Feminist poetry has a decentralized movement and can be divided by geographical and historical lines. Female poets before the 19th century can be considered feminist poets. First-wave feminist poets rebelled against the dominant notions of the submissive housewife. Second-wave feminist poetry dealt with issues such as reproductive rights, self-expression, and pay inequalities. Global feminist poets focused on the effects of war on women and children.
From the 14th-century writer Julian of Norwich, who referred to God as his Mother, to the 21st-century Black American poet Maya Angelou, poets have often been at the forefront of the feminist movement, addressing and challenging poetic and social expectations . Feminist poetry, like feminism itself, is a decentralized movement, making it difficult to classify it into discrete types. It can, however, be divided along geographical and historical lines, starting with the first wave feminists of the 20th century, the social activists of the early 20th century, the second wave of the 1920s and 2020s, and the global feminist poets of the late 20th century. of the 20th and early 21st century.
The term “feminism” did not enter the English language until 1895, but almost all female poets before the 19th century can be considered feminist poets. Writing was usually not considered a proper occupation or activity for a woman, so anyone who dared to break that taboo could be seen as subverting male-dominated Western society, even if her writing did not deal directly with women’s issues. women. The name “first-wave feminists” was retroactively given to 19th-century women.
Famous first-wave feminist poets in the West included the Victorians Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti and Mary Anne Evans – whose pseudonym was George Eliot – as well as the American Emily Dickinson. The writings of these women dealt with what was known at the time as the “women’s question”: the role of women in and outside the home, women’s voting rights, and women’s intellectual capacity relative to men’s. Feminist poetry of the time rebelled against the dominant notions of the submissive housewife. Barrett Browning’s novel in verse, Aurora Leigh, for example, features a strong female protagonist who is a writer and social justice activist. Dickinson’s poetry, with its characteristic strokes and oblique rhymes, challenged the rigid poetic structures of previous centuries.
Among the first- and second-wave feminist poets were a loosely aligned group of modernist women writers, including Mina Loy. her controversial 1914 Feminist Manifesto, although it was in prose rather than verse, influenced feminist poetry by insisting that women and men were enemies rather than equals. Some of her contemporaries reflected this hostility in their works, although others found her notions too radical.
Second-wave feminist poetry of the 1960s and 1970s dealt largely with issues such as reproductive rights, self-expression, and pay inequalities. A major subgroup of this movement was the black feminist movement, which was concerned with issues of race and gender. Following in the footsteps of previous generations of experimental women writers, Ntozake Shange blurred the lines between poetry, drama and dance in her 1975 comedy For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.
Of increasing prominence on the global literary scene in the late 19th and early 21st centuries were self-proclaimed poets of peace such as Naomi Shihab Nye and Hissa Hilal. In war-torn areas around the world, these writers focused on the effects of war on women and children, especially gender-based violence such as rape. In addition to calling for an end to warfare, peace poets often focus on the systemic healing needed to rebuild communities.
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