Does Gallimard Publish Women Poets?

Yesterday's presentation of the conference volume Voi(es)xde l'autre: Poètes femmes XIXe-XXIe siècles (Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2010) at the Librairie Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris) was a joyful event. Patricia Godi-Tkatchouk, the editor, gave a synopsis of the book and the conference in Clermont-Ferrand that preceded it. This was followed by brief poetry readings from many of the poets included in the 52 page anthology that ends the volume ("Complainte de l'escargot" by Claire Malroux: "bavant des mots comme l'argent de personne"). The discussion period was also lively, as these photos demonstrate.

Apparently, the gossip about Gallimard Press is that it does not really desire to publish women poets. My own observation is that the otherwise excellent Anthologie bilingue de la Poésie Anglaise (Pléïade) includes only three women representing poetic creation after 1960, whereas the explosion of talented women poets writing during this period would demand a much larger contingent.

Marilyn Hacker lamented that there have been few anthologies of women's poetry published in France, although numerous volumes of this kind exist in the USA and in Great Britain. Until now, anthologies of women writing poetry in French have apparently been published in Canada more than in France...

Anthologies/Links

Marie-Claire Bancquart (ed.), Couleurs femmes: Poèmes de 57 femmes (Le Castor Astral, 2010).

Christine Planté (ed.), Femmes poètes du XIXe siècle: Une anthologie (PUL, 2010).

Erhan Turgut (ed.), Voix de femmes. Anthologie de femmes poètes et photographes du monde(Turquoise Editions, 2010).

Nicole Brossard (ed.), Anthologie : De la poésie des femmes au Québec des origines à nos jours (Rémue-Ménage, 2005).

Conseil international des femmes, Anthologie de la poésie féminine mondiale (Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 1973).

Guantanamo poems

Poetry, "a form that people turn to naturally in moments of crisis," as Andrew Motion explained in a Guardian audio (December 13, 2007), was written from within the Guantanamo prison.  An anthology of poems was collected and edited as Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak by Marc Falkoff (University of Iowa Press, 2007).  

You can listen to some of the poems here.

Listen to NPR features about Guantanamo here.

Robert Pinsky felt that the value of the poems came from their urgency, see link.

Reviews of the book include:

Yochi J. Dreazen, "The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher," the Wall Street Journal (June 20, 2007)

in the Independent (June 21, 2007)

Dan Chiasson, "Notes on Prison Camp" New York Times (August 19, 2007) also printed as "Poems from Guantanamo: the Detainees Speak," IHT (August 17, 2007)

John Lundberg, "Poems from Guantanamo Bay," Huffington Post (March 16, 2008)

100 and 101 Essential Modern Poems by Women

Reginald Gibbons (a poet who teaches at Northwestern University) favorably reviewed 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women in the Chicago Magazine (June 2008).  The book, edited by Joseph Parisi, former editor of Poetry, and Chicago author Kathleen Welton, gives comment on 100 poets.

Other anthologies of poetry written by woman abound, such as Germaine Greer (ed.) 101 Poems by 101 Women (Faber, 2001) reviewed by Adam Newey in New Statesman (December 2001).