Washing Windows Too: Irish Women Write Poetry has recently been published by Arlen House and is available from Books Upstairs. It contains 100 new poems, selected by co-editors Alan Hayes and Nuala O'Connor, by women who have not yet published a full collection. It is the successor to Washing Windows? which was published in 2017.
Alan Hayes’ preface on ‘Poetry, Power and Privilege’ makes for very interesting reading. In it he details the inequality of opportunity between male and female poets. He writes that 'from the 1950s onwards, conservative powerbrokers chose to champion their male peers, and in most instances female voices were silenced.' He believes that women authors today owe a debt of gratitude to Catherine Rose (founder of Arlen House, Ireland's first feminist press), Dr Margaret Mac Curtain (feminist activist and seer), and Eavan Boland. Apparently, Eavan Boland travelled Ireland in the ‘80s giving workshops to women. One woman didn’t want to ‘go public’ as a poet because her neighbours would think she didn’t wash her windows. Hayes calls for a more open, independent and honest arts world.
I'd like to thank Nuala O'Connor for her introduction, 'A Voice Answering a Voice'. She opens
'...let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves' Mary Oliver wrote in her poem 'Wild Geese', and what a pleasure it is for a reader to see what subjects new poets love enough - feel urgently enough about - to be moved to create poetry.
What subjects these are, you'll have to have the joy of discovering for yourself within the pages. I was more than delighted to get a mention in the introduction (along with many others) in the same paragraph as Virginia Woolf's Orlando. It was a book I read in my late teens and I've never really recovered from Woolf's soaring stream of consciousness and oft beautiful imagery. She left an indelible mark on me. She's still one of the most stylish writers out there.
Available to order here.
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