Candy Prix Émile-Nelligan: Marlène Belley, Les jours sont trop longs pour se mentir India Sahitya Akademi Award : Kunwar Narayan for Koi Doosra Nahin Poetry Society India National Poetry Competition : Tabish Khair for Birds of North Europe & Gopi Kottoor for The Coffin Maker New Zealand Montana Book Award for Poetry: Michael Jackson, Pieces of Music New Zealand Book Award for Poetry: Michele Leggott, Dia United Kingdom Cholmondeley Award: U. A. Fanthorpe, Christopher Reid, C. H. Sisson, Kit Wright Eric Gregory Award: Colette Bryce, Sophie Hannah, Tobias Hill, Mark Wormald Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection: Sean O'Brien, Ghost Train (Oxford University Press) Forward Poetry Prize Best First Collection: Jane Duran, Breathe Now, Breathe (Enitharmon Press) T. S. Eliot Prize (United Kingdom and Ireland): Mark Doty, My Alexandria Whitbread Award for poetry: Bernard O'Donoghue, Gunpowder National Poetry Competition : James Harpur for The Frame of Furnace Light United States Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Sandy Solomon, Pears, Lake, Sun Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Maxine Kumin AML Award for poetry to Marden J. Clark for "Snows" Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: Vijay Seshadri, "Lifeline" Bollingen Prize: Kenneth Koch National Book Award for poetry: Stanley Kunitz, Passing Through: The Later Poems Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress: Robert Hass appointed Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Philip Levine, The Simple Truth Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize: A.R. Ammons Wallace Stevens Award: James Tate Whiting Awards: Lucy Grealy, James L. McMichael, Mary Ruefle Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: Denise Levertov Deaths Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article: January 28 – George Woodcock, 82 (born 1912), Canadian poet, biographer, academic and prominent anarchist February 6 – James Merrill, 68 (born 1926), American poet, of a heart attack April 14 – Brian Coffey, 89 (born 1905), Irish poet and publisher April 22 – Jane Kenyon, 47 (born 1947), American poet, of leukemia May 11 – David Avidan, 61 (born 1934), Israeli Hebrew-language poet July 7 – Helene Johnson, 89 (born 1906), African American poet, after osteoporosis July 16: May Sarton, 83 (born 1912), American poet, novelist and memoirist, of breast cancer Stephen Spender, 86, (born 1909), English poet and essayist, of a heart ailment September 3 – Earle Birney, 91 (born 1904), Canadian poet September 13 – Maheswar Neog, 80 (born 1915), Indian, Assamese-language scholar and poet September 18 – Donald Davie, 73 (born