We Publish Women – Women Poets in the Information Age
Publication, in all areas of literature, is an important measure for success in the field, and yet is a door that has only recently creaked open to allow diverse voices. Even ruth weiss, despite writing and performing with the best of the Beat Generation, found that the doors of poetry publishing were not only closed to poets like her, but were being actively and loudly slammed shut.
“WE DON’T PUBLISH WOMEN”
Women poets weren’t marketable, especially not to a culture that desired women as domestic guardians rather than societal mouthpieces. Some might argue that women are still ignored by publishing powerhouses in favor of more palatable works, those that have a masculine name to attach to the text.
However, the rise of the internet and the movement away from more traditional forms of literature offers opportunity to writers that disrupt the traditional, primarily white, older male community that has dominated publishing for so long. Not only has the medium of the written word shifted from printed to plugged-in, but the ease at which poetry is accessed means the words of these female poets stoke the flames of others like them, whose fires might have died at the repeated dousing by traditional publishers. The unpublishable become the social-media self-published.
Susannah Herbert, director of the Forward Arts Foundation, says that the greater accessibility opens the market to younger female voices: “For young women who don’t necessarily feel they’ve got a massive right to the microphone, poetry offers a space to write and express yourself without crashing into an authority. Then other young women see something of themselves in those poems.”
Even as if these online poetesses transition back into print media, it’s easier now for women to sidestep the blockades built by traditional publishers, using inexpensive software and personal computers to distribute their work and establish a reputation for themselves. Published poetry offers possibility to women poets (a voice, a readership, a public profile, and a place within a poetic community), and the ease of modern self-publishing allows them to step successfully through a field rife with exploitative editorial practices (publishing without consent, intrusive framing of poems).
With this widening of the poetical sphere, the literary landscape has also transformed, exposing aspects of women’s lives that were hushed and shameful less than a century ago. While women have written about their own forbidden bodies, desires, and connections for literal millennia, modern female poets have adopted these themes from their literary ancestors and adapted them for a more public viewing, away from the censorship of male publishers.
ruth weiss’ success came even in the face of prejudice, paving the way for many other women coming up behind her and using her art to galvanize creative minds. Her works’ existence act as resistance and bode well for the voices of the unheard. As for what the world of poetry holds for women of the twenty-first century, we can only wait and see.
