Authors :

Some Women Poets

Elizabeth Jennings's Collected Poems, 1986, [828 JEN] is in fact a generous selection based on her many collections, of which I prefer the earlier ones:

Poems, 1953; A Way of Looking, 1955; A Sense of the World, 1958; A Song for a Birth or a Death, 1961; Recoveries, 1964; The Mind has Mountains, 1966; The Animals' Arrival, 1969; Lucidities, 1970; Relationships, 1972; Growing Points, 1975; Consequently I Rejoice, 1977; Moments of Grace, 1980; Celebrations and Elegies, 1982; Extending the Territory, 1985; Tributes, 1989; Times and Seasons, 1992; Familiar Spirits, 1994.

She has translated The Sonnets of Michelangelo, 1961 [854 MIC]. Her prose has not been very successful. Every Changing Shape, 1961, is a general book about poetry and was followed by Frost, 1964, a study of the American poet. See also Christianity and Poetry, 1965, and Seven Men of Vision [809.104 JEN], 1976. Elizabeth Jennings edited The Batsford Book of Religious Verse, 1981.

As a British woman poet of the post-war period she may be compared with two Americans whose work has a British context: Sylvia Plath (Collected Poems, ed. Ted Hughes, 1981 [815 PLA]) and Anne Stevenson (Collected Poems, 1996 [ 828 STE - we have other individual volumes at this shelf-mark]). Consider also the work of Wendy Cope (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, 1986, The River Girl, 1991, Serious Concerns, 1992 [828 COP]).

A more successful poet than Jennings or Cope is Patricia Beer, Collected Poems, 1988 [828 BEE]. In Ireland, the work of Eavan Boland is outstanding: see her Collected Poems, 1996, and the associated book of prose essays, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman Poet in Our Time, 1995. The claim is made often that the poetry of Medbh McGuckian is a specifically feminine poetry; it is certainly elusive and difficult. The poetry of the Anglo-Welsh Gillian Clarke is more accessible.

There is no satisfactory account of any of these poets apart from some of the many essays and books on Sylvia Plath. On Anne Stevenson, see Chris McCully, 'Better Fame: The Poetry of Anne Stevenson', P.N.Review 19.5, May-June 1993. On Eavan Boland, see John Foy, 'Paroling Sweet Euphony', Parnassus, 22.1-2, 1997, 223-46 [photocopy in library]. A good anthology of recent women's poetry in English is Carol Rumens (ed.), Making for the Open: Post-Feminist Poetry, 1985, revised 1987 [808.81 MAK]. See also Linda France, ed., Sixty Women Poets, 1993.

Classmarks for Royal Holloway library are given in square brackets. To check our holdings of these books, and to reserve items on short loan, log into ALEPH here.

Follow this link to LION (Literature On-Line) where Eaven Boland is currently writer-in-residence, for the opportunity to participate in masterclasses and discussion groups.

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