>On whose part?
>
A tad touchy?
I was responding to an implication, perhaps unintended, by Geraldine that
to write as a woman about womanly things is inevitably a reduction,
somehow trivial. But I do think that subject matter is the least
interesting thing about a poem. Quite often in reading it's the last
thing I comprehend.
Sometimes it is trivialising, sometimes it isn't. But the whole question
is a rat's nest. On one hand, why should I be somehow desexed in order
to be a Proper Poet? On the other, why shouldn't I imagine a "male"
voice of my own if I want to? Why can't I access all the glorious
irresponsibility of a truly moral poetry?
No special pleading here - I would want that freedom for all poets, of
every sex.
I always wanted to be a _poet_. Not a woman poet, not a white middle
class poet, not a Melbourne poet with brown hair and a funny nose...
Best
Alison
>I think all poets get reduced by categorization from time to time. But
>that's the need of the categorizer to create an ordered environment that he
>or she thinks it's possible to live in and understand. I don't know anyone
>who finds woman's experience, certainly not childrearing, in any way
>disqualifying.
>
>
>Perhaps
>>I'm smarting slightly at the thought that poems that deal which
>>specifically female experiences are by definition cliched and twee, by
>>definition buying into an unwanted notion of the merely _feminine_.
>>Surely not. That also is an imprisonment.
>>
>>Best wishes
>>
>>Alison
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