Reclaiming 20th Century Women Poets: Reversing the Rush to Oblivion (PAMLA Annual Conference)
San Francisco, CA
Organization: PAMLA
Event: PAMLA Annual Conference
In her 1992 anthology, American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Cheryl Walker proposes that the poets whose verse she collects share the stigma of “broad recognition” in their own time, followed by “almost total neglect.” In the spirit of the PAMLA conference theme, "Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion," this session will examine how this trajectory is not limited to Nineteenth Century U.S. women poets, but applies to Twentieth—and even Twenty-First?—Century women poets, as well. We invite proposals that explore the lives and work of women poets who had broad cultural recognition in their own time, but whose influence has since diminished (such as Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Gwendolyn Brooks); are there new ways of looking at such poets, or new information about their lives, that could help bring their achievements back into focus as relevant—even vital—for our times? Along with inviting proposals that aim to reframe the narrative about 20th Century women poets (individually or collectively), we also welcome proposals that consider how existing narratives about poetic schools or movements (such as Beat, Black Mountain, Confessional, New York, or Black Arts) could be reimagined if the women poets affiliated with them were considered as “major,” rather than as “minor” or “peripheral.”
https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19710
Meg Schoerke
