For International Women’s Day this year, we asked a few of our favourite poets and writers to spotlight some favourite works by women.
Salena Godden, Alice Frecknall, Harry Josephine Giles, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, Fran Lock and Lisa Luxx share some books they love — from M. NourbeSe Philip, Sylvia Pankhurst and Zora Neale Hurston, to Patricia Smith, Jos Charles and Caroline Bird; firmly situated in history, in protest, in joy and in craft, we hope you find something you need here:
Lisa Luxx
Two of my favourite collections include Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's Water & Salt (Red Hen Press. UK stockist: Blackwells) which so sensitively writes of grief, ritual, war and the identity of meal time from the perspective of the Arab diaspora. Writing from the position of displacement is always tricky and uneasy to navigate, but Lena does so in such a moving and powerful voice; every line is bone clean, every word impeccable. It is potently political in its softest moments.
The other I would like to celebrate is Keisha Thompson's Lunar (Commonword Books) which explores the Black British experience, masculinity and mental health in the language of maths. This book taught me the absolute boundlessness of poetry - how poems really are our best way to forge new languages. On international women's day I think it's important to recognize we have that capacity to forge our own symbols, that liberation is a code we're writing in our own tongue.
Fran Lock
My militant feminist reading list currently includes Smokestack Books' Writ on Cold Slate: poems by Sylvia Pankhurst, with photographs by Norah Smyth. Sylvia Pankhurst's literary fate is metonymic for any struggle with working-class solidarity as its object. History has preferred to focus on her mother and sister, and on the activities of WSPU, who – lest we forget – were solely interested in gaining the vote for middle, upper-class, and property owning women. The poems in this collection, in print for the first time since 1922! attest to Pankhurst's unrelenting activism, her deep sense of socialist solidarity, and her incredible empathetic reach. They're also good, combining the heightened lyric style of Christina Rossetti with an unflinching documentary witness to the brutality of prison life.
I've also been obsessed with Kenning Editions' Grenade in Mouth: Some Poems of Miyó Vestrini (transl. Anne Boyer & Cassandra Gillig) (UK stockists: Blackwells) since it first appeared in 2019. Often insultingly miscategorised as the 'Venezuelan Sylvia Plath', death doesn't so much haunt as commands Vestrini's poems. These are poems without catharsis or accommodation, of hilarious, dark, and gloriously untempered discontent.
I was given the gift of reading alongside Nicole Sealey in February this year. Her work was previously unknown to me, but wow! I ordered Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017) off the strength of that reading, and I'm still being knocked sideways by it. This is a poet who uses every possible poetic resource to stage a bravura engagement with both trauma, and with tenderness.
Harry Josephine Giles
Feeld by Joe Charles (Milkweed)
Feeld takes the English language apart and puts it back together in a way that speaks and sings and mourns and hopes. It gave me melodies for writing towards myself, and a language to be in community with. Extract: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90970/from-feeld
of sirens, body & faultlines by Nat Raha (Boiler House Press)
A book of prophecy and resistance, a writing through of years of struggle -- both struggle against and struggle for, struggle as life and for life. The words make noises and tears around the page; when I read them I can hear Nat's sonically furious and beautiful performances.
Extract: https://eoagh.com/nat-raha/
The Stone Age by Jen Hadfield (Picador)
I feel deep kinship with the stones Jen writes about and the voice she writes in and for: they are northern stones we both know and love. When I read these poems I cried in recognition, aloud, and for being a voice trying to find voice with the islands.
Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa
Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip (Wesleyan Poetry)
Whenever I feel haunted by historical narratives pertaining to my ancestors I often look to Zong! for guidance and a spiritual hug. M. NourbeSe Philip composed form to masterfully reveal the laments, curses and chants of the 150 Africans murdered on the Zong in 1781. The orchestration of the language is genius and as someone who is obsessed with making words dance on the page I admire the tenacity of this masterpiece.
(Silver Press published a UK edition in 2020, but it looks hard to get hold of now — it seems to be available via Blackwells)
Voyage of the Sable Venus and other poems by Robin Coste Lewis (Knopf)
When aliens invade Earth or we must flee to Mars due to an asteroid, etc this is one of the collections I will pack before I pack a pair of socks. This collection is proof that Black women existed were present throughout history, by excavating Black women in art work from ancient civilisations (including Greek) to the present. The poetry is astonishing, every single line is perfection. Other poetry collections were staring at me rudely in heaps of dust because I refused to put Lewis’ work down.
Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith (Bloodaxe)
A masterclass in form and writing with great eloquence to provoke compassion and empathy. This collection focuses on the horrors inflicted on the black community and the murder of Emmett Till. The collection challenged my writing about trauma and inspired me to keep questioning the narrative seeing the event from different angles. I love collections which are constantly teaching in that you never read the same thing twice, like a performance.
Salena Godden
The Sound Mirror by Heidi James (Bluemoose Books)
Such a powerful and profoundly moving novel spanning three generations of women and choice and courage.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston (HQ / Harper Collins)
A great new collection of short stories for a new generation of Hurston fans! Iconic!
Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan (Penguin. On bookshop.org.uk here)
Deliciously dark and haunting, the feelings and images stick in your head forever. It is also a love letter to Edinburgh, which I adore.
Alice Frecknall
I haven’t found reading easy this year. When the first lockdown hit, my brain just didn’t seem able to do it anymore. I would pick up a novel I was halfway through, turn the pages, follow the text, and when it came to closing the book, I wouldn’t recall any of it. But where prose seemed to leave me, poetry stayed. I’ve taken joy and comfort in discovering new poems or revisiting old favourites to sit with them some more. There have been many incredible collections by women poets published in the last couple of years alone. Picking just three is no easy task, but for their emotional power, playfulness, and vulnerability, these are the ones I’ve read more than any over the last twelve months. And I know I’ll continue to read them for many years to come:
Flèche by Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber)
On first reading Flèche, I described it as a ‘gift for the soul’, which may sound hyperbolic but the poems in this collection really do feel like openings into rooms of honest emotion. (available here)
The Air Year by Caroline Bird (Carcanet)
A wonderful fusion of playfulness and pain, in their surrealism each poem cuts right to the truth of feeling and delivers a powerful gut-punch when you least expect (in the best possible way!)
Shine, Darling by Ella Frears (Offord Road Books)
This collection feels like an intimate conversation. The poems layer profound, at times unsettling, revelations with moments of quiet mundanity; each one existing in full colour.
A note on book-buying: All titles above are linked to purchase direct from publishers (in parentheses), where these publishers are non-UK-based we’ve included a link to Bookshop.org.uk (where we are not affiliates and receive no click-through income) or, failing that, an alternative UK-based stockist.
If you’d like to support your local independent bookshop directly, that would be fantastic and where they don’t stock a title they can usually order it in for you. There’s a fantastic resource here with a map of indie bookshops near you.