Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence
Cover Art by Elayne Safir
Selected for the Nebraska 150 Book List
The anthology Women Write Resistances: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013) views poetry as a transformative art. By deploying techniques to challenge narratives about violence against women and making alternatives to that violence visible, the over 100 women American poets in this anthology intervene in the ways gender violence is perceived in American culture. The critical introduction frames the intellectual work behind the building of the anthology by describing how poets break silence, disrupt narratives, and use strategic anger to resist for change. Poetry of resistance distinguishes itself by a persuasive rhetoric that asks readers to act. The anthology collects poems by Alicia Ostriker, Maureen Seaton, Judy Grahn, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Ellen Bass, Kristy Bowen, Allison Hedge Coke, Jehanne Dubrow, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Khadijah Queen, Hilda Raz, Evie Shockley, Margo Taft Stever, Judith Vollmer, Rosemary Winslow, and many, many more.
These poets write…with clear messages and great imperatives….
– Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
Praise for Women Write Resistance
WWR Dawes
One of the most pernicious forms of violence enacted against women is the silencing of those who have been violated and abused. The poems in Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence constitute a collective shout of alarm and defiance in the face of such silencing. The voices are rich in power, nuance, raw honesty, and unquestionable grace and beauty. This generous and ambitious anthology is a gathering of necessary and affirming poems written by some of the best poets writing in America today. – Kwame Dawes
WWR Kennedy
Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence is ideal for use in introductory and advanced Gender and Women’s Studies courses. The more than 100 poems give fresh insight into women’s experience of various types of violence– war, rape, domestic abuse, incest, intimidation— and their social contexts, while reflecting on root causes of violence, methods of resistance, and visions for a world without violence. The book reminds everyone that violence against women is still unfortunately a prominent part of our society, while giving tools that enhance understanding and resistance. - Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy
WWR Berns
Women Write Resistance draws us into a world of pain and oppression, but also hope. Words often fail to describe the violence women endure. However, through poetry, these women capture the trauma experienced by so many. The stories of abuse painted in the poems leave a haunting legacy and dare us to stand up against the violence. Their survival and courage to speak out gives us hope that change can happen. – Nancy Berns
WWR Darling
The act of writing is not typically viewed as an assertion of power or an articulation of authority. Putting pen to paper requires only a voice and an idea. However, the women included in this anthology do more than defy this long-entrenched logic…. the poems and poets included in Women Write Resistance work to display the activism of poetry and the power of the woman-poet. Wiseman’s anthology is a carefully constructed, masterfully executed, and necessary contribution to the study of women’s writing. –Kristina Marie Darling, Pleiades
WWR Gianotti
She urges us to read and write poetry that ‘makes things happen, or at the very least, had the potential to initiate action.’ …. Wiseman accurately opines the power of language, the most powerful weapon humankind has ever created, able to combat violence but equally able to inviolate….Her process results in a wonderful kaleidoscope of perspective…Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence must become the rule, not the exception; the action, not the obsolescence. – Joe Gianotti, Blotterature Literary Review
WWR Shoemaker
In compiling this collection, Laura Madeline Wiseman had a mission to bring the thematic subject of these poems — violence against women — into the spotlight where the public could not ignore what is too often private or ignored or pushed aside… Wiseman posits poets achieve change by writing poems that break the silence, raise awareness, disrupt established narratives, talk back to the predators and perpetrators, focus anger where it belongs, and serve as a call to change and to action. – Karen Shoemaker, Lincoln Journal Star
WWR Fleegal
Women Write Resistance… gives power back to victims, survivors, witnesses, and rescuers. They share their experiences from the safe places that support poem-making and from the trenches, both of which insist survival, even beauty, is yet possible. And they do it well, in poems memorable, moving, and crafted, literary. – Stacia Fleegal, Blood Lotus
Book Trailer
Related Links
- Article Spoon River Poetry Journal Blog
- Interview The Conversant
- Interview Pank
- Radio Nebraska Lit Girl Hour
- Interview Spoon River Poetry Review
- Newspaper Daily Nebraskan (Week Without Violence October 2013, Reading October 2013, Anthology Reading September 2013, Feature April 2013, )
- Nebraska 150 Books Goodreads
- Interview The Sundress Blog
- Interview Poetry Crush
- Interview Les Femmes Folles (August 2013, September 2014)
- Interview Wild Women Rising
- Interview Menacing Hedge
- Interview Poemeleon