Perverse Serenity Robyn Rowland Spinifex 1992 This is a book-length narrative sequence on the love affair between the poet and a monk in an Irish monastery. It represents an unfinished love, a yearning that might also be interpreted as that sense of longing the exile feels for a homeland, one which will never be realised.…
Category: Poetry
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Sybil: The Glide of Her Tongue
Sybil: The Glide of Her Tongue Gillian Hanscombe Spinifex 1992 Lesbians are often told that we have no culture, that we have no history, and yet lesbians are always rediscovering hidden histories, literary traditions, codes and behaviours that have been obscured, obliterated or proclaimed irrelevant. Sybil: The Glide of Her Tongue challenges that version of…
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Womanslaughter
Womanslaughter Pat Parker Diana Press 1978 From Wikipedia: Parker’s elder sister, Shirley Jones, was shot and killed by her husband. Parker wrote the autobiographical poem, Womanslaughter, based on this event. In the poem, Parker notes that Her things were hisincluding her life. The perpetrator was convicted of “womanslaughter”, not murder, because Men cannot kill their…
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Movement in Black
Movement in Black Pat Parker Diana Press 1978 Movement In Black is a collection of poetry by Black lesbian feminist Pat Parker. The poems featured in the collection center around Parker’s experiences as a Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother, writer, poet, and activist. From Wikipedia: The collection was originally published by Diana Press in 1978.…
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She Had Some Horses
She Had Some Horses Joy Harjo Thunder’s Mouth Press 1982 First published in 1983 and now considered a classic, Creek Indian Joy Harjo explores womanhood’s most intimate moments in this collection of poetry. Harjo’s prose speaks of women’s despair, of their imprisonment and ruin at the hands of men and society, but also of their awakenings,…
A Woman Is Talking To Death Judy Grahn The Women’s Press Collective 1974 A 1974 long poem by Judy Grahn, the internationally-known lesbian poet, author, and cultural theorist who established the Oakland-based Women’s Press Collective in 1969. The first woman ever I kissed was Josie, who I had loved at such a distance for months.…
The Defiant Muse: Hispanic FeministPoems from the Middle Ages to thePresent: A Bilingual Anthology Flores Angele Feminist Press atCUNY 1986 Each bilingual volume in The Defiant Muse series includes 60 to 80 poems by both well-known and rediscovered poets, selected on the basis of their individual merit and as illustrations of the evolution of feminist thought and…
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The Black Unicorn: Poems
The Black Unicorn: Poems Audre Lorde Norton 1978 Filled with rage and tenderness, Audre Lorde’s most acclaimed poetry collection speaks of mothers and children, female strength and vulnerability, renewal and revenge, goddesses and warriors, ancient magic and contemporary America. These are fearless assertions of identity, told with incantatory power. I have been womanfor a long…
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I Am Becoming My Mother
I Am Becoming My Mother Lorna Goodison New Beacon Books 1986 I Am Becoming My Mother is a book of poetry by Lorna Goodison: a Jamaican poet and leading West Indian writer. Apart from issues of home and exile, her work also addresses the power of art to explore and reconcile opposites and contradictions in…
Blood Bread & Poetry: Selected Prose 1979 -1985 Adrienne Rich WW Norton & Company 1986 Examining the connections between history and the imagination, ethics and action, Adrienne Rich explores the possible meanings of being white, female, lesbian, Jewish, and a United States citizen, both at this particular time and through the lens of the past.…