Contemporary Women Poets Research Articles

Poetry and precarious memory: Ways of understanding less and less

Poetry as an art form has traditionally registered tropes of feeling and memory, often with astonishing power, especially since the Romantics began to focus on projections of the self. Yet, when poetry invokes memory, anchoring people to their pasts and identities, it frequently reveals that, at best, memory offers a precarious connection to what is certain or secure – and this is particularly the case for women writers. For example, much of Emily Dickinson’s poetry reveals that memory’s recesses are often uncomfortable, and studies in autobiographical memory confirm poetry’s intuition that all may not be what it seems within the “house” of the recollecting self. This paper explores ways in which poetry’s elusive suggestiveness, and memory’s more fraught instances, confirm the provisionality and precarity of what most people are inclined to take for granted – that they know themselves and can speak securely of who they are. This has always been a challenge for women in patriarchal societies as gender inequality and precarious work – often in atypical employment – has informed and affected their expressions of self and identity. We conclude with examples from the work of two contemporary women poets, Emma Hyche and Mary A. Koncel, in order to focus on their particular approaches to precarity in their poetry and prose poetry and to posit that women poets often disrupt and disturb aspects of the patriarchal language system to offer new constructions of autobiographical memory.

Of Beginnings and Convergences: Contemporary Women’s Poetry in Manipur

Anglophone women’s poetry in Manipur in the last decade critiques the norms prevalent in patriarchal societies. This article focuses on six contemporary women poets whose works highlight the woman, her subjectivity, and her truths. Collectively, their works constitute an emerging feminist poetic tradition in Manipur. Despite the multiplicities of location and creative idiom of each poet, their poetry converges upon seminal issues and amplify one another’s voices, giving us an intimate glimpse of women’s trysts with everyday structures of patriarchy. The respective poets attempt to rewrite previously inscribed taboos and cultural practices—some by reimagining tropes that have weighed against fair representation of women such as the body, female desire, and myths; and others by breaking the cycle of abuse and shame through testimonial poetry.

Objects Can Be Unintentionally Beautiful. Feminist Ekphrasis, Photography and Spectatorship in Mary Jo Bang's and Bernadette Mayer's Poetry

In 1981, Laura Mulvey famously amended her original contentions in “Visual Pleasure” (1973) to introduce the notion of a “female gaze.” Through ekphrastic poems—lyric representationsof visual art—contemporary women poets have also questioned the plausibility of a (female) polyvocal viewing subject, especially when poeticizing photographic and sculptural material. This essay analyzes and compares Mary Jo Bang’s and Bernadette Mayer’s examples of ekphrasis, focusing on their feminist revitalization of the inanimate object through linguistic devices. In my close readings, I most notably propose a link between these poetic renderings and Katherine Behar’s ironic reinterpretation of Levi Bryant’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) in her book Object Oriented Feminism (2016). Following this rhetoric, I reflect on the poets’ blurring of the problematic subject/object dichotomy by means of formal experimentation. The oeuvres of both Bang and Mayer, all in all, highlight the efforts of contemporary feminist experimentalism to dismiss hierarchies and provide a space for the inbetween, anti-logocentric—and anti-patriarchal—poetic reality.

Beyond the Gendered Stereotypes: The Conflict of Motherhood in Dollie Radford’s Poetry

This article sheds light on motherhood as a theme which – to my knowledge – has not been thoroughly explored to date in Dollie Radford’s volumes of poetry published in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It positions Radford’s depiction of the theme within Victorian conventions, and simultaneously in line with the radical meanings embraced by her contemporary women poets, including Christina Rossetti, Alice Meynell and Augusta Webster. In doing so, the article approaches the representation of motherhood at different levels, thereby eschewing a fixed reading of the selected poems. It offers an insight into Radford’s conflict as a mother who wishes to enlighten both her children and the future generation away from the prevailing doctrines. Thus, the argument presented herein adds to the existing body of knowledge on Radford and challenges the gendered readings imposed upon her poems by Victorian reviewers.

A Feminist Reading of Filipino Women Poets

This paper draws on ideas from a shared identity of Filipino women writers. While a shift in 21st Century feminist reading, mainly the slant that to think about woman is also to think about gender, has become available for interrogation and re-inscription, the study on Filipino woman as a construct and a subject of self-representation of contemporary Filipino poetry remains scarce. Drawing at how women and their experiences were represented in select poems written by 4 contemporary women poets, this paper explored common patterns of women imaging using textual and thematic analysis, alongside French feminism expounded by the arguments of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva. The findings revealed that women poets’ rhetoric, awakening, resistance, and call to action had redefined women experience as a collective whole. Collective as they seem, the poems established a strong articulation of a feminist stance, which is a resistance against subversion and marginality. The paper is of relevance both to feminist scholars and others with practical interests in women poetry as it will enable them to better understand Filipino women experience and its representation in verse.

Our Shared Japan: Contemporary Spaces of Love and Exoticism in Irish Women’s Poetry

The aim of this paper is to analyse the new perspectives on the locus amoenus put forward by contemporary women poets in Ireland, in particular those by the female authors included in the anthology Our Shared Japan, edited by Irene De Angelis and Joseph Woods (2007). This paper argues that these writers provide alternatives to traditional pastoralism that trigger new reflections on women’s identities and subjectivities. As Donna L. Potts asserts, some constitutive aspects of the pastoral tradition are “the relationship between nature and human nature, and between the present and the mythicised past, the motif of transformation, etc.” (9). These aspects will be scrutinised in the context of travel to the new, exotic space of Japan. The alterity that the poetic voices meet with in their travel provides them with new perceptions of themselves and their affective life in relation to the environment. This renegotiation of identity is mostly made through the body, which becomes a tool for knowledge and communication. The heterotopia (Foucault) of the trip, therefore, provides the perfect space for the poetic subjects to interact, change and reflect about their identity, their sense of belonging or alienation and the impact of travel on their emotional life.

In Mistral's footsteps: “The Other” (1954) as the substrate poem for contemporary Chilean women poets

AbstractThis study proposes that Gabriela Mistral's poem “The Other” (1954) is a work that has inspired many contemporary Chilean women poets. Evidence from three poetry collections—Alejandra Del Río's Written in Braille (1999), Marina Arrate's Uranium (1999), and Malú Urriola's Butterfly Stroke (2007)—connect directly to Mistral's proposal in “The Other.” These contemporary poets take up the psychic unfolding of the speaker in that poem to vindicate the woman that in Mistral's work was annihilated. These three contemporary poets prove that now is time for women to freely express themselves and their desires through the written word, subverting traditional patriarchal discourse.

Il ruolo di Vittoria Colonna nelle Rime Diverse d’alcune Nobilissime et Virtuosissime Donne (1559)

ABSTRACTThe Rime di donne, printed in 1559, is the first Italian verse anthology dedicated entirely to female poets. This article offers a detailed reading of the image and role that Vittoria Colonna plays in the anthology, drawing comparisons with Pietro Bembo’s function in the Libro primo of 1545. It suggests that the Rime di donne’s editorial strategies codify Colonna as the female equivalent to Bembo, presenting her as the exemplary exponent of Petrarchan style for contemporary women poets. The article first examines two sonnets that Marguerite d’Angoulême addressed to Colonna, exploring how those highlight Colonna’s stylistic and spiritual primacy within the anthology. Secondly, it analyses the poems the editor chose to represent Colonna herself. Finally, it shows ways in which the anthology can be regarded as a testimony to the poetic and stylistic legacy of Colonna with respect to the construction of the female poetic persona for the poets anthologised.

Mapping Jewish American Literary Studies in the New Century

Mapping Jewish American Literary Studies in the New Century

Walking Women: Embodied Perception in Romantic and Contemporary Radical Landscape Poetry

Reading early Wordsworth through Adorno, this article suggests that Romantic walking entails the subjugation of external objects through the exercise of an imperial and elevated perception. It then considers Dorothy Wordsworth’s influence over her brother and the possibility that a Romantic ‘eco-poetic’ emerges from the ‘feminine’ perspective below the mountain, and within the domestic landscape. I argue that this gesture away from walking and mountaineering as the demonstration of physical prowess, or as the pursuit of a real or ideal goal, is taken up by three contemporary women poets of landscape. Harriet Tarlo, Frances Presley and Helen Macdonald offer different ways of walking, which dispense with goal-orientation, explore the ethical choices available to perceptual beings, and attempt a more immersive, embodied engagement with the land. Their contribution to contemporary ‘radical landscape poetry’ combines the feminist discourse of ‘situated knowledge’ with an implicitly enactivist approach to human encounters with the environment.

A tale of two wives: The transnational poetry of Patience Agbabi and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze

This article approaches transnational poetry through the recent engagement of medieval studies with the theoretical frame of postcolonial studies, which raises questions about periodization, contact zones and axes of power. The intersection of postcolonial theory and medievalism has uncovered global interconnections across time and space through a transnational dialectics investigating the contemporaneity of the Middle Ages and modernity. The article traces the transnational affiliations connecting Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath” and the work of two contemporary women poets of the African diaspora, British-born poet of Nigerian origin, Patience Agbabi, and Jamaican Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, who have recontextualized the well-known character of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the space of the metropolitan African diaspora. While Breeze’s poem, published in 2000, imagines that “The Wife of Bath speaks in Brixton Market”, Agbabi has reworked the Wife’s vivid language in the voice of a Nigerian businesswoman in “What do women like bes’?” from her 2014 collection Telling Tales. The article suggests that, by exposing the transnational flows and “crossover” skills already present in Chaucer, Agbabi and Breeze engage in a continuing conversation which contributes to our understanding of both medieval England and contemporary Britain as, in Bill Ashcroft’s term, “transnation”.

Peering into the Shadows or Foregrounding the Feminine? Feminist Rewritings of the Parable of the Prodigal

This article considers a range of rewritings of the Parable of the Prodigal by contemporary women poets, novelists, preachers and liturgists. Seeking to move beyond mere inclusion of female characters into the parable, we seek to identify rewritings that foreground female perspectives and thereby transform the reading of the biblical text. After considering a range of shorter texts, we offer an extended reading of Marilynne Robinson’s diptych of novels, Gilead and Home. As feminist practical theologians, our concern is to demonstrate how patriarchal texts that, in their original form, exclude women may be re-read/written in ways that not only include the feminine but seriously engage with women’s experience and perspectives. As such, we hope this article may offer clues to preachers, teachers and pastors, as well as scholars, of ways of engaging creatively with patriarchal biblical texts so that they may become empowering for female readers and hearers.

Poetry Today: A Panorama of Turkish Love Poetry: Birhan Keskin and Other Contemporary Women Poets

Poetry Today: A Panorama of Turkish Love Poetry: Birhan Keskin and Other Contemporary Women Poets

Reweaving the place of nature: two contemporary women poets

espanolEste articulo analiza obra poetica de escritora brasilena Arriete Vilela y de Grace Nichols, escritora caribena afincada en Gran Bretana. El objetivo es mostrar las diferencias en el tratamiento de las nociones de espacio y lugar en naturaleza, a traves de ecocritica, el feminismo y otras lecturas interdisciplinarias. Sus poemas presentan un modo de comprender naturaleza que implica una interconexion entre lo humano y lo mas-que-humana en una relacion que puede considerarse tan armoniosa como problematica. El uso que hace Vilela de la imagineria naturalista nos evoca las resistencias y, a vez, potencialidades que pueden encontrarse en su poesia brasilena. Grace Nichols comienza desde discontinuidad en su vision del paisaje y cultura caribenos, donde una industria turistica colonizadora prevalece incluso por encima del genero de los cuerpos. Ambas autoras inician el dialogo entre naturaleza externa y naturaleza de mujer, en obras en donde dialogos y conflictos pueden ser rechazados y celebrados a traves de poesia. EnglishThis article examines two women poets, the Brazilian Arriete Vilela and the Caribbean poet living in Britain, Grace Nichols, with the aim of showing the way they deal differently with notions of space and place in nature, approaching these notions through ecocriticism, feminism and other interdisciplinary readings. Their poems present an understanding of that involves an interconnection between human and more-than-human in a relationship that may be seen as harmonious and problematic. Videla's use of nature imagery provides both resitances and potentialities to be revealed in her Brazilian poetry. Grace Nichols begins from a discontinuity in her view of Caribbean landscape and culture where a touristic colonizing industry frames even gendered bodies. These two poets explore the dialogue between external of the female human being, in a body of work through which such dialogues and conflicts can be poetically resisted and celebrated.

William Wordsworth and Women Poets

Despite his early interest in Helen Maria Williams and Charlotte Smith, Wordsworth is little remembered for any ongoing interest in British women poets. However, in 1829 he inquired about assisting with a possible second edition of Rev. Alexander Dyce's 1825 Specimens of British Poetesses. At about the same time, writing to Dionysius Lardner about a contributing an essay to Lardner's Cyclopaedia of Eminent Men, he suggested that he might prepare “an Account of the Deceased Poetesses of Great Britain – with an Estimate of their Works.” Both these plans, however, seem to have involved primarily poets of the eighteenth century. Still, throughout his later years Wordsworth took an active interest in several contemporary women poets, including Felicia Hemans, and attempted to promote the work of several lesser-known poets of his acquaintance. His interaction with these poets and their work reveals the extent to which his era's gendered attitudes colored both his advice and his cautious encouragement.

“Continental Drift”: Translation and Kimiko Hahn’s Transcultural Poetry

In the context of the expanding discourse of transnational Asian American Studies, this essay studies Kimiko Hahn, particularly her engagement with East Asian traditions in her poetry, and shows how her work exemplifies a transcultural Asian American literature that requires reading beyond the domestic boundaries of the United States. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's and Gayatri Spivak’s translation studies, it examines how Hahn critiques the assimilationist representation of Asian women in translations of Asian texts such as Arthur Waley’s version of Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji. It then reads how, based on her thoughts about literary translation, Hahn experiments with creative practices of “translation,” including a retranslation of Ezra Pound’s Chinese images and untranslation of zuihitsu. Rewriting Ezra Pound’s Chinese images, Hahn reconstructs women’s voice in ancient Chinese writings. Undoing the simplistic interpretation of the classical Japanese form zuihitsu, her restorative untranslation of the form makes connections between the discursive agency of ancient Asian women writers and contemporary women poets. Thus, Hahn’s translational writing reveals a poetics of “continental drift,” a poetics that calls attention to the necessity of reading Asian American literature in transnational and transcultural contexts.

Notes on Contributors

Linda Kinnahan is Professor of English at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. She is the author of “Poetics of the Feminine: Literary Tradition and Authority in William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, Denise Levertov, and Kathleen Fraser” (Cambridge UP 1994) and “Lyric Interventions: Feminism, Experimental Poetry, and Contemporary Discourse”(Iowa UP 2004). She has published numerous articles on modernist and contemporary poetry in North America and Britain, including work on Williams, Erica Hunt, Kathleen Fraser, Barbara Guest, Carol Ann Duffy, Denise Riley, Wendy Mulford, Geraldine Monk, and John Mathias. Recent essays include treatments of the lyric subject in British contemporary women poets, such as Jackie Kay, Grace Nichols, and Gillian Clarke, and a historical consideration of linguistically innovative poetry by British women, moving from Veronica Forrest-Thomson (in the 1960s) to a present-day generation that includes such poets as Caroline Bergvall. Kinnahan’s current book project, “Modernism and the Gendering of Economics,” argues the...

Funny grrrls: Humor and contemporary women poets

AbstractAs humorists, women poets have a spotty history. Sure, there is comedy in the work of Gertrude Stein and in the darkly sarcastic poems of Dorothy Parker, but humor is hardly as prevalent as it is in the works of male poets, who have a rich history of comic poetry dating back to Chaucer and leading up to Philip Larkin, John Ashbery, Billy Collins, and others. Rather than make comparisons, however, I explore women poets on their own terms, paying particular attention to the way contemporary women poets in America use humor in their work. I outline four modes (thematic, tonal, imagistic, and syntactical), then examine why women use humor—to what ends? Ultimately, I argue that humor is disruption, a way to assert authority, and often a means by which women poets examine sexual and social mores.

ISMENE AT THE CROSSROADS: GENDER AND POETIC INFLUENCE

ABSTRACTThis essay departs from Harold Bloom's male‐oriented theorisation of poetic influence as the ‘battle between strong equals, […] Laius and Oedipus at the crossroads’ (The Anxiety of Influence, 1973) to proceed both to a generalised consideration of the position of the woman poet vis‐à‐vis the male‐authored poetic tradition and, further, to more specific observations of relations of poetic influence in evidence in the work of contemporary women poets in German. I first propose a theory of the historical woman poet via an interpretation of the figure of Antigone, then, turning to her sister Ismene as the figuration of the contemporary woman poet, analyse traces of poetic influence in works by Anne Duden, Barbara Köhler, Elke Erb, and Ulrike Draesner.

Echoing song: contemporary Korean women poets

Echoing song: contemporary Korean women poets