Wikipedia – Chris Murray

‘There are less Wikipedia articles on women poets than pornographic actresses’ James Gleick

April 30th, 2013

“There are less Wikipedia articles on women poets than pornographic actresses.”

The above quotation is derived from Wikipedia’s Women Problem written by James Gleick at the New York Review of Books made during this last week. It interests me as it is embedded in article about the sub-categorisation of American women novelists, an ongoing row about editorial habits that infect androcentric working environments. I have had some experience of these environments, which I consigned to their rightful place when I began blogging about poetry and poets.

Many discussions about resolving this issue have emerged online in recent days and none of them are fit to purpose. Imagine a scenario where a woman has spent some years writing about the American woman novelist, the woman poet, the woman editor or translator for Wikipedia – only to find that sleight of hand had consigned this work to some irrational sub-category based on an ephemeral and subjective desire to tidy-up ?

One can address the issue in a number of ways : subvert the categorisation, appoint editors to recategorise, or assert one’s independence and transcend the necessity of endless and pointless plea-bargaining on the subject of poetry and novels by women writers. I chose the latter route over five years ago and I am sticking to it in the face of reports from VIDA about the invisibility of women writers in the canon.There was the 100% men issue of The New Yorker (April 29th 2013).

There is a turbulence inherent in unearthing a viewpoint that asserts that there is a difficulty in our value system that relegates women’s views on every subject to the amateurs section including but not limited to issues of rape, torture, birthing (or not). There are even awards to those men who put words into the mouths of women historical figures.

The muse has become a tattered prostitute framed by the self-importance of the male writer. I wouldn’t go to the bother of redressing this imbalance via traditional publication routes.

Dear Friends: Grow Your Own Index

'Life or Theatre ?' Charlotte Salomon

An Index Of Women Poets

A

B

C

D

F

G

H

I

Philo Ikonya

J

Julian of Norwich

L

M Mc/Mac

N

O and O’

P

Sylvia Plath

R

S

T

U

V

Ruth Vanita

W

Z

Antonella Zagaroli

Irish Women Poets on SoundCloud

Poems by Doris Lessing.

October 29th, 2011

Fable

When I look back I seem to remember singing.
Yet it was always silent in that long warm room.

Impenetrable, those walls, we thought,
Dark with ancient shields. The light
Shone on the head of a girl or young limbs
Spread carelessly. And the low voices
Rose in the silence and were lost as in water.

Yet, for all it was quiet and warm as a hand,
If one of us drew the curtains
A threaded rain blew carelessly outside.
Sometimes a wind crept, swaying the flames,
And set shadows crouching on the walls,
Or a wolf howled in the wide night outside,
And feeling our flesh chilled we drew together.

But for a while the dance went on –
That is how it seems to me now:
Slow forms moving calm through
Pools of light like gold net on the floor.
It might have gone on, dream-like, for ever.

But between one year and the next – a new wind blew ?
The rain rotted the walls at last ?
Wolves’ snouts came thrusting at the fallen beams ?

It is so long ago.
But sometimes I remember the curtained room
And hear the far-off youthful voices singing.

.

Fable is © Doris Lessing, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd, London, on behalf of Doris Lessing. Olivia Guest from Jonathan Clowes Ltd

Pictured are two books of published poetry by Nobel Laureate and writer Doris Lessing (1919-2013). I am intrigued by each of the books. I thought to add some information on the status of the books and their current locations, but information is quite scanty. Thus I will be blogging the process.

Fourteen Poems by Doris Lessing , published 1959 by Scorpion Press, is unavailable, although I have located a copy in a library in a university library in Dublin.

The Scorpion Press closed in the 1970s, according to this Wikipedia entry.

Some articles from the press were obtained by the McFarlin Library, Special Collections at the University of Tulsa. I am adding here the link.

The original link (Lessing’s Scorpion/ Northwood titles) details the names of the Fourteen Poems which were published in 1959,

Under a Low Cold Sky
Older Woman to Younger Man (1)
Older Woman to Younger Man (2)
Plea for the Hated Dead Woman
Bars
Dark Girl’s Song
New Man
Night-Talk
Song
Exiled
Oh Cherry Trees you are too white for my heart’
Fable
In Time of Dryness
Jealousy

McFarlin obtained Lessing’s correspondence in relation to the pamphlet: Lessing, Doris Correspondence in reference to Fourteen Poems.

.

The list of poems from The Inpopa Anthology 2002 are:

The Wolf People

In the Long Dark
The Misfit
As If They Had Always Known It
Cave Wolves
Something Speaks
The Sky-fire
The Ice Comes

Both sets of poems from Ms Lessing’s Opus are listed in her published works, I for one, am incredibly curious to read her poetic writing and have applied for more information to the special collections at the McFarlin Library at Tulsa University. I will update this post when I get more information about the poems.

I am adding here Lessing’s list of published works

.

Since it is Saturday and the day that I generally highlight the work of a woman writer, editor or translator. I thought to link to a story by Doris Lessing from the New Yorker Magazine, as a special treat:

.
Thanks to Alison Greenlee, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Tulsa, for information about the Scorpion Press archive.

‘Flaxman’ by Margaret Fuller.

March 5th, 2011

Flaxman

by Margaret Fuller.

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,-
A higher charm than modern culture won
With all the wealth of metaphysic won
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-coloured light flows from one sun;
Art, ‘neath its beams, a motley thread was spun;
The prism modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure, white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.

This poem comes from the wonderful Norton Anthology, The Making Of A Sonnet, Edited by Edward Hirsch and poet Eavan Boland, Norton, 2008. Information on Margaret Fuller’s feminism, journalism and poetry can be gotten from her Wikipedia page and online. In the context of discussions begun by VIDA on women reviewers,poets and literatry advocates, I thought it an excellent idea to place here a poem by the first full-time female book-reviewer in journalism. Calls have been made to explain the absences of women from the 2010 lists. I am adding in here the relevant links :

240px-FullerDaguerreotype — Daguerrotype of Margaret Fuller from Wikipedia.

‘In the Storm of Roses’ by Ingeborg Bachmann.

July 8th, 2010

In the Storm of Roses

Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.

Source: In the Storm of Roses (translator unknown) by Ingeborg Bachmann.