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Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

Or female poets of the past 50 years, I don't need anything too recent. I'm after recs. Who are your favorites? Please post poems here!

Not so much looking for things like Warsan Shire/other instagram-aesthetic folks, I'm more of a Mary Oliver/Marilyn Nelson/Pat Parker/Natasha Oladokun/Jane Hirshfield kind of person. Non-western/non-white/LGBT poets a bonus!

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

Louise Gluck?


AN ADVENTURE
1.
It came to me one night as I was falling asleep
that I had finished with those amorous adventures
to which I had long been a slave. Finished with love?
my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries
awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked
to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed—
surely this counted for something?

2.
The next night brought the same thought,
this time concerning poetry, and in the nights that followed
various other passions and sensations were, in the same way,
set aside forever, and each night my heart
protested its future, like a small child being deprived of a favorite toy.
But these farewells, I said, are the way of things.
And once more I alluded to the vast territory
opening to us with each valediction. And with that phrase I became
a glorious knight riding into the setting sun, and my heart
became the steed underneath me.

3.
I was, you will understand, entering the kingdom of death,
though why this landscape was so conventional
I could not say. Here, too, the days were very long
while the years were very short. The sun sank over the far mountain.
The stars shone, the moon waxed and waned. Soon
faces from the past appeared to me:
my mother and father, my infant sister; they had not, it seemed,
finished what they had to say, though now
I could hear them because my heart was still.

4.
At this point, I attained the precipice
but the trail did not, I saw, descend on the other side;
rather, having flattened out, it continued at this altitude
as far as the eye could see, though gradually
the mountain that supported it completely dissolved
so that I found myself riding steadily through the air—
All around, the dead were cheering me on, the joy of finding them obliterated
by the task of responding to them—

5.
As we had all been flesh together,
now we were mist.
As we had been before objects with shadows,
now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals.
Neigh, neigh, said my heart,
or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know.

6.
Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun
contentedly rising, the feather comforter
mounded in white drifts over my lower body.
You had been with me—
there was a dent in the second pillowcase.
We had escaped from death—
or was this the view from the precipice?


U.A. Fanthorpe?

THE FORTUNE-TELLER'S FUNERAL

The seeing has been my life. Handed down
Like silver. No use here, in Farnborough,
Where they know my proper name. But Easter-time
Sees me off on my way to Margate.
A good place to mystify. Westgate sometimes.
Or Broadstairs. All gainful addresses.

Vardo, curtains, crystal ball—
They draw the people. I’d do better in the sun,
In my big chair, holding damp gorgio hands,
Say just as true a future. But they need hocus-pocus,
The lamp, reflections, shadows, me in pearlies,
Queen Gypsy Rose Lee on the posters.

I find the future. They giggle and stare,
Helpless at belief. I muzzle what I know:
How many young women will marry twice,
How many lads die young, in sand or air.
I speak riddles: Many will love you.
Beware of high places, of fire and steel.
They can unravel it if they like.

My own death’s different. I’ve planned it.
Picked my undertaker, Mister Owen,
Who did so well by Levi. The procession,
He’ll see to it: six jet horses
(My Levi’s pals should find a proper match),
Outrider, coachman, flowers and flowers and flowers,
great wreath in the shape of my special chair,
Romanies walking, three hundred or so,
Twenty thousand, I say, twenty thousand
Some in mourning, some not

Black triangles, the gypsy Z
They are marched through. The see-saw rattle
Of goods trains in the night.
Whose death is this? I will not see it.
What country’s this? A world turned upside down.
I refuse the seeing.

The mourners go
From Willow Walk to Crofton Road,
by the park to Farborough Common.
Traffic jams. The Deputy Mayor
of Margate, he’ll be there to show respect.
A proper Romany funeral. Like an old queen’s.
The ash tree, I say, the birch tree.
Such things need to be thought about before.
And the Devouring.
I refuse the seeing.

My death, I know it well:
The April day in nineteen thirty-three; the weather, rainy,
And cold; the missel-thrush singing all day
By the vardo, till I die. I am Urania,
Friend of the skies, the one who knows the future.

I will not hear the gypsies playing in the lager.
I will not hear it when the music stops.

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

We lay in shade diaphanous
And spoke the light that burns in us

As in the glooming’s net I caught her,
She shimmered like reflected water!

Romantic and emphatic moods
Are not for her whom life eludes…

Its vulgar tinsel round her fold?
She’d rather shudder with the cold,

Attend just this elusive hour,
A show in a shadow bower,

A moving imagery so fine,
It must have been her soul near mine

And do we blended and possessed
Each in each the phantom guest,

Inseparate, we scarcely met;
Yet other love-nights we forget!


by natalie clifford barney, lesbian poet

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

here's some recs:
sor juana inés de la cruz: yes, she's a nun from colonial mexico, but she did write love poems for her female patrons and enough of the literature on her indicates she might have been into women

renée vivien: another lesbian poet but one from around the turn of the 20th century this time who was heavily involved in parisian lesbian circles

djuna barnes: also involved in the parisian lesbian circles, though her poems tended to be less macabre and depressing than vivien's work

audre lorde: black lesbian feminist poet who's probably better known these days for her feminism than her poems but they're no less interesting

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

Well, they did say contemporary, or I'd have recced more people :D I do like Audre Lorde's poetry.

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

Carol Ann Duffy is a lesbian poet and the UK's current Poet Laureate; she's also both the first female and the first openly gay Poet Laureate. Her first official poem as Poet Laureate was a very angry one about politics, which was published during the UK expenses scandal but tbh is pretty eternally relevant:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/12/politics-carol-ann-duffy-poem

The current Scottish Makar (the Scottish version of Poet Laureate) is Jackie Kay, a Scottish-Nigerian lesbian poet (and also, funnily enough, a former partner of Duffy's; they were together for 15 years). I like her poem Her:
https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/her

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

"Last Post" is my favorite Duffy poem ;__;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8175000/8175790.stm

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Oh, wow, I hadn't actually read that one before. It's devastating.

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

SA And actually, I'm going to add a link to another Jackie Kay poem, Threshold, because I'd forgotten how good this was:

Video of her reading it at the Scottish Parliament
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmLxjUNVtQU

In text form here
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/threshold

/might have slightly fallen down a YouTube poetry rabbit hole, lol

Re: Contemporary female poets

[(Anonymous)]

I found ‘Stuffed’ by her in a textbook when I was in high school, and not having any context for it I assumed it was meant to be a poem about kinky f/f desire. It was kind of a revalation for my younger self and though I’ve read more of her poetry since then, I have a hard time divorcing that one from the context I gave to it back then.