1962 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France). May 30 – Composer Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, incorporating settings of Wilfred Owen's poems, is premièred for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral. September – Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate. October Beginning this month, Sylvia Plath experiences a great burst of creativity, writing most of the poems on which her reputation will rest in what will be the last few months of her life, including many which will be published in Ariel and Winter Trees. Dame Edith Sitwell reads from her poetry at a concert at Royal Festival Hall in London given in honor of her 75th birthday. Writers in the Soviet Union this year are allowed to publish criticism of Joseph Stalin and are given more freedom generally, although many are severely criticized for doing so. The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, in the poem, The Heirs of Stalin, writes that more guards should be placed at Stalin's tomb, "lest Stalin rise again, and with Stalin the past". He also condemns anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. His poetry readings attract hundreds and thousands of enthusiastic young people, to the point where police are often summoned to preserve order and disperse the crowds long after midnight. Other young poets also go beyond the previous limits of Soviet censorship: Andrei Voznesensky, Robert Rozhdestvensky, and Bella Akhmadulina (who has divorced Yevtushenko). Aleksandr Tvardovsky, editor of the literary monthly Novy Mir, supports many of the young writers. By the end of the year, the young writers have gained power in the official writers' unions which control much of the literary culture of the Soviet Union, and some publications which had attacked them are printing their work. American poet Robert Frost visits Russian poet Anna Akhmatova in her dacha. Michigan Quarterly Review is founded. Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately: R.