She Is Fierce: Collecting Women’s Poetry

It’s an exciting time for poetry. Slams and performances are attracting huge audiences; book sales are booming; some of today’s biggest online superstars are poets. Women are at the forefront of this movement: winning prizes, headlining festivals, topping bestseller lists and connecting with thousands of readers in digital spaces. It has not, however, always been so.

In 2017, I wanted to read an anthology of poems by women that would cover all eras from the ancient world to today. I wanted to hear from different women, in different places and positions. It dawned on me that nothing of this kind had been published for decades.

Anthologies have traditionally been dominated by male voices, seasoned with a mere scattering of women – usually, the same few names. I counted more poems by men called William than by women in several of the anthologies on my own shelves. The renowned and seminal Penguin Poetry of the Thirties anthology included just one female writer, and this in a decade in which Vita Sackville-West, Kathleen Raine and Edith Sitwell were working. However, women weren’t exactly absent. Wondered at and worshipped by male poets, they danced through and dominated those pages. I started reading, and resolved to compile the anthology I wanted to read myself.

Women’s songs have always formed a part of oral traditions, though these were often not recorded. Female poets were active in the ancient world but, for the most part, their work was not preserved and some – like Sappho’s – was edited or suppressed later. Throughout history and into our own times, women have faced educational, religious and social limitations on their freedom both to write and – especially – to publish. During most eras, it was almost exclusively aristocratic women who had the leisure, learning and liberty to become known as poets.

For many centuries it was considered shocking for women to lift their eyes from the housework and seek employment outside the home, and especially for them to trespass in the ‘male’ arena of literature. Women writers were condemned, or mocked. Parents worried in case potential husbands were put off by their bookish daughters. For centuries afterwards, it has been hard for women – especially if they are also mothers – to find time to work, and to get that work taken seriously. We will never know how many women wrote but didn’t dare publish, or exactly how many published under pseudonyms (often men’s names), as George Eliot and the Brontë sisters felt that they must.

Women have written many wonderful poems about the natural world but I discovered fewer than I had expected, especially from earlier times. There have certainly been periods in history when it must have been difficult and unusual for women to tramp around the countryside as men have always done: alone, wearing sensible shoes and seeking inspiration in wild and free places. I also had to wonder whether the many gorgeous moonlit poems I discovered existed because those were the only moments the poet could snatch for herself, as the family lay sleeping.

It was often felt that women writers should stick to certain subjects – family, friendship, dutiful religion and the prettier corners of nature – and they have written beautifully and powerfully about all these. However, in the poems I gathered and elsewhere, female poets consider every possible subject: science and our magnificent universe; politics and protest; bodies and belief; myths and mental health; war and displacement.

I also researched brief biographies of the poets to include in She is Fierce – and what women they were, and are! From suffragettes and freed slaves to schoolgirls, I was fascinated to uncover their stories, many of which are little known. Some of these women faced poverty, war, physical and mental illness, oppressive societies and cruelty, but they spun from their experiences wonderful poetry that will speak to readers for generations to come.

Women have always written protest poetry. Female poets campaigned in verse for equality in marriage and in society, fighting with words – and in the case of many of these poets, brave action – against slavery, segregation and sexism among other evils. We cannot assume that the writers of the past would recognise or fully embrace our own beliefs, but for many the act of publishing poetry was a rebellion in itself. It is a woman – Emma Lazarus – whose words grace the Statue of Liberty, and demonstrate the readiness of female writers to defend the downtrodden.

I read about the often ignored contribution of women to the abolition of slavery and the fight for civil rights, including extraordinary writers such as the freed slave Sojourner Truth and the activist Frances W Harper. Only a handful of women are generally included in war poetry anthologies, but they have written poems on war too, and bitter protests against gender inequality that date back many hundreds of years.

It is absolutely thrilling helping to rescue from relative obscurity some of the great female writers of the past as well as celebrating the amazing new writers publishing today: fierce and fantastic writers all.

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Ana studied English Literature at the University of Sheffield and gained a BA and MA before starting a career in publishing. She has worked in publicity in publishing for over fifteen years, both in-house for Random House, Kyle Books, Michael O’Mara Books and Quercus and on a freelance basis. She has worked on fiction, non-fiction, humour, science, history, cookery, gardening, health, children’s and celebrity titles and many of her campaigns have helped propel books into the bestseller lists.
Ana has contributed articles to publications including Writers’ Market UK, The Book Lover’s Companion (Michael O’Mara, 2012) and to newspapers and magazines. She has appeared on national and regional radio talking about books, poetry and teenage diaries. Ana lives in Surrey with her husband, two daughters and two demanding cats.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnaBooks

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Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/She-Fierce-Brave-Beautiful-Poems/dp/1509899421

SHE IS FIERCE

feraA stunning gift book containing 150 bold, brave and beautiful poems by women – from classic, well loved poets to innovative and bold modern voices. From suffragettes to school girls, from spoken word superstars to civil rights activists, from aristocratic ladies to kitchen maids, these are voices that deserve to be heard.

Collected by anthologist Ana Sampson She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Womencontains an inclusive array of voices, from modern and contemporary poets. Immerse yourself in poems from Maya Angelou, Nikita Gill, Wendy Cope, Ysra Daley-Ward, Emily Bronte, Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock, Liz Berry, Jackie Kay, Hollie McNish, Imtiaz Dharker, Helen Dunmore, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Christina Rossetti, Margaret Atwood and Dorothy Parker, to name but a few!

Featuring short biographies of each poet, She is Fierce is a stunning collection and an essential addition to any bookshelf.

The anthology is divided into the following sections:
Roots and Growing Up
Friendship
Love
Nature
Freedom, Mindfulness and Joy
Fashion, society and body image
Protest, courage and resistance
Endings

 

Tags: featured, poetry

Category: On Writing