More on the lack of press for women poets
re my post from a few days ago. There are other discussions about this over here and over here and over here and over here
I’m involved with the WOMPO listserv (which I recommend checking out), and frankly I’ve been buying mostly poetry by women for some reason for a while now. It hasn’t been a conscious decision. I also try to support women-owned presses. That has been a conscious decision though.
I’m not good at writing reviews / being the arbiter of good taste but I guess that would be a good way to support women poets.
I do ignore the lame-stream media for the most part, except for this blog. Heck, I’m campaigning for Ron Paul and he is being screwed over royally by the MSM – the MSM is pretty dubious in my eyes right now & has been for a while. (For pulling crap like this all the time.)
Should I even be doing this blog anymore? Should I change it to highlight other blogs instead of the MSM? What do you think?
If you've enjoyed this blog, how about buying me a cup of coffee?
Certainly aim at other blogs, too, if you feel so inclined, but please don’t drop the links to “MSM” as they are my lifeline to poetry coverage in publications I’d never see and don’t have time to troll myself, esp. the British paper you link to. And for god’s sake don’t be disouraged and drop your blog altogether. I am sure I am not alone in saying you would be greatly missed!
I think do what makes you happy, Jilly.
Thanks for all that you do for Poetry Hut Blog.
I agree with Ivy – do this if you want to, but feel free to add other elements, or switch it up, to keep yourself engaged and entertained – after all, isn’t that what a blog is for?
I appreciate your work here and linking to poetry stories. It’s easy to get frustrated and discouraged – in fact, it happens to me on a routine basis! I love it when I see a positive story about poetry, or about a poet I love.
When we all get jobs at the New Yorker and the New York Times and Poets & Writers we will greenlight more female-friendly content. Right? It’s only a matter of time now!
hey Jilly
Please keep linking to all media that supports poetry!
My 2 cents: As someone who used to work for the MSM, I must say that in some ways, yes, they are responsible for our lack of information. But at the same time, a lot of reporters (I’m talking about your average newspaper reporter here, not the books editor, which we all know is a dying position) just don’t always have the time to go & seek out the news and profile stories. (They’re put on breaking news and PR releases instead.) Often are not in the know about who they SHOULD be covering. The best thing we can do as people in the poetry/writing community is to send word about local poets (especially women!) who win prizes/have interesting lives/work with local organizations/publish books/run local presses, etc. to the media and tell them we’d like to see them written about. So much of what goes into the news comes from tips from readers. I hope this adds some perspective to the debate. However, I do agree that there is an overall lack of women in the media (as makers of media and subjects in media), and that this is a problem.
[...] and again today. [...]
The way I look at it, you’re highlighting something you think is “good” (poetry news) produced by something you think is “bad” (the MSM). To me that’s the ultimate act of kindness, and I’d encourage you to keep at it, lest you get discouraged and out of touch and give up on society as a whole when Ron Paul drops out.
OK, that may have been uncalled for…
But really, I (selfishly) would like to see you continue what you do because I learn each time I visit, and I certainly echo the thoughts above that you should do what makes you happy, and I hope know that you have a number of regulars out here that are grateful for what you do and have done.
So: thanks.
I also would greatly miss your blog if you stopped doing it. It’s one of the places I always visit when I make regular rounds on the poetry blog circuit. I’ve often found the mainscream media (that’s not a typo) items you link to highly interesting and informative. It’s obvious that you select carefully, it’s not a random hodgepodge.
One human being can only do so much, obviously. By all means make any changes you feel would be useful. It’s your show here.
I’m also supremely frustrated by the bread-and-circus political parade being broadcast and printcast into the world daily. But even amid all of this there’s life, and history isn’t over yet.
Whatever you decide to do, I really appreciate the work and play you’ve done, and are doing, here.
I enjoy the links you put up, yes, but do what you feel like doing. You can also change directions again down the road, right? Follow your heart!
- Scott
Glad for all these poetry links you find. It doesn’t matter to me where you source them. it amazes me that you find so many. http://www.writersfestival.org/archives/a-v.html has some.
Women are definitely fewer reported for anything. Just look at the
http://www.mediareporttowomen.com/current.htm or http://www.wimnonline.org/analysis/ or
Throwing a few ideas out there…Maybe we have to look back a long way for the answer. Is it a by-product of past decades. If writers come from houses rich in books, are women not pushing themselves to the top of poetry because mom and grandmom didn’t?
Poetry as a craft takes 40 or 50 years to get really good. What percentage of women publishing have done it for a lifetime? (I don’t know if this would change the picture or not). I look at http://www.ubu.com/ubu/ and the 3:1 male to female. How’d that happen? Is it a matter of who is conversing and relating? Women bloggers and men bloggers do have a tendancy to keep on their own side of the sandlot.
I find myself wanting gender parity and to prefer women and yet I am more skewed to males. Is that a byproduct of economy and women proportionally spending neurons being moms, or being in lower paid work with less seniority and job security so have less technical excellence and ? Or being enculturated to be more emotionally explicit and use more slanted language as a dialect when good poetry is more show not tell?
Doesn’t matter to me what you use as a source, just keep doing what you’re doing. Eventually, the tide will turn toward the women. But my hope is that poetry, in general, receives more attention and that writers start reaching untapped markets, which helps us all in the long run.
Well, I shared about Jilly’s initial post and my response on my blog. I asked readers could they readily list women poets they enjoy. I asked if we as women were doing enough to support women artists. So predictable it’s funny, a young man wrote he was ‘pissed off’ by my post.
Feel free to weigh in:
http://blackeyedsusans.blogspot.com/2008/01/supporting-women-poets.html
I was physically threatened by a woman in a Wompo post. That said, a great number of people (both genders) wrote to me privately with kind and supportive words when I chose to leave the list. I just wish the admins had intervened.
I appreciate your blog.
Alan,
Threatened? Why? No need to rehash if you rather not. Being pro-woman is not synomous with anti-male. That kind of thinking annoys me. Nor does having a difference of opinion warrant threats.
What I find interesting is how we, artists in particular, carry on like we’re incredibly liberal, open-minded and inclusive. We talk about celebrating diversity but my experience is that we really expend more energy exercising tolerance and not embracing what makes us different.
I suspect I’m going off on a tangent but I’m a woman and we do that a lot. (susan with tongue firmly planted in cheek).
Glad to hear you like my blog.
It’s archived here: http://foetry.com/forum/index.php?topic=407.0
Ah, that was before my WOMPO time, Alan. There’s no excuse for violent threats.