Poetry an' stuff

i often wonder about gender and writing. i look through my own collection of books, and notice that so many of the writers i hold most dear are male. i wonder if this is some sort of internalised mysogny i am not entirely aware of.

article: "do women write female poetry?

list: ruth padel's top 10 female poets

at the moment, i'm starting to collect more 20th century woman poets. anne sexton, adrienne rich, alice oswald ... it's a journey. a past lover introduced me to larkin, and i fell in love with him. and now, this world, this connected passion for words and how together they move in and out of each other is taking me back.



list : top ten books on shelley

i've had a passion for the romantics since my mid teens - shelley was the first. i have to stutteringly confess that this interest came out of reading an article online about the gothic subculture, and linking 'goffics' to a love of the romantics. so i was curious, and raided the shelves at my fundimentalist christian school library. there was a copy of 'the collected works of percy bysshe shelley,' thin plastic cover over the red binding. paperback, flimsy. i consumed devoured explored implored shelley to show me his magic, and it unfolded around me, little me, never really... getting... poetry before this point. i progressed into byron, down into ee cummings (drawn first for his dislike of capitals and use of puntuation...)

but, but. the poets have been mostly male. my favourite writers - kawabata, murakami, winterson, atwood, yes, roughly even. but female poets, i've never really taken to.

so now, i will. i'm working on it. i feel... i feel sad sometimes that all this, these interests of mine, i feel like i step into them alone. i like sharing intellectual discoveries, writers, poets, artists, creativity, i like seeing it grow out and over and into and out of me, and others, i like that give and take which comes when you give a writer to someone else - and right now, i feel as though i have no one who gives a fig for the stuff i read and enjoy. so, the solitary journey? it's not without its charms, and i think, it too will give back a lot to me.