Provisional Pleasures: The Challenge of Contemporary Experimental Women Poets (original) (raw)
This article is an introduction to contemporary experimental poetry by women. It considers the reasons for the resistance to such work in this country. It refutes arguments made against it, for example that avant-garde writing is elitist or not related to women's experience. It further suggests why this writing, in particular in its complex engagement with issues of language, subjectivity and gender, should in fact be of great interest to the woman/feminist reader. In particular, it suggests parallels between the concerns of this work and those of feminist poststructuralism. Above all, throughout the piece, it attempts to introduce the ‘provisional pleasures’ of the contemporary avant-garde to the reader, introducing, quoting and providing multiple interpretations of the work of several diverse writers in this tradition. It aims to provide a sense of the linguistic and formal innovations of these writings, alongside a sense of their relevance to questions of female subjectivity ...
Related papers
A Feminist Aesthetics: Patricidal Poetic Desire across Selected Writings
Vivek Dwivedi (ed.), The Shifting Role of Women: From Chores to Cores. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing., 2023
A feminist [literary] aesthetics, although is not a distinctive field of knowledge or epistemology, yet it has come to be known as such, in use to identify a distinct set of perspectives to read texts and raise certain questions about theories and assumptions on representations of women in literature, art, and other audio-visual media using aesthetic categories. Therefore, feminist scholars actively engaged in aesthetic interpretations investigate how the gendered representation of women in aesthetic objects leaves a mark on the conceptualizations on literature, art, aesthetic judgements, artists and their works. The other facet of feminist scholarship is aesthetic interpretation of works by women, especially since in the mainstream patriarchal academia there are fears of male appropriation of feminist works, the interpretations are to be jealously guarded.
Contemporary Women's Writing, 2015
Until recently women's position on the British innovative poetry scene has been difficult, to say the least, often risking being "doubly excluded," as an anonymous writer is quoted in the introduction to Maggie O'Sullivan's crucial 1996 anthology Out of Everywhere. Thankfully, women's experimental writing now seems to be in a healthier state than ever, although the refusal of key figures Geraldine Monk and Maggie O'Sullivan to be included in Carrie Etter's 2010 anthology, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, reveals the need to be cautious about the gender label. As Monk and O'Sullivan declared as far back as 1984: "The most effective chance any woman has of dismantling the fallacy of male creative supremacy is simply by writing poetry of a kind which is liberating by the breadth of its range and innovation. .. to exploit and realise the full potential and importance of language." This article reflects on the risks entailed by identifying poets as "women" poets, in its examination of the work of three younger British writers working in the innovative "tradition": Holly Pester, SL Mendoza, and Sophie Robinson. The article uses a theoretical approach adapted from David Kennedy and Christine Kennedy's recent study Women's Experimental Poetry in Britain 1970-2010 (2013), proposing a modification of their key terms voicing and unvoicing to revoicing. The innovative poetry scene in the United Kingdom is a more vibrant and accessible place for women writers than ever before. By innovative poetry, I refer to the poetic writings that have appeared in Britain and Ireland under a host of
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.