Women injecting the personal into their poetry dates all the way back to Sappho, an Ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, known for her poetry exploring homoerotic desire between women. This seems to have set a precedent for the hefty personal element we associate with a lot of female poetry historically, from the domestic female poetry of the Romantic period and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love verses during the Victorian age, to the strikingly confessional verse of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton in the sixties and the present-day ‘insta-poets’ such as Rupi Kaur and Lang Leav. However, too often I have noticed that this branding of women’s poetry as the poetry of ‘the personal’ has occured with some derision.
Rupi Kaur
Today, there is a great disparity in the way we receive the work of male and female poets, which has a direct effect on what is published. Many women’s work is dismissed as too ‘domestic’, ‘fluffy’, or, if they dare to show some anger, ‘shrill’, when tackling personal issues. Meanwhile, men are praised for their poignancy or bravery when they tackle similar topics. Females poets are praised for exhibiting a detached voice or approaching so-called ‘larger’ issues usually falling into the the domain of male writers, and reviewers often pit female authors’ work against one another, praising the one by denouncing the other – the latter usually being that work which displays a more confessional tone.
Yet, this is not a new issue. One of the best-selling poets of the Romantic Period, Felicia Hemans’ poetry was judged as ‘domestic’ – suitable reading for women, but that is all. Despite being one the best-sellers of her day she is largely cast aside today in favour of Romantic giants such as William Wordsworth or Lord Byron. Sylvia Plath’s poetry suffers similarly, with readers and critics seemingly unable to separate her confessional, verse from her life. People have been poring over her letters and diaries after her death, trying to glean anything autobiographical to tie to her poetry, resulting in an uncomfortably voyeuristic gaze as we feel somewhat entitled to intimate details about her life, marriage, and death.
Sylvia Plath
Still today, the personal in women’s poetry remains a contentious issue. Rupi Kaur, despite having come under numerous criticisms for her style of verse, has amassed a huge audience by candidly discussing topics such as heartbreak, trauma (although there has been some criticism of the way she tackles this topic), and the journey to self-love in her work. Using Instagram to share her poetry, Kaur has appropriated a platform used to document the personal through images, where lots of young women spend time posting and consuming predominantly personal-focused media, to her creative advantage. In crafting her minimalist poetry to suit the aesthetically pleasing posts expected on Instagram, and in keeping the majority of her pieces short, stark, relatable and easily consumable, Kaur (whether you like her poetry or not) has revolutionised the way poetry, especially such personal works are read and received.
In poetry, as in art, women have predominantly been the object of the male gaze, the objects of metaphors rather than their creators. The universal ‘I’ in poetry has long been consciously and sub-consciously assumed to be male, representative of a wider assumed universal male subjectivity throughout the arts and philosophy, echoing Simone de Beauvoir’s claim that “man is defined as a human being and a woman as female”. Women have had to come to terms with cross-gender identification in writing, whether that be the often gratuitously misogynistic views of women presented by men, the disregard of female experience, or simply the prevalence of male writers over female ones in education, publication, and the critical sphere. This lack of enough authentic representation of female subjectivity has led to the problem we see today where many men are unprepared to read or review women’s personal poetry, as if it needs to be left to those with the correct expertise, regardless of the fact that women have had to accept male experience as default for centuries.
Anne Sexton
On what grounds do readers, particularly male readers, find it alarming when women turn that gaze inward upon herself? Is there something frightening or disturbing to the wider audience in the empowering act of a woman writing her own life and experiences? Or is it perhaps decentring to them that in exploring and exposing the self through poetry women have shattered the illusion of perfect femininity and serenity that they are supposed to embody.
By allowing readers an uncomfortably voyeuristic look into their innermost thoughts, desires, and weaknesses through verse, a glass ceiling has been cracked by female writers and poets, perhaps one which people are not ready to have us break through quite yet.