Akhmatova's Requiem, an elegy about suffering of Soviet people under the Great Purge, composed 1935–61, is first published complete in book form, without her knowledge, in Munich. Ukrainian writer Vasyl Symonenko's Kurds'komu bratovi is written and begins to circulate in samizdat.
Works published in English Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantial revisions listed separately:
Canada Roy Daniells, The Chequered Shade, a collection of short poems, mostly sonnets R. G. Everson, Blind Man's Holiday, a first book of poems Eldon Grier, A Friction of Lights Irving Layton, Balls for a One-Armed Juggler."Irving Layton: Publications ", Canadian Poetry Online, Web, May 7, 2011. Lionel Kearns, Songs of Circumstance Wilson MacDonald, The Angels Of The Earth. Toronto: Nelson.Search results: Wilson MacDonald, Open Library, Web, May 10, 2011. Gwendolyn MacEwen, The Rising FireGustafson, Ralph, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, revised edition, 1967, Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books Al Purdy, The Blur in Between James Reaney, The Dance of Death at London, Ontario.
Anthologies in Canada Frank Scott, translator and editor, Saint-Denys Garneau and Anne Hébert The Plough and the Pen: Writings From Hungary 1930-1956, translations of Hungarian populist poets and writers by eight Canadian poets, including Earle Birney, A.J.M. Smith and Raymond Souster
Ireland Austin Clarke, Flight to Africa, Dublin: Dolmen PressM. L. Rosenthal, The New Poets: American and British Poetry Since World War II, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, "Selected Bibliography: Individual Volumes by Poets Discussed", pp 334-340 Denis Devlin, Selected Poems, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Irish poet published in the United States Richard Murphy, Sailing to an Island, including "The Poet on the Island",Crotty, Patrick, Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology, Belfast, The Blackstaff Press Ltd., 1995, London: Faber and Faber; Irish Poets Online/ Author/ Richard Murphy" at the Irish Poets Online Web site, accessed October 20, 2007 New York: Chilmark Press, 1965 Irish work published in the United Kingdom
New Zealand James K. Baxter, The Ballad of the Soap Powder Lock-Out, a light-hearted work written by a poet who was at this time a postal worker in New Zealand, in connection with a postal workers’ protest against delivering heavy samples of soap powder Alistair Campbell, Sanctuary of Spirits Keith Sinclair, A Time to Embrace
United Kingdom Patricia Beer, The Survivors Edwin Bronk, With Love From Judas, Lowestoft, Suffolk: Scorpion Press W. H. Davies, The Complete Poems of W. H. Davies, introduction by Sir Osbert Sitwell C. Day-Lewis, translation, The Eclogues of Virgil (see also his translations The Georgics of Virgil 1940 and The Aenid of Virgil 1952) Lawrence Durrell, editor, New Poems 1963: A P.E.N. Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.Web page titled "Works by Lawrence Durrell" at the International Lawrence Durrell Society website, retrieved August 1, 2010 T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1962 Michael Hamburger, Weather and Season, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Atheneum Philip Hobsbaum and Edward Lucie-Smith, editors, A Group Anthology of young poets, many influenced by Ted Hughes, including George MacBeth, Peter Porter, David Wevill, and Peter Redgrove James Kirkup, Refusal to Conform Laurence Lerner, The Directions of Memory George MacBeth, The Broken Places, Lowestoft, Suffolk: Scorpion Press Norman MacCaig, A Round of Applause Louis MacNeice, The Burning Perch (posthumous) John Clark Milne, Poems (posthumous) Richard Murphy, Sailing to an Island, London: Faber and Faber; New York: Chilmark Press, 1965 Irish Margaret O'Donnell, editor, An Anthology of Commonwealth Verse, London: Blackie & SonRajyalakshmi, P. V., The Lyric Spring: The Poetic Achievement of Sarojini Naidu, p 214, Abhinav Publications, 1977 Wilfred Owen (killed 1918), The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited and introduced by C. Day-Lewis F. T. Prince, The Doors of Stone Peter Redgrove, At the White Monument, and Other Poems, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Bernard Spencer, With Luck Lasting R. S. Thomas, The Bread of Truth Anthony Thwaite, The Owl in the Tree, London: Oxford University Press Charles Tomlinson, A Peopled Landscape, London: Oxford University Press Rosemary Tonks, Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms
United States Conrad Aiken, The Morning Song of Lord Zero John Malcolm Brinnin, Selected PoemsLudwig, Richard M., and Clifford A. Nault, Jr., Annals of American Literature: 1602–1983, 1986, New York: Oxford University Press ("If the title page is one year later than the copyright date, we used the latter since publishers frequently postdate books published near the end of the calendar year." — from the Preface, p vi) Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems John Ciardi, In Fact Evan S. Connell (at this time known as "Evan S. Connell Jr."), Notes From a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel E.E. Cummings, 73 Poems, posthumously published (died 1962) Babette Deutsch, Collected Poems, 1919-1962 Denis Devlin, Selected Poems, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Irish poet published in the United States Alan Dugan, Poems 2 Allen Ginsberg, Reality Sandwiches, San Francisco: City Lights Books 6 Edward Gorey, The Gashlycrumb Tinies Daniel G. Hoffman, The City of Satisfactions John Hollander, Various Owls Robinson Jeffers, The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, posthumously published (died 1962) Donald Justice, A Local Storm H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Poems W. S. Merwin: The Moving Target, New York: AtheneumWeb page titled "W. S. Merwin (1927- )" at the Poetry Foundation Web site, retrieved June 8, 2010 Translator, The Song of Roland Howard Nemerov, The Next Room of the Dream Lou B. ("Bink") Noll, The Center of the Circle, a first volume of poetry Mary Oliver, No Voyage, and Other Poems (first edition; later released in an expanded edition in 1965) Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, an autobiographical novel published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" Henry Rago, A Sky of Light Summer, New York: Macmillan John Crowe Ransom, Selected Poems, revised and enlarged edition Kenneth Rexroth, Natural Numbers Adrienne Rich, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, her third volume of poetry, gains the poet national prominence for her lyric voice, mostly in free verse, and for her treatment of feminist-related themes Theodore Roethke, Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical Carl Sandburg, Honey and Salt Anne Sexton, All My Pretty Ones Louis Simpson, At the End of the Open Road, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark Jesse Stuart, Hold April May Swenson, To Mix With Time John Updike, Telephone Poles, and Other Poems Mark Van Doren, Collected and New Poems, 1924-1963 David Wagoner, The Nesting Ground William Carlos Williams, Paterson, all five books of this long poem first published together James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press
Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United States Louis Zukofsky, Bottom: On Shakespeare a work of literary philosophy Robert Bly's "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry" published in Choice
Other in English Viresh Chander Dutt, Poems and Meditations, Calcutta: self-published; India, Indian poetry in EnglishVinayak Krishna Gokak, The Golden Treasury Of Indo-Anglian Poetry (1828-1965), p 323, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi (1970, first edition; 2006 reprint), , retrieved August 10, 2010 James McAuley, Australia: James McAuley (Australian Poets series), Sydney: Angus & Robertson The Six Days of Creation (An Australian Letters publication) Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Australia: In Light and Darkness, Sydney: Angus & Robertson Editor, Six Voices: Contemporary Australian Poets, Sydney: Angus & Robertson; American Edition, Westport, Connecticut: 1979 (anthology)
Works published in other languages Listed by language and often by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
Denmark Inger Christensen, Græs: digte ("Grass")