She is Fierce

by Ana Sampson

  The Sun Has Burst the Sky / Warning are here and here.

  Jackie Kay (born 1961)

  Jackie had a Scottish mother and Nigerian father, but was brought up by white adoptive parents, which inspired her prize-winning first poetry collection The Adoption Papers. She has written plays, children’s books and television dramas – though she once admitted to hiding from her publisher under a table because one of her books was taking so long to write. Jackie is the third modern Makar (the Scottish Laureate). ‘Fiere’ is dedicated to Jackie’s best friend Ali Smith and was inspired by the Robert Burns poem ‘John Anderson my Jo’, which traces the long lifetime of a marriage in just two stanzas. ‘Fiere’ takes three stanzas to follow a friendship through a lifetime.

  Fiere is here.

  Amineh Abou Kerech

  Amineh is from Damascus. She arrived in Oxford in 2016 after a long exile in Egypt and energetically set about learning English and getting to the top of every class with her sister. She writes all the time, in Arabic and in English, and is forever calling up her homeland.

  To Make A Homeland is here.

  Rukiya Khatun

  Arriving in the UK at the age of six, Rukiya worked with enormous determination to qualify as a lawyer in 2017. Her poems take inspiration from the landscapes and language of her home country, Bangladesh.

  Sylhet is here.

  Else Lasker-Schüler (1869–1945)

  Else was a German Jewish poet and playwright. She moved to Berlin with her first husband where she trained as an artist, published her first poems, had a son and became renowned for her alternative lifestyle. Her poems were successful and influential, but after marrying and separating from her second husband and the death of her son, she found herself penniless and suffered from depression. She fled the Nazi regime and eventually settled in Jerusalem.

  Reconciliation is here.

  Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)

  Emma was from a Jewish family in New York. She worked on Ellis Island teaching English to Jews who had fled persecution in Russia, and wrote passionately against anti-Semitism. ‘The New Colossus’ was written to raise funds to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty (the statue itself was a gift to America from France) and it was eventually inscribed upon the monument itself.

  The New Colossus is here.

  Mary Leapor (1722–1746)

  Mary’s father was a Northamptonshire gardener and, despite her lack of education, she had great writing ambitions: from childhood she ‘would often be scribbling and sometimes in rhyme’. As a domestic servant she was lucky with one employer – Susanna Jennens was a poet herself, encouraged Mary’s writings and let her educate herself in her library – but less so with another, who fired her for writing while his dinner burned. Mary died of measles aged only twenty-four, never having seen her work in print. Her poems, published after her death, protested against the difficulties she faced as a working-class woman, and criticized the way society valued women only for their looks and fortunes.

  Extract from Essay on Friendship is here.

  Jean Little (born 1932)

  Though Canadian poet Jean Little was born legally blind, it hasn’t stopped her writing poetry, children’s books, novels and her autobiography. She taught disabled children and her first children’s book featured a child with cerebral palsy. Jean has six honorary degrees and is a Member of the Order of Canada. She lives in Ontario with her sister, great-niece and great-nephew, and her guide dog, Honey.

  Today is here.

  Pippa Little

  Born in Tanzania and raised in Scotland, Pippa now lives in Northumberland. She has travelled extensively in central Europe and translated Hungarian and Spanish poetry. She has a PhD in contemporary women’s poetry and her collections include Our Lady of Iguanas, The Spar Box and Twist.

  Huge Blue is here.

  Liz Lochhead (born 1947)

  Liz had written poetry since her childhood but before becoming a fulltime writer she was – she says – a ‘terrible’ teacher. She has written songs and plays, as well as poetry, and was the Makar (Scotland’s Poet Laureate) from 2011 to 2016. You can also hear her voice on ‘Trouble is Not a Place’, a track by experimental Glaswegian hip-hop group Hector Bizerk. Liz has said of feminism that it ‘is like the hoovering: you just have to keep doing it’.

  A Glasgow Nonsense Rhyme for Molly is here.

  Amy Lowell (1874–1925)

  Amy was from a prominent Massachusetts family who didn’t think their daughters should go to college, but fortunately their mansion had a library stocked with 7,000 books. At the age of twenty-eight she decided to become a poet, so she read intensively for eight years in preparation. She was a poetry pioneer and campaigned forcefully to bring it to a wider audience by lecturing, translating and nurturing new talent. A flamboyant and eccentric figure with a pince-nez, bun, and a cigar permanently in hand, Amy became a poetry celebrity. She lived with actress Ada Dwyer Russell, to whom many of her poems are addressed.

  A Decade / Wind and Silver are here and here.

  Hollie McNish (born 1983)

  Hollie has published the poetry collections Papers, Cherry Pie, and a poetic memoir of parenthood, Nobody Told Me, winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2016. She co-wrote the play Offside, which relates the two-hundred-year history of UK women’s football, and collaborated with the Dutch ensemble, the Metropole Orkest, on her second poetry album Poetry Versus Orchestra. McNish tours the UK extensively, and her poetry videos have attracted millions of views worldwide. She has a keen interest in migration studies, infant health and language learning, and gives performances of her work for organizations as diverse as the Economist, MTV and UNICEF.

  Milk-Jug Jackers is here.

  Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)

  Born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand, Katherine is better known as a writer of short stories than as a poet. A passionate and, by all accounts, occasionally difficult character, her love-life was rather complicated: while pregnant with the child of another man, she married her much older music teacher, only to abandon him days later. Rushed away to Germany by her scandalized mother, she suffered a stillbirth. Her relationship with her second husband, John Middleton Murry, was more affectionate by letter than in person. The presence of Ida Baker – the woman she called her ‘wife’ – was presumably a bone of contention. She died of tuberculosis aged only thirty-four.

  When I Was a Bird / Camomile Tea / The Awakening River are here, here and here.

  Charlotte Mew (1869–1928)

  Charlotte’s middle-class family had little money after her father died, and she and her sister Anne worked to contribute to the household. They had another brother and sister who had been certified insane and confined to asylums, and Charlotte and Anne vowed never to marry, to avoid passing on mental illness to their children. She wrestled with her faith throughout her life and in her poems, feeling attracted to Roman Catholicism but never actually converting. The deaths of her mother and Anne devastated Charlotte, and she sadly took her own life.

  The Call / May 1915 are here and here.

  Alice Meynell (1847–1922)

  Despite having eight children, Alice found time to write journalism, as well as poetry, and assist her husband editing journals. She campaigned against animal cruelty, for better living conditions for London’s poor, and for votes for women. She also spoke out against oppression as doubts about colonialism and the British Empire began to be felt in the late nineteenth century. The Meynells took in and supported Francis Thompson, a poet who had fallen on hard times due to his opium addiction.

  Renouncement is here.

  Elma Mitchell (1919–2000)

  Elma was a Scottish poet who worked as a librarian for the BBC. She was fluent in languages including Russian and worked as a translator and freelance writer, publishing poetry from the 1960s onwards. She worked in a thatched barn that served as both library and study, and was inhabited by rare bats. Elma read fiercely and bril
liantly at her rare public readings, even when she was elderly and frail.

  This Poem . . . is here.

  Hannah More (1745–1833)

  Hannah had a long engagement which was eventually broken off, but she accepted an annuity from the jilter which gave her the financial independence to work on her writing. She campaigned against slavery and was a member of the Bluestockings, an eighteenth-century women’s society who gathered to discuss intellectual matters. Hannah established schools for the poor in the west of England, despite resistance from local farmers who worried an educated population wouldn’t be content with labouring work, and clergymen who had previously been in charge of education.

  Extract from The Bas Bleu is here.

  Michaela Morgan

  Michaela is a children’s author and poet who has written more than 140 books. She has visited schools in the UK, Europe, the USA and Africa, and also gives workshops and readings in libraries, at festivals and in prisons. Her latest poetry collections are Wonderland: Alice in Poetry and Reaching the Stars: Poems About Extraordinary Women and Girls (Macmillan). Michaela is really quite small. But very fierce.

  My First Day at School is here.

  Pauli Murray (1910–1985)

  Anna Pauline Murray was inspired to become a lawyer after being arrested for sitting in the ‘whites only’ section of a Virginia bus in 1940, and she continued fighting for civil and women’s rights all her life. She faced prejudice throughout her studies because of her gender and race, but eventually became California’s first black attorney general. Her 1950 book States’ Laws on Race and Color was a key contribution to the civil rights movement, and she was appointed to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women by John F. Kennedy in 1961. Pauli had a brief marriage to a man, which was annulled, and several relationships with women.

  Ruth is here.

  Eileen Myles (born 1949)

  Eileen Myles are a poet, novelist, performer and art journalist. Their twenty books include the upcoming Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Cool For You, I Must Be Living Twice/new & selected poems, Inferno and Chelsea Girls. In 1992 Myles ran an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. They live in Marfa TX and New York.

  Uppity is here.

  Edith Nesbit (1858–1924)

  Edith wrote many books, and is especially remembered for her much-loved children’s stories, including Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Railway Children. She had a tempestuous personal life with her husband Hubert Bland – they both had affairs, and Hubert had children with other women, some of whom Edith brought up as her own. She co-founded the socialist Fabian Society.

  Among His Books / The Things That Matter are here and here.

  Grace Nichols (born 1950)

  Grace was born in Guyana, and moved to Britain in 1977. Her first book, I is a Long-Memoried Woman, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1983, and she has also written stories and poems for children and a novel. She is inspired by folklore and Caribbean rhythms and culture. Grace has edited anthologies of poetry and was poet in residence at the Tate Gallery from 1999 to 2000.

  For Forest is here.

  Selina Nwulu

  As well as a poet, Selina is a writer and campaigner in the areas of social justice, politics, education and the environment who has worked for non-profit organizations, including UN Women and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She co-edited Women’s Views on News and has published widely. Selina was Young Poet Laureate for London in 2015–2016 and has performed around the UK and further afield.

  Tough Dragons is here.

  Mary Oliver (born 1935)

  Mary’s poems are filled with a wonder at the natural world she felt from childhood, when she loved to walk in her native Ohio and wrote poetry from the age of fourteen. Mary lived in Massachusetts for many years with her long-term partner and literary agent Molly Malone Cook, and has written many poems inspired by the Cape Cod coastline. Mary’s poems have won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and the New York Times called her ‘far and away America’s best-selling poet’.

  Breakage is here.

  Alice Oswald (born 1966)

  Alice Oswald studied Classics at Oxford and then trained as a gardener. She worked in gardens for seven years before publishing her first book of poems, The Thing In the Gap-Stone Stile, which won the Forward Prize in 1996. Her latest collection, Falling Awake, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the T. S. Eliot Prize 2016, and was the winner of the Costa Poetry Award 2016. In June 2017 she was awarded the International Griffin Poetry Prize. She is married with three children and lives in Devon.

  Wedding is here.

  Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)

  Wisecracking Mrs Parker grew up in New York and wrote for, among others, Vogue and Vanity Fair. She became the queen bee of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table, a witty group who met daily for lunch in the hotel on West 44th Street to bitch, drink, gossip and generally congratulate themselves. It was a glamorous new world – women were drinking, carrying on with men and even, Heaven forbid, dancing the Charleston – but Parker’s cool verse often tots up the bitter costs of these freedoms.

  Lullaby / Inventory are here and here.

  Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)

  Sylvia was fiercely ambitious and worked tirelessly on her poetry. She attempted suicide in 1953 and her experiences recovering in a clinic inspired her only novel, The Bell Jar. In 1956 she met poet Ted Hughes while studying at Cambridge University. They married and had two children, but she struggled to find time to write with young children to care for and a house to run, and her career stalled while his took off. The relationship broke down and a distraught Sylvia plunged into a creative frenzy, getting up at dawn to write the furious poems for which she is best remembered. She took her own life during the freezing February of 1963. Her first poetry book had appeared in 1960, and Ariel, the collection that cemented her extraordinary reputation, appeared two years after her death.

  Metaphors / Mirror are here and here.

  Wendy Pratt (born 1978)

  Wendy is a fully qualified microbiologist, as well having degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing, and is working towards a PhD in poetry. She has published several collections of verse and writes features for publications including Yorkshire Life. Her latest collection, Gifts the Mole Gave Me, was published by Valley Press in 2017.

  Nan Hardwicke Turns Into a Hare is here.

  Kathleen Raine (1908–2003)

  Kathleen was inspired by the Scottish ballads passed down her mother’s family and by her father’s love for poetry. She attracted many admirers, though she clashed with her parents over some of her suitors, and her chaotic love-life included marriages, children, elopements and affairs about which she felt enormous guilt. She had an unrequited passion for the writer Gavin Maxwell, whose book Ring of Bright Water was named after a line in one of her poems, and felt responsible for causing the death of his beloved otter. Kathleen often wrote about religion and spirituality, and her poems were popular in France, the USA and India, as well as Britain.

  Heirloom is here.

  Shukria Rezaei

  Shukria arrived in Oxford at fourteen, a refugee from Taliban persecution of her Hazara people in the Pakistan border regions of Afghanistan. She started writing poems in English almost before she had the words to do so, bringing a gift for imagery from her Persian heritage. She has seen her work published widely, in Oxford Poetry among other publications.

  A Glass of Tea is here.

  Lola Ridge (1873–1941)

  Lola moved from Dublin to New York with her mother. Having married and separated from a goldmine owner, she worked as a copywriter, artist’s model, factory worker, illustrator and educator, as well as writing poetry inspired by life on the Lower East Side. She and her second husband were socialist activists, taking part in protest marches and holding lively parties in their shabby apartment for other writers. Lola wrote about su
bjects considered shocking at the time, including race riots, but her book The Ghetto and Other Poems made an immediate impact. She was always sickly, though this impression was reinforced by the fact that she lied about her age, so people – including the writer of her New York Times obituary – thought she was ten years younger than she actually was when she died.

  A Memory / Submerged are here and here.

  Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)

  In contrast to her brother, the wild-living Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina was so religious that she abstained from playing chess or visiting the opera on religious grounds. She remained unmarried, and devoted herself to charity work, her family and poetry. Although she modelled for her brother and other artists, it tended to be for sacred subjects, and she heartily disapproved of some of the Pre-Raphaelites’ other muses, including the ill-starred Lizzie Siddal, her brother’s obsession and – eventually – his wife. One of her best-loved poems is ‘Goblin Market’, in which one naughty sister is tempted by sticky enchanted treats.

  In an Artist’s Studio / A Birthday / The Trees’ Counselling / Remember are here, here, here and here.

  Olive Runner

  Olive’s poem was published in Poetry magazine in September 1918. Almost a hundred years later, it was rediscovered and celebrated as part of the freedom-themed National Poetry Day 2017.

  Freedom is here.

  Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962)

  Vita grew up on the family estate of Knole, in Kent, which she immortalized in her novel The Edwardians, but couldn’t inherit because she was a woman. She and her husband Harold Nicolson had an unconventional relationship, both having affairs with men and women. Vita’s lovers included Violet Keppel, with whom she often ran away for periods of time, and Virginia Woolf, who was inspired by her to write her 1928 novel Orlando. It was a difficult time to have same-sex relationships, and Vita struggled with her feelings and the lack of social tolerance. In 1930 Vita and Harold moved to Sissinghurst in Kent and lovingly restored the ruined gardens there. As well as poems, she wrote biographies of women including Joan of Arc and the seventeenth-century writer Aphra Behn.