1929
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, May 16. Began writing poetry as a child with the encouragement and under the supervision of her father, Arnold Rich, from whose “very Victorian, pre-Raphaelite” library, Rich later recalled, she read Tennyson, Keats, Arnold, Blake, Rossetti, Swinburne, Carlyle, and Pater.
1951
A.B., Radcliffe College. A Change of World, chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Award.
1952-53
Guggenheim Fellowship; travel in Europe and England. Onset of rheumatoid arthritis.
1953
Marriage to Alfred H. Conrad, an economist teaching at Harvard. Residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1953-1966.
1955
Birth of David Conrad. The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems; Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America.
1957
Birth of Paul Conrad.
1959
Birth of Jacob Conrad.
1960
National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for poetry.
1961-1962
Guggenheim Fellowship; residence with family, in the Netherlands.
1962
Bollingen Foundation grant for translation of Dutch poetry.
1962-63
Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship.
1963
Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962. Bess Hokin Prize of Poetry Magazine.
1966
Necessities of Life. Move with family to New York City. Increasingly active politically in protests against the Vietnam War.
1967
Selected Poems published in Britain. Honorary doctorate, Wheaton College. Orthopedic surgery for arthritis.
1967-69
Lecturer, Swarthmore College. Adjunct Professor, Writing Division, Columbia University School of the Arts.
1968
Begins teaching in SEEK program at City College of New York, and continues 1968-72 and 1974-75. Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize, Poetry Magazine. Death of Arnold Rich.
1969
Leaflets: Poems 1965-1968.
1970
Death of Alfred Conrad.
1971
The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970. Shelley Memorial Award, Poetry Society of America. Increasingly identifies with the women’s Iiberation movement.
1972-73
Hurst Visiting Professor of Creative Writing, Brandeis University.
1973
Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972.
1974
National Book Award, shared with Allen Ginsberg.
1975
Adrienne Rich’s Poetry, edited by Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi (Norton Critical Edition). Poems Selected & New, 1950-1974. Lucy Martin Donnelley Fellow, Bryn Mawr College.
1976
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience & lnstitution. Twenty-One Love Poems. Begins life with Michelle Cliff.
1976-79
Professor of English, Douglass College, Rutgers University.
1978
The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977.
1979
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. Honorary doctorate, Smith College. Move to Montague, Massachusetts.
1980
Orthopedic surgery for arthritis.
1981
A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981.
1981
Fund for Human Dignity Award, National Gay Task Force.
1981-83
Co-edits Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian/feminist journal.
1981-87
A. D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University.
1982
Orthopoedic surgery for arthritis.
1983
Sources.
1983-84
Visiting Professor, Scripps College.
1984
The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984. Move to Santa Cruz, California.
1984-86
Distinguished Visiting Professor, San Jose State University.
1986
Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems. Blood, Bread, & Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985. Of Woman Born, l0th Anniversary Edition. Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
1986-93
Professor of English, Stanford University.
1987
Honorary doctorate, College of Wooster, Ohio. Honorary doctorate, Brandeis University. Brandeis Creative Arts Medal in Poetry.
1989
Time’s Power: Poems 1985-1988. Marjorie Kovler Fellow, University of Chicago. National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry. Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters, New York University.
1990
Honorary doctorate, City College of New York. Honorary doctorate, Harvard University. Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in Poetry.
1990
Member, Department of Literature, American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters. Member, founding editorial group, Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists & Our Friends.
1991
An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991. The Common Wealth Award in Literature.
1991
Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
1992
Honorary doctorate, Swarthmore College. Robert Frost Silver Medal of the Poetry Society of America. William Whitehead Award of the Publishing Triangle for lifetime achievement in letters. An Atlas of the Difficult World receives the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and the Lenore Marshall/Nation Award. Julia Arden Conrad, grandchild, born. Charles Reddington Conrad, grandchild, born.
1992
Spinal surgery.
1991
Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970. What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. An Atlas of the Difficult World awarded the Poet’s Prize.
1994
MacArthur Fellowship.
1995
Dark Fields of the Republic Poems 1991-1995.
1996
Guest editor of Best American Poetry of 1996. The Wallace Stevens Award, the Academy of American Poets.
1997
Awarded a National Medal for the Arts, which AR refused, to protest the policies in both political parties that subverted democratic government for the good of the people in the interest of corporate capitalist power, and to protest the political subversion of the arts, signified by the recent decision of the House of Representatives to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. See Rich’s essay “Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts” in Arts of the Possible (2001), pp. 98-105.
1999
Midnight Salvage Poems 1995-1998. Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lannan Foundation. Chancellor, Academy of American Poets, 1999-2001.
2000
Death of Helen Rich.
2001
Fox: Poems 1998-2000.
Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations. In March, AR goes to Santiago, Chile, to participate in “Chile Poesia,” an international poetry festival.
2003
Expanded edition of What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, with a new introduction, “Jacob and the Angel,” and an additional essay, “Six Meditations in Place of a Lecture.” Bollingen Prize for Poetry, Yale University.
2004
The School Among the Ruins Poems 2000-2004. AR edits the Selected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser for the Library of America.
2006
National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
2007
Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth Poems 2004-2006, and Poetry and Commitment: An Essay.
2009
A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society 1997-2008.
2010
Lifetime Recognition Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize.
2011
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve Poems 2007-2010. Finalist, National Book Award.
2012
Death of AR, March 27, in her home in Santa Cruz, from the effects of long-term rheumatoid arthritis.
2013
Later Poems Selected & New 1971-2012.
2016
Collected Poems 1950-2012.
Death of Michelle Cliff, June 12.
Adrienne Rich 