female poets we love

April is National Poetry Month. March was Women's History Month. wonder | wander | women love a worthy excuse to call attention to our sisters' achievements. As we honor them today with our personal list of favorites. 

free copy of the official poster for the April 2022

The first-ever National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, but the history of poetry itself goes back thousands of years ago.

Natalie Diaz | Post-Colonial Love Poem

National Poetry Month reminds the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers.

The trauma and heartache of the past few hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, ages, eons may well wear us down. But for some brilliant words encapsulated in special verses that have changed our lives for the better. 

Sappho, Mirabai, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Ancient and ageless, these women give voice to the countless labeled and unnamables that affect our daily lives in obvious and subtle ways. With groundbreaking form, style, and subject matter, these women have elevated poetry and made it more accessible to us all. 

Throw back all the way to Ancient Greece with Sappho [C. 630 to C.570 BC] - a poet who lived on the island of Lesbos, where she was known for her lyric poetry. Affectionately known as the “tenth muse” and “the poetess” of her time - Sappho’s work inspired countless Greek poets to come, sadly most of her work is lost to us. 

Anna Akhmatova - Odessa, Ukraine

Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply drawn images, and use of direct quotation which brings a sense of immediacy. Exhibiting a well-developed tradition of Lesbian poetry, which had evolved its own poetic diction, meters, and conventions. 

Awed by her splendor stars near the lovely moon cover their own bright faces when she is roundest and lights earth with her silver. 

Denise Levertov reading her poems

Mirabai [1498 to 1546] also known as Meera Bai, this sixteenth-century Hindu mystic poet widely known and cherished in the Bhakti movement culture. Though there are no surviving manuscripts from her time, she is credited with a passionate and blissful poetry style that centered on Krishna.

Her compositions are still sung today in India - mostly as devotional songs as they are deeply philosophical. Most legends about Mirabai mention her fearless disregard for social and family conventions, her devotion to Krishna, her religious devotion.

Anna Akhmatova, Denise Levertov, Hilda Doolittle

Dark Friend, what can I say? This love I bring from distant lifetimes is ancient, do not revile it.

One of the most highly regarded poets of the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s [1806 to 1861] literary reputation eclipsed her husband, Robert Browning. Popular in both England and the US, her work inspired even the iconic Emily Dickinson.

Sonia Snchez, Joy Harjo, Carol Ann Duffy

Dickinson kept a photo of Browning framed in her room. Poet Edgar Allan Poe also borrowed the meter from her poem Lady Geraldine’s Courtship for his notorious poem The Raven.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.

Jenny Zhang

Try reading a poem a day for a week and see its effect. Without poetry, we lose our way. ~ Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate and Academy of American Poets Chancellor.

May we all find more poetry in life!

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