by Ana Sampson
heat is here.
Jan Dean (born 1950)
Jan runs workshops in schools, libraries and even cathedrals, encouraging people to write. She has published children’s fiction and poetry collections including the CLiPPA shortlisted Wallpapering the Cat. She says, ‘Writing poems is wonderfully strange – like playing lucky dip with a barrelful of tigers, raspberry jellies and machine parts.’ Her poem ‘Rosa Parks’ celebrates the civil rights activist who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in 1955, which made her a key inspiration to the movement.
Three Good Things / Rosa Parks are here and here.
Imtiaz Dharker (born 1954)
Imtiaz was born in Lahore but moved to Glasgow at the age of one. She calls herself a Scottish Muslim Calvinist, adopted by India and married into Wales. Also an artist, she illustrates her prize-winning poetry herself and has exhibited her drawings around the world. She is also a documentary maker and has produced films for Indian organizations working to combat homelessness and promote women’s rights and education.
How to Cut a Pomegranate / Flight Radar are here and here.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
Emily was from an upper-crust Massachusetts family and was apparently a sociable girl until something – scholars are divided about whether this might have been an unrequited love affair, or mental health struggles – led her to withdraw from the world. She retreated into the house, dressed all in white, and wrote almost 2,000 passionate poems which were discovered after her death. Some were neatly bound in little books, while others were scribbled on envelopes and the recipes she loved to cook. Only a handful were published before Emily’s death, and early editions ‘corrected’ her unusual punctuation. It wasn’t until 1955 that they appeared in print as she had written them, but she is now acknowledged to be one of history’s most important and best-loved poets.
There is No Frigate Like a Book / ‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers / Behind Me – dips Eternity are here, here and here.
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961)
In 1911 H.D. left her native America for a holiday and never returned. In England, she met the poet Ezra Pound – to whom she was briefly engaged – and he became her champion, admiring her poems for their ‘straight talk’. A leading member of the Imaginists, she wrote stripped-down free verse in contrast to the more flowery poetry that had come before. She suffered a breakdown after her marriage (to another poet, Richard Aldington) collapsed, her father died and her brother was killed in the First World War, and in the early 1930s she was psychoanalysed by Sigmund Freud himself in Vienna. To aid her recovery, H.D. moved to Corfu with her lover Annie Ellerman (who wrote novels under the name Bryher) and there saw visions of the Greek gods. She later wrote several feminist takes on ancient myths including the Trojan War.
The Moon in Your Hands is here.
Lady Dorothea Du Bois (1728–1774)
Dorothea’s father, the Earl of Anglesey, was evidently something of a cad. He declared his marriage to Dorothea’s mother invalid due to a previous entanglement, making his three daughters, including Dorothea, illegitimate. Dorothea’s mother pursued him through the courts but never saw a penny of the money he was ordered to pay her, and his estate passed to the son of his third wife. This sorry saga was told in several of Dorothea’s books, including Poems by a Lady of Quality, which she hoped in vain might secure her justice. She married a French musician and had six children, eventually dying penniless in Dublin.
Song is here.
Carol Ann Duffy (born 1955)
Carol Ann was born in Glasgow. She grew up in Stafford and then attended the University of Liverpool, where she studied Philosophy. She has written for both children and adults, and her poetry has received many awards, including the Signal Prize for Children’s Verse, the Whitbread and Forward Prizes, as well as the Lannan Award and the E. M. Forster Prize in America. In 2009 she became Poet Laureate. In 2012 she was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize.
Valentine is here.
Helen Dunmore (1952–2017)
Helen wrote children’s books, novels – including Birdcage Walk – and criticism about Emily Brontë and Virginia Woolf, as well as poetry. She had a house in Cornwall and was an intrepid sea swimmer, braving the waves in a wetsuit on cold days. Her final poetry collection Inside the Wave was published just before she so sadly died from cancer, and it posthumously won the Costa Poetry and Book of the Year awards in 2017.
September Rain is here.
Rhian Edwards
Rhian studied Law, and worked as a tax consultant and selling advertising for the Financial Times before meeting a group of poets in London who inspired her to take up writing herself. Also a singer-songwriter who performs on stage and for radio, she is now an award-winning poet. She lives in South Wales with her daughter.
Polly is here.
George Eliot (1819–1880)
Mary Ann Evans published under a male pseudonym because she wanted her novels – which include Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss – to be taken seriously, but also because of her personal life. She lived with George Henry Lewes, who was married (though his wife had children with another man). Although affairs were not uncommon, their openness was. It was the cause of a decades-long rift with her brother Isaac – to whom her ‘Brother and Sister’ sonnets are addressed, some twenty years after they were estranged.
School Parted Us [extract from ‘Brother and Sister’ Sonnets] is here.
Rebecca Elson (1960–1999)
A distinguished Canadian-American astronomer, Rebecca was one of the world’s leading researchers into star clusters and galaxy formation. She also climbed mountains on three continents, spoke three languages, played the mandolin, cooked wonderfully and was a star striker in her Saturday League football team. In 1996 she married Italian artist Angelo di Cintio. Rebecca was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of twenty-nine, and although she went into remission, it eventually returned and she died tragically young, aged thirty-nine.
Antidote to the Fear of Death is here.
‘Ephelia’
Ephelia’s true identity is unknown, though she is presumed to have been living in London during the 1670s and 1680s. In 1679 she published Female Poems on Several Occasions, one of the earliest collections of poems written from a female perspective. Some of the poems suggest she was jilted by a lover, leading the feminist scholar Germaine Greer to suggest that she might have been Cary Frazier, the Earl of Mulgrave’s rejected mistress. She was possibly well-connected at the court of Charles II, since her poems certainly circulated intellectual circles there. Maureen E. Mulvihill has made a case for her to have been Mary Villiers, later the Duchess of Richmond.
To a Proud Beauty is here.
Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834)
Catherine was a wealthy socialite whose father was a leading nobleman at the court of George III. Her family were supportive of her interests in art and writing but she didn’t publish her poetry during her lifetime, instead circulating copies among her well-connected friends. Her work, including a jaunty parody of William Wordsworth, was published after her death. She wrote a famous ‘Riddle on the Letter H’, though it has often been misattributed to the Romantic poet Lord Byron.
When Last We Parted is here.
Elaine Feinstein (born 1930)
Elaine has written novels, radio and television drama and biographies, including those of poets Ted Hughes and Marina Tsvetaeva. She is also a translator and award-winning poet. Born in Liverpool, she went to Cambridge University in 1949, only a year after women were first granted full admission. She is married with three sons, and was awarded a Civil List pension in 2005 in recognition of her services to literature.
Anniversary is here.
Rachel Field (1894–1942)
Rachel wrote plays, novels and collaborations with her husband, but was best known as a writer for children. She spent her summers in Cranberry Isles in Maine, which almost certainly inspired her
poem ‘If Once You Have Slept on an Island’. She also wrote the English lyrics for the version of ‘Ave Maria’ that appears in Disney’s Fantasia. Rachel died of pneumonia caught after an operation aged only forty-eight.
If Once You Have Slept on an Island is here.
Kathleen Fraser (born 1937)
Kathleen moved to New York to work for Mademoiselle magazine before becoming a poet. She taught poetry in San Francisco from the 1970s to the 1990s, and lobbied for more women writers to be included on the curriculum. She founded the American Poetry Archives and between 1983 and 1991 edited HOW(ever), a journal devoted to suporting women’s writing. She divides her time between San Francisco and Rome.
Poem In Which My Legs Are Accepted is here.
Victoria Gatehouse (born 1970)
A Yorkshire poet, Victoria originally trained as a scientist and works as a clinical researcher. She has a Masters degree in poetry from Manchester Metropolitan University and has won several poetry competitions. Her first pamphlet, Light After Light, was published in 2018.
Phosphorescence is here.
Nikita Gill (born 1987)
Nikita was born in Belfast but grew up in New Delhi, where an inspiring teacher encouraged her to publish a short story about her grandfather in a newspaper. She has gained an enormous online following, and her first collection, Wild Embers, was published in 2017. Nikita has written about her experiences of being bullied, unhappy and abusive relationships, and mental health, as well as poems with a feminist slant inspired by Greek myths.
93 Percent Stardust is here.
Chrissie Gittins
Chrissie worked as an artist and teacher before starting to write fulltime. She has written poetry for adults and children, short stories and radio drama – including a play about a dinner party served in the mould of a life-sized iguanodon. Chrissie has been a writer in residence at schools, libraries and Belmarsh Prison. You can hear Chrissie reading her poems on the Poetry Archives.
The Unseen Life of Trees is here.
Remi Graves (born 1992)
Remi is a London-based poet and drummer. Her work has been featured at St Paul’s Cathedral, on BBC Radio 4 and more. She runs poetry workshops in schools and libraries and loves helping young people share their own stories. Remi was a National Poetry Day Ambassador in 2017. She is also Elmo’s biggest fan.
It Is Everywhere is here.
Dora Greenwell (1821–1882)
Dora was often ill and never married, living instead with her mother and, later, her brothers. She wrote many religious poems, some of which were set to music as hymns. She also wrote in passionate support of women’s suffrage and education and against the slave trade. Dora had friends among the literary celebrities of the day, including Christina Rossetti, and it is thought that she had an opium habit.
A Scherzo: A Shy Person’s Wishes is here.
Laura Grey (1889–1914)
Laura Grey was the stage name of Joan Lavender Baillie Guthrie, an idealistic young suffragette whose suicide shocked society. Lavender, as she was known, acted on the London stage until she was arrested for window-breaking during the campaign to win votes for women. She was jailed in Holloway Prison with other suffragettes, including Emily Wilding Davison, and force-fed after a hunger strike. While there, she wrote a poem, ‘To D. R.’ (thought to be fellow campaigner Dorothea Rock), that was published as part of an anthology called Holloway Jingles by the Women’s Social and Political Union. Lavender was released after four months but her health never recovered, and she began to rely on tranquillizers. Her mother was desperately worried about her mental state, but was unable to get Lavender the help that might have prevented her tragic death.
To D. R. is here.
Hadewijch of Antwerp (thirteenth century)
We know little about Hadewijch’s life, except that she was a visionary and poet writing in the thirteenth century who probably lived in Antwerp. Some of her poems are attributed to ‘Hadewijch II’ as there were two groups of works with different handwriting discovered among her papers. She was presumably aristocratic, since she was highly educated and fluent in Dutch, Latin and French. Hadewijch wrote religious poems using the traditions of love poetry. Her letters suggest she spent some time in a ‘beguine’ house – these were refuges for religious women who took vows of poverty and chastity but didn’t become nuns – and, later, travelled.
You Who Want is here.
Anne Halley (1928–2004)
Anne, christened Ute Halle, was born in Germany, but the Nazi regime banned her father from practising medicine because he was Jewish and the family moved to America, settling in New York in 1938. She taught English, as well as writing poetry and short stories, and translating German works. Disparaging editorial comments on her work from male editors – ‘all that kitchen sink imagery!’ and ‘too much female self-pity’ – cemented her commitment to feminism.
A Pride of Ladies is here.
Sue Hardy-Dawson (born 1963)
Sue is a poet and artist who has been widely published in children’s anthologies. Before becoming a poet she was a family support worker and teaching assistant – Sue has dyslexia and is passionate about encouraging children with special educational needs. She runs multi-sensory poetry workshops for children of all ages. Sue’s wonderful collection Where Zebras Go was shortlisted for the 2018 CLiPPA and Apes to Zebras, co-written by Roger Stevens and Liz Brownlee, is out now.
Diaspora is here.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
Frances was born in Baltimore to a free African American couple. She was raised by her activist uncle after her mother’s death, and worked all her life to promote women’s rights and education as well as civil rights. A hundred years before Rosa Parks, she refused to give up her seat in the section of a segregated trolley car in Philadelphia reserved for white passengers. She lectured and wrote against slavery and helped slaves flee to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Frances was married with three step-children and a daughter of her own.
Eliza Harris is here.
Kaylin Haught (born 1947)
Kaylin was born in Illinois and raised on the Oklahoma prairie. Her father worked on an oilfield and was also a preacher, and her mother was a factory worker and Sunday School teacher. ‘God Says Yes To Me’ has been widely anthologized, and even set to jazz.
God Says Yes To Me is here.
Winifred Holtby (1898–1935)
A feminist, socialist, pacifist and campaigner against racism, Winifred once wrote that a ‘passion for imparting information to females appears to be one of the major male characteristics’, spotting instances of ‘mansplaining’ over seventy years before the word was coined. In 1931 she was diagnosed with Bright’s disease and given two years to live, and she poured all the energy of her last months into writing South Riding. Although better known during her life for her journalism, it is this last novel for which she is now best remembered.
Boats in the Bay is here.
Anne Hunter (1742–1821)
The daughter of a Scottish surgeon, Anne married another surgeon: John Hunter, whose collection formed the basis for London’s Hunterian Museum of medical artefacts. Her sparkling parties (of which her husband didn’t always approve) attracted literary London’s superstars, including the so-called ‘Bluestockings’: educated women who discussed intellectual matters despite disapproval from male critics of the time. Her poetry was published anonymously at first, and then as Mrs John Hunter, and often concerned romantic or domestic matters. In an age without trains or telephones, and when childbirth was so dangerous for women, Anne was understandably upset when her daughter moved away from home with her new husband.
To My Daughter On Being Separated from Her on Her Marriage is here.
Jean Ingelow (1820–1897)
Jean’s poems and novels sold well, and leading Victorian poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Christina Rossetti were among her fans. She threw dinner parties for her poorer neighbours several times a week, f
unded by the sale of her books – she was apparently very skilful at carving a roast. She also wrote hymns and children’s stories.
Seven Times One: Exultation is here.
Lesley Ingram
Lesley was born in Yorkshire and has researched ekphrasis as translation. She has worked in IT, dabbled in archaeology, been a tax officer and taught English in France. She has performed her poems at literary and poetry festivals, and enjoys photographing floors, walls and ceilings, including carpets of bluebells and sandy beaches. She loves liquorice and graveyards.
The Pale Horse is here.
Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001)
Elizabeth worked briefly in publishing and as a librarian before becoming a full-time writer, living most of her life in Oxford. Her Roman Catholicism and experience of mental breakdown in the 1960s both influenced her verses. Although she disliked reading her poems in public, she became a mentor to student poets, and frequently welcomed them into her ornament-cluttered flat for discussion and tea. She was an avid consumer of ice cream and a keen cinema-goer.
Friendship is here.
Jenny Joseph (1932–2018)
Jenny was a writer of poetry, prose and children’s books, and worked as a lecturer, journalist, cleaner, pub landlady, and for an anti-apartheid magazine in South Africa. Her best known poem ‘Warning’ is about ageing disgracefully and was written when she was only twenty-eight. It became enormously popular and was twice voted the UK’s favourite postwar poem, inspiring many fans and imitators around the world. She admitted to mixed feelings about its runaway success, but her many other poems are now also widely enjoyed.
