The exclusion of women from full participation in many aspects of Australian society in the past is well-known and documented: government legislation was needed in the 1880s and 90s to allow married women to own property in their own right, for women to vote and stand as candidates in elections in 1902, and to allow married women to be permanently employed by the Commonwealth government as late as 1966 culminating in the more general equal employment and education provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984. The poetry community was not immune from such discrimination: in the post-war period until the 1990s most poetry editors of literary journals, anthologists, advisers to publishers and reviewers were male, and some male poets held several of these influential roles concurrently, including appointments to the Commonwealth Literary Fund advisory board and later, the Literature Board which allocated publication subsidies and individual grants. While the gender…
Anthologies and the Amazonian Phalanx: Publication of Australian Female Poets from the 1940s
Abstract
This article discusses the extent to which female poets in Australia were disadvantaged by the predominance of male anthologists from the 1940s until recently. Through their actions many male anthologists, whether they were conscious of their bias or not, discriminated against female poets, often believing firmly in their own judgements about ‘quality’. Virginia Woolf’s personification of the patriarchy as Professor von X is still found in this period in the pronouncements of male anthologists who confuse their judgement of quality with an absolute truth, rather than understanding it as a matter of personal preference. However, ground-breaking female anthologists such as Kate Jennings, Susan Hampton, Kate Llewellyn, Jennifer Strauss and Susan Lever were able to identify strong work by many female poets, suggesting that many male anthologists were unconsciously discounting the work of female poets or favouring the work of male poets because they were men. From 1975, the publication of a number of women-only anthologies, particularly those by mainstream publishers, brought attention to the many female poets and the different voices and subjects they brought to their poetry, and compelled future anthologists to at least consider the female poets published in them. There has been a demonstrable upswing in the percentage of female poets included in mainstream anthologies since the appearance of the early women-only anthologies.
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Published 25 May 2024 in Volume 39 No. 1. Subjects: Australian Women Poets, Australian poetry, Feminist literature & writers, Gender - Literary portrayal, Literary canon, Poetry anthologies.
Cite as: Shapley, Maggie. ‘Anthologies and the Amazonian Phalanx: Publication of Australian Female Poets from the 1940s.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2024, doi: 10.20314/als.ba3b413ce2.
- Maggie Shapley — Dr Maggie Shapley is a Canberra scholar and poet whose poems have been published in various literary journals and anthologies.Full details →