Thursday, August 05, 2021

Shane McCrae jubilat

"In 1987, Poetry Ireland Review published an article titled, “Who is Ireland’s Most Neglected Poet – A Survey.” Though the introduction to the article states confidently that they put the question to ‘a wide range of Irish poets – of both sexes and several generations,’ while the latter appears to be true, the former is most certainly not. Out of the twenty-two respondents, precisely zero were women. Each of these respondents picked one or two poets to champion. Out of their choices, precisely zero were women. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be a woman poet at this time and feel so extraordinarily excluded from this discourse and, ironically, neglected in every possible sense." Victoria Kennefick Kenyon Review