Poems From the Women's Movement

         On Wednesday, September 16th, the UMass Amherst Everywoman’s Center co-sponsored an event with Amherst College’s English Department, Creative Writing Program and Women’s Studies Program, Smith College’s Women and Gender Studies Department and Poetry Center, and the Massachusetts Review. The event entitled “Poems from the Women’s Movement,” held at Amherst College, was hosted by Ellen Miller-Mack, a faculty member at Amherst College. This event celebrated the book of the same title, which has been recommended by Oprah’s Book Club. The room was full and the audience listened with rapt attention, murmuring approval as the presenters read.

           The editor of “Poems from the Women’s Movement,” Honor Moore, was the first speaker at the reading.  Moore has edited many other poetry books, biographies, and translations and taught at three universities in New York. She explained that she created this book because, after Sylvia Plath published “Ariel” in 1982, more women began writing poetry than ever before. Moore wanted to unite a sample of their poems so that they would provide inspiration and encouragement for other forthcoming female poets. Moore then read one of her own poems from 1972 which had never been printed in any of her books. It was called “Polemic Number 1” and it began,

       “This is a poem to say write poems women

         Because I want to read them.”

Moore’s poem continued to discuss the destructiveness of the widespread “Male Approval Desire” that plagues many women. She read vehemently and powerfully but at the same time her voice sounded beautiful and lyrical.

              Other readers at the event were Joan Larkin, co-founder of lesbian feminist press Out & Out books whose book “My Body: New and Selected Poems” received the Publishing Triangle’s 2008 Audre Lorde Award. Catherine Champion, Laura Deutsch, Lysette Navarro, Rachel Ruskin,Yolanda Scavron and students from the 5-Colleges also read selected poems from “Poems from the Women’s Movement.” In addition, Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, the daughter of Audre Lorde read one of her mother’s poems and two others. She said that when she used to go to her mother’s readings as a young girl, she would see that sometimes the room was dead and sometimes it was alive. She looked at her audience and said, “This room is alive.”

              The next event in this series will be a showing of the film, “Who Does She Think She Is” at the Augusta Savage Gallery in New Africa House at UMass, on September 30th at 7pm. This movie addresses issues such as the disparity between the amount of female artists and the amount of art by female artists that is displayed in galleries, and the difficulties of choosing family, art or both. This is portrayed through concentration on the lives of five female artists from all around the country and the struggles they face. This event is free to the public and is wheelchair accessible. For more information, visit the Everywoman’s Center website or call 413-545-0883.

9/21/09

Sierra Simmons

srsimmon@student.umass.edu