Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Bishop
-
Standard Name: Bishop, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Bishop
Pseudonym: Mr Margolies
EB
, a leading US poet of the later twentieth century, published six volumes of poetry during her lifetime, of which several collect writing already published. Her prose included translations, essays, a travel book, and scintillating personal letters. Her fellow-poet Anne Stevenson
calculates her total output at fewer than a hundred poems, including prose poems, of which Bishop herself would have accepted by no means all as worthy or finished. Yet her impact has been extraordinary.
Stevenson, Anne. “The Geographical Mirror”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 31-41.
31
Scholar Linda Anderson
argues that EB
has had unprecedented significance . . . for a younger generation of British poets.
Anderson, Linda. “Introduction”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 7-11.
When MMC
first started writing, she focused her efforts on critical reviews and essays. While still at Vassar
she started a rebel literary magazine, Con Spirito, with two of her classmates, Frani Blough
and...
Author summary
Medbh McGuckian
MMG
, who lives in Northern Ireland, is well-regarded among contemporary poets writing in English. She began by writing a very private and reserved poetry. Using images from the home and from nature, she explored...
Reception
Medbh McGuckian
Single Ladies was most enthusiastically reviewed by Anne Stevenson
in the Times Literary Supplement. She judged MMG
's talent too original to be spoiled by the praise or misunderstanding of critics: her successes are...
Residence
Elaine Feinstein
By the time the Feinsteins were married they were living in rooms above the bridge in Mill Road, Cambridge (where Arnold was now doing a PhD). Before their first son was born they moved to...
Residence
Jo Shapcott
JSgrew up in a new town, Hemel Hempstead, which she felt to be a disadvantage for a young writer. There were absolutely no vowel meadows (as in Elizabeth Bishop
's Nova Scotia); instead,...
Textual Features
Anne Stevenson
In the title-poem, each of five stanzas ends with a version of the first closing lines: we thought we were living now, / but we were living then.
Stevenson, Anne. Selected Poems, 1956-1986. Oxford University Press.
Despite the strong emotion expressed in some of these poems, AS
later remembered the volume as setting free her gift for irony.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
126
The final poem, A Legacy, On my Fiftieth Birthday, is written...
Textual Features
Ruth Padel
RP
takes the journey as the most central of all poetic images. The first part of her book is a guide to reading poetry, divided under headings of which many include the words journey,...
Textual Features
Adrienne Rich
AR
focusses on such authors as Lorraine Hansberry
and Elizabeth Bishop
; on women's roles in academia; and on the shaping of the subjectivities of lesbian, Jewish, and other minority women in America.
Textual Features
Carol Rumens
In her introduction CR
calls for quality and professionalism. Those women writers, she says, who have been concerned with the stern art of poetry as an end in itself have tended to be swamped by...
Textual Production
Anne Stevenson
AS
published Between the Iceberg and the Ship (whose title comes from Elizabeth Bishop
), a volume which harvests twenty years of essays and lectures.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
preface
Textual Production
Bryher
Desmond MacCarthy
had launched Life and Letters in June 1928; it issued its last number this month, and Bryher's new publication first appeared in September. It merged it with the London Mercury after May 1939...
Textual Production
Elaine Feinstein
EF
says her fiction and poetry come from different parts of herself: the voice, the cadences, the rhythms are very different. She sees fiction as involving impersonation of other people.
Pacernick, Gary. Meaning and Memory: Interviews with Fourteen Jewish Poets. Ohio State University Press.
180
For the craft of...
Textual Production
Anne Stevenson
AS
retains her belief in poetry's need and capacity to reach out to elusive reality, to the ahuman, wordless world.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
173
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
170-1
She keeps an Ongoing Anthology, a loose-leaf folder with copies of...
