Abstract
The lyric was the dominant mode of poetry in this post-war period but was particularly challenging for women due to the critical establishment’s scepticism towards eliding ‘woman’ with ‘poet’. We find poets struggling to grasp an individual female subjectivity, to reconcile their identities as writers and wives, mothers or spinsters, and thus to find a personal voice that was authentic. Additionally, literary women defined themselves against the weakest practitioners of the lyric who tended to conservative or trite formalism. The most dynamic poets often eschewed the lyric in favour of a dramatic persona by which to vent their concerns about social injustices or global turbulence. A few daringly fictionalised the first person pronoun to explore female identity. Some poets disrupted the lyric form altogether as a means to disturb and find a place within a male-dominated lyric tradition. This chapter also records the scarce but brave public poems and skilful uses of a narrative voice that warrant more recognition in the annals of this period’s literary activity.
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Notes
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Dowson, J. (2017). Lyric, Narrative and Performance in Poetry. In: Hanson, C., Watkins, S. (eds) The History of British Women’s Writing, 1945–1975. History of British Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-47736-1_3
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