The 8th March is International Women's Day and we're proud to have represented so many phenomenal women in our recent PBS Selections. Here's a brief round up of a few of the fantastic women from across the globe, we've been championing recently:
Rachael Allen - Kingdomland (Faber) PBS Spring Choice
Darkness shines through this startling debut collection by a powerful new female voice. Suffused with violence against women, the "damp kitchen" of domestic abuse, and drowned girls who billow back to the surface, defiantly refusing to die, this is a dark but luminous collection for International Women's Day.
Amy Key - Isn't Forever (Bloodaxe)
Billed as a "grimoire for the feminine self" our PBS Summer Special Commendation delves into the mirrored surfaces of female identity, intimacy and uncertainty with a surreal and wry wit.
Sophie Collins - Who is Mary Sue? (Faber)
Probing poems which expose patriarchy, prejudice, female shame and guilt. Through innovative reportage and collage, Collins skewers assumptions about female creativity and sexist stereotypes.
Tishani Doshi - The Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (Bloodaxe)
A powerful and disturbing reflection on our troubled times, where women fear to walk the streets at night. Doshi's title poem issues a defiant rallying call, reclaiming the darkness and speaking out for female victims of rape and murder across the world.
Sinead Morrissey - On Balance (Carcanet)
In this T.S. Eliot winning collection, the world hangs in the balance, poised between ecological and economic instability, addressing gender imbalances and celebrating Lilian Bland, the first-ever female pilot.
Vahni Capildeo - Venus as a Bear (Carcanet)
Former Forward Prize winner Vahni Capildeo breathes life into everything from inanimate museum artefacts to mythic women with her inimitable verve and innovation.
Carrie Etter - The Weather in Normal (Seren)
Resonant and moving poems encompassing the wild prairie lands of her native Normal, the vagaries of family life, ageing parents and loss.
Fiona Benson - Vertigo & Ghosts (Cape)
This unique take on the #Metoo zeitgeist casts the ancient Greek God Zeus as a serial rapist and challenges the dark misogyny inherent in history and the present day.
Rebecca Tamás - WITCH (Penned in the Margins)
A fierce, filthy, occult and obscene incantation for the modern feminist. These millennial spells cover everything from female equality and sex to UN resolutions.
Jane Yeh - Discipline (Carcanet)
Heart-breaking and hilarious, Jane Yeh's poems range through the sublime to the ridiculous, with bizarre cameos from lamas, tuxedo wearing cats, sausage dogs and meaty displays of foody imagery.
Lola Ridge - To the Many (Little Island Press)
Little Island Press brings this much neglected modernist back into the limelight. A revolutionary trans-national female voice who deserves to be heard!
Here are a few more for inspiration: Phoebe Power, Ramona Herdman, Meryl Pugh, Hannah Sullivan, Mary Jean Chan, Sophie Robinson, Marilyn Hacker, Elisabeth Sennitt Clough, Liz Berry, Ellen Hinsey, Jorie Graham and many more. There are so many more incredible women poets who we've championed recently in our PBS Selections but the list would be far too long to name them all! PBS Members get 25% off all these titles by following the links.