Modern Women Sharing Their Voices through Poetry
Poetry has gained popularity for its versatility – epic poems have been traded for bitesize poems on the comfort of your own screen, resulting in poetry becoming more popular with teenagers and millennials.
Image Source: Instagram @rupikaur_
A movement within poetry began as women started to expose aspects of their lives which they were previously expected to keep secret like the struggles of womanhood and their sex lives.
Poems from female writers started gaining a following with Slyvia Plath’s collections before gaining more traction in the last five or so years. Young women between 13 to 24 are now the biggest consumers of poetry in the UK so it’s no wonder that women are taking over the poetry scene. The poetry scene is known for being dominated by dead white men such as Keats but now it is a much more diverse industry. “Publishers have noticed there is an appetite for the writing of women and that if they ignore that appetite, they are not going to sell as many books. Young women working in publishing can also see what is popular online and say: this has a market” says Susannah Herbert, director of the Forward Arts Foundation.
Just like seeing yourself in poetry and fiction can help relieve some of the negative emotions you might be experiencing, writing them can have the same effect. Poetry is an expressive outlet and is often used as a form of therapy. I have personally used poetry to replace journaling – describing how I am feeling in the moment to get it out of my head. Writing poetry requires us to be open and honest with ourselves about our emotions in general and towards certain events in our life. There’s a historical expectation that poetry has to use tools such as iambic pentameter and be crafted perfectly. This is not the case. At its core, poetry is about expressing emotions kept inside yourself. You don’t even need to share it with other people.
Poetry and Story Therapy: The Healing Power of Creative Expression (Writing for Therapy or Personal Development) by Geri Giebel Chavis is a must-read if you would like to know more about poetry as a form of therapy.
But for those who do share their works, here are some amazing and strong women who have shared their voices with the world.
Let’s start with a woman a lot of people have heard of, Rupi Kaur. She rose to fame quickly both online and in print. She started posting her poems on Instagram before, she self-published her own poetry collection complete with her very own illustrations – milk and honey.
This later got snatched up by a publisher with her latest collection being titled Home Body. She also produced and starred in her debut film, Rupi Kaur Live, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, in 2021.
Instagram and Tumblr became platforms to showcase poetry to the masses, often posting a verse or two from a longer piece. Both Rupi Kaur and Charly Cox started their poetry journey on social media to gain a dedicated following before publishing traditionally. Cox is published through HarperCollins whereas Rupi Kaur’s work has been published through Andrews McMeel and Simon Schuster for her latest collection. Charly Cox leapt into the list of top 10 bestselling poets in 2018 with her collection She Must Be Mad, her debut expressing about her journey from girlhood to womanhood – she also openly talks about mental health as a MQ Mental Health ambassador and as a poet. She has since released a second collection titled Validate Me.
Carol Ann Duffy – Poet Laureate. Two of her collections that stand out are Standing Female Nude and Feminine Gospels. Feminine Gospels is a favourite of mine as Duffy draws on the historical, the archetypal, the biblical and the fantastical to create various visions – and revisions – of female identity. Anon is a stand out poem in this collection, personally.
Amanda Gordon performing her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ at Joe Biden’s Presidential inauguration. The black poet and activist was selected as the very first American National Youth Poet Laureate back in 2017 when she was just 19 years old. You go girl!
Andrea Gibson. She publishes spoken word poetry on Button Poetry’s Youtube channel as well as in print with collections like Lord of the Butterflies. Her collection explores the themes of gender, romance, loss, and family. Button Poetry is an excellent platform to watch spoken word poetry without going to poetry slams in person.
Jenny Zhang – Zhang’s latest collection, My Baby First Birthday is a tender exploration of the way we fetishise womanhood and motherhood, the acceptance of pain and how women are reduced to their violations, traumas and body parts.
Olena Kalytiak Davis’ most recent collection is titled The Poem She Didn’t Write And Other Poems.
This collection, Davis addresses lost love, sexual violence, and the confrontations of aging. Her first collection, And Her Soul Out Of Nothing, won the Brittingham Prize (University of Wisconsin Press) published in 1997 is an expression of the spirit which defines the very essence of our beings.
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