Feminist poetry is inspired by, promotes, or elaborates on feminist principles and ideas. It might be written with the conscious aim of expressing feminist principles, although sometimes it is identified as feminist by critics in a later era. Some writers are thought to express feminist ideas even if the writer was not an active member of the political movement during their era. Many feminist movements, however, have embraced poetry as a vehicle for communicating with public audiences through anthologies, poetry collections, and public readings.
Formally, feminist poetry often seeks to challenge assumptions about language and meaning. It usually foregrounds women's experiences as valid and worthy of attention, and it also highlights the lived experiences of minorities and other less privileged subjects. Sometimes feminist poems seek to embody specific women's experiences, and they are often intersectional registering specific forms of oppression depending on identities related to race, sexuality, gender presentation, disability, or immigration status. This has led to feminist writing journals like So To Speak providing a statement of intention to publish the work of women and nonbinary people in particular.
Kim Whitehead states that feminist poetry has "no identifiable birth date," but there are a few key figures identified as early proponents of feminist ideas, and who convey their politics through poetry. The title of first feminist poet is often given to Sappho, at least in part because she seems to write about female homosexuality in Ancient Greece, a culture and time when lesbian sexuality was usually ignored or erased.
Feminist poetry in Asia
Feminist aspects of Sanskrit writing
The beginning of works categorised as literature in India began with the Sanskrit term kāvya, a discourse separate from science or from the purely oral, and specific literary style that included works thought to contain a kind of soulfulness. In this early period, men were often posed as poets, and women as a kind of muse, as in the tenth century explanation for the origins of Indian literary culture: Poem Man's wife ("Poetics") chases him across South Asia creating varying kinds of literature across the region. Poetry was certainly an important part of political cultural life in the Sanskrit cosmopolis, and some women contributed; for example the poet Rajasekhara tells of women in different regions who entertain with songs.
The early civilisation of Khmer country in modern-day Cambodia cultivated a literature in Sanskrit, and diverged from its neighbours in creating a strain of poetry from the fifth century to the 13th century in which women were a source of praise and admiration. Take for example the Mebon Inscription of Rājendravarman, which features eulogies for specific women of note, and which is, according to Sheldon I. Pollock, "without obvious parallel in South Asia," and may be related to "specific kinship structures in the region".
Nineteenth-century feminist poets in India
Early anglophone women poets in India blended native traditions and literary models from Europe. Amongst these early feminists, the Dutt Sisters - Toru Dutt (1856–1877) and Aru Dutt (1854–1874) stand out, and are sometimes compared to the Brontë Sisters in England. The Dutt sisters came from a family of poets, including their father Govind Chandra Dutt, and their access to education was unprecedented. The mother of the family Kshetramoni Mitter Dutt along with all three children - Toru, Aru, and their brother Abju Dutt, had received an education in English, and to some extent, in the Bengali language. The family had a reformist bent, and some members had converted to Christianity. Both sisters visited England in the 1870s, and attended the higher lectures for women at Cambridge University. Toru Dutt's poetry in particular has been labelled extraordinary, because her writing "created a new idiom in Indian English verse."
Spanning the turn from the 19th to 20th century, Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) represents a figure for whom politics and poetry are intertwined. Like the Dutt Sisters, Naidu was allowed access to all the educational resources she desired, and she passed the Madras University matriculation examination at age 12. She came from a large and free-thinking family. Her father, Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, was a well-regarded doctor, known for his educational reforms, and her mother, Barada Sundari Devi, was educated at a Brahmo school. Naidu had seven siblings all of whom made contribution to Indian life, for example her brother Virendranath Chattopadhyay was an Indian revolutionary. Naidu studied at Girton College, Cambridge, which brought her into contact with writers of the day, including Arthur Symons, and W.B. Yeats. Ultimately, Naidu's unconventional upbringing and education were catalysts for her intellectual powers, since as she writes in her roman à clef, Sulani: "Unlike the girls of her own nation, she had been brought up in an atmosphere of large un-convention and culture and absolute freedom of thought and action." After her marriage to Govindarajulu Naidu - controversial because of his age and class - Naidu began publishing poetry to international acclaim, and in parallel with this literary art, she maintained her nationalist efforts, eventually becoming the first Indian woman to serve as president of the Indian National Congress.
Post-1960s feminist poetry
Anthologies were an important part of foregrounding women's writing in volumes like Eunice De Souza's Nine Indian Women Poets (1997).
Feminist poetry in Central America and the Caribbean
The Feminist Legacy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
During the Latin American colonial period, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (est 1651–1695) was a poet, dramatist, and nun. Exceptionally talented and intelligent, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz chose to spend most of her life in the Convent of the Order of St. Jérôme, and her response to a critical Bishop, Respuesta a Sor Filotea, is hailed as one of the first feminist manifestos. Not only did Sor Juana have to deal with the criticisms of men of her era, but she also faced the Spanish perception of literature from the colonies as second-rate. Sor Juana's poems challenge the assumptions of men about women, for example in 'You Foolish Men.'
What kind of mind is odder
than his who mists
a mirror and then complains
that it's not clear.The fact that she chooses to avoid a heteronormative life with marriage and children is often held up as a feminist choice, and she represents the possibility to be a woman who 'pursues knowledge and procreates only through art and not through a genetic legacy.'
Post-1960s feminist poetry in Central America and the Caribbean
Anthologies of women's writing in the 1980s foregrounded the importance of women poets in the Caribbean, for example in M.J. Fenwick's Sisters of Caliban (1996) described as "a gendered and racialized position of resistance".
Feminist poetry in North America
Early feminist poets in North America
Though they lived in an era before an organised feminist movement, certain American poets have been lauded by feminist literary criticism as early examples of feminist writers. Feminist poetry in the United States is often thought of as beginning with Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), the first poet of the New World. There were also, however, native poetic traditions before colonialism, which continue to the present day, and represent an important strand of American poetry. Native traditional verse has included "lyrics, chants, anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs, and legends." While it is difficult to ascertain from these oral traditions whether the authors of early texts were male or female, precolonial native poetry certainly addresses issues relevant to women in a sensitive and positive way, for example the Seminole poem, 'Song for Bringing a Child Into the World.' In fact, native poetry is a separate but relevant tradition in the United States; as poet Joy Harjo comments, "The literature of the aboriginal people of North America defines America. It is not exotic." In the context of Canada, Anne Marie Dalton argues that at least some indigenous communities in North America (though not all) have lived by practicing ecofeminism with regard to women's roles, and the sustainability of the land.
When colonialism did arrive, Anne Bradstreet was one of the first poets to win acclaim, and many of her poems are thought to have feminist themes. The mother of eight children, Bradstreet sometimes found herself in conflict with her domestic circumstances and her role as a Puritan woman. Feminist literary criticism defined Bradstreet in retrospect as a "protofeminist," because of her "gender awareness," and her treatment of domestic concerns of importance in women's lives. Poet Alicia Ostriker describes Bradstreet's style as "a combination of rebellion and submission," a pattern that Ostriker also sees in poets to come like Phyllis Wheatley and Emily Dickinson.
Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) was brought to the United States from Africa as a slave, and sold to the Wheatley family of Boston in 1771. A prodigy as a child, Wheatley was the first black person to publish a book of poems in the American colony, and though her poems are sometimes thought of as expressing "meek submission", she is also what Camille Dungy describes as "a foremother", and a role model for black women poets as "part of the fabric" of American poetry. Involved in the abolitionist movement, Wheatley became "a spokeswoman for the cause of American independence and the abolition of slavery".
Nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) is often thought of as feminist, though she never wrote for public audiences. Not necessarily recognized in her own lifetime, Dickinson offers powerful female speakers. Engaging with male writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson or William Wordsworth, her work is praised for developing "others ways of representing the position of a female speaking subject" in particular romantic and psychological dynamics. See for example the declaration of desire and longing in 'Wild nights - Wild nights!.' In the 1970s, feminist literary criticism articulated Dickinson's feminism through groundbreaking studies by Margaret Homans, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and Suzanne Juhasz. Critics point in particular to Dickinson's expression of anger at women's confinement, to her re-gendering of external and internal realities, to her use of feminist motifs, and to her articulation of her particular position in Puritan, patriarchal culture. Dickinson also proves that confinement to domestic life does not dictate an inability to create great poetry. As the poet Adrienne Rich writes, "Probably no poet ever lived so much and so purposefully in one house; even, in one room."
Post-1900s North American feminist poets
Feminist poets of the early twentieth century harnessed the new opportunities and rights which came as a result of coeducational resources now afforded to women. Cristianne Miller goes so far as to say that 'In no period before and rarely since have women poets had greater success and influence than in the first half of the twentieth century in the United States.'
Living through the turn of the century was Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson(1875–1935), a poet often thought of in relation to her marriage to Paul Dunbar. Dunbar-Nelson, however, is an accomplished writer in her own right, praised by poet Camille Dungy for breaking out of writing only about "black women's things," instead addressing "the theater and war of life." Born in New Orleans, Dubar-Nelson's family had a heritage of African American, Anglo, Native American, and Creole roots. Camille Dungy suggests that bringing black women writers like Dunbar-Nelson into the feminist canon alongside Bradstreet and Dickinson is of great importance in rediscovering literary foremothers for black women writers.