Adrienne Rich

American poet (1929-2012), awarded the National Book Award in 1974 for her poetry collection "Diving into the Wreck," alongside Allen Ginsberg. A representative of a quasi-political poetry, in the tradition of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Allen Ginsberg, she made her literary debut with the poetry collection "A Change of World" in 1951, which was praised by W.H. Auden. This was followed by the collection "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" in 1963, where, in a more personal tone, she rejects the perpetually supportive role of women as mothers and wives. Her marriage to her husband Alfred Conrad dissolved, she met her later partner, writer Michelle Cliff, and opposed the Vietnam War with her 1974 collection "Diving into the Wreck." In 1978, she published "The Dream of a Common Language," which includes the standalone section of same-sex love poetry "21 Love Letters." In 1997, she refused to accept the National Medal for the Arts awarded to her by the Clinton administration, protesting against "the cynicism of its governance, which contradicts the concept of art." In 2003, she declined to participate in a White House symposium on "Poetry and the American Voice" due to the Iraq War. She passed away in America on March 27, 2012, at the age of 82. Adrienne Rich's poems have been translated into Greek by poet Krystalli Glyniadaki and are included in the ninth issue of the magazine "Poetics" (spring-summer 2012).