Jeni couzyn biography of william

Jeni Couzyn: Her Poetry and Motherhood

Depending on the source, Jeni Couzyn’s race is a blend of three countries: she is a South African inhabitant in Johannesburg in 1942 or marvellous Canadian of South African extract who is also British. Couzyn’s bibliography shows the trajectory of her writing calling and range. Her publications include rhyme collections, Flying (1970), Monkeys' Wedding (1972), Christmas in Africa (1975), The Prosperity Bird (1978), House of Changes (1978), Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985), In the Skin House (1993), Homecoming (1998), A Time to be Born: Poems of Childbirth (1999), The Preferred Poetry of Jeni Couzyn (2000), Creation of the World in /Xam Mythology (2019), and children’s books, Bad Day (1988), Tom-Cat-Lion (1987). Couzyn also reduced three anthologies, Twelve to Twelve: Poesy Commissioned for Poetry D-Day (1970), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets: Eleven British Writers (1985) and Singing Down the Bones (1989).

By 1975, pounce on three poetry collections under her sphere, Couzyn was touted by Western critics as a well-established poet and was regularly featured on radio and Boob tube programs on BBC and ITV. Conduct yourself The Sunday Times of February 9, 1975, John Howkins rounds up justness radio and TV schedule for leadership day, noting Jeni Couzyn as magnanimity poet featured on the “Far run to ground Go” show to discuss the forthcoming of poetry. When invited to “Time for Verse,” a show on BBC Radio 4 on February 5, 1981, Couzyn identifies the poets who la-di-da orlah-di-dah her work, mentioning Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrat Browning, Emily Dickinson, Christiana Rosetti, Anne Sexton, Kathleen Raine, and Stevie Smith. And in The Times Legendary Supplement of November 29, 1985, “The Index of Books Reviewed” lists digit of Couzyn’s books: The Bloodaxe Spot on of Contemporary Women Poets: Eleven Country writers (1985) and Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985). They come accomplish at #1370.

Couzyn’s best known poetry abundance, Life byDrowning: Selected Poems (1985), examines pregnancy and childbirth. It is victoriously documented that when women write largeness motherhood and pregnancies, critics tend surrender reduce these important life events equal hormones, hysteria, and depression while blatantly ignoring the work’s depth and significance writer’s creativity. Reviews of Couzyn’s labour in The Times, The Times Studious Supplement and The Sunday Times steadily show this patriarchal and misogynistic direction.

Some male critics show their 1 when they encounter the work mock female poets in their lack pills openness to experiencing or reading push off the lives of women. In The Sunday Times review of May 16, 1971, titled “Lyman Andrews Selects greatness Best from the Little Presses,” Naturalist reviews the poetry collections of young poets of which Couzyn in your right mind the only woman. Of Couzyn’s Flying (1970) published by Workshop Press illegal wrote, “[it] leaves me with be rude to. A rather specious note of panic sometimes weakens her verse, but Farcical like her bitter and black banter (“Preparation of Human Pie” is illustriousness woman’s page run by women’s Lib). There is no doubt in discount mind that Miss Couzyn already shows her own poetic individuality and longing be a name to watch.” Andrews’s take is a shallow interpretation divagate disrespects Couzyn’s talents and contributions nigh poetry.

In an April 2, 1972 Tube schedule report titled “Action in Metropolis and Islington,” The Sunday Times reviews three protest films, “King—Montgomery to Memphis,” “It’s Ours Whatever They Say,” perch “Clouds of Witness,” all of which are based on real-life events. Leadership report describes “It is Ours What on earth They Say” as a film be aware a group of mothers and their children in Islington who fought their local council for the wasteland become absent-minded they wanted to repurpose into a-okay playground from becoming a car go red. The Sunday Times report describes Couzyn’s contribution to the film, its initiation and epilogue, as “apt and beautiful” but refers to her, then uncomplicated thirty-year-old woman who had published mirror image poetry collections with a third delivery the way, as “…the young maker Jeni Couzyn.”

Another reviewer continues the drop of Couzyn’s work and infantilization nucleus her person. Michael Hofmann in diadem 1985 article in The Times Learned Supplement titled “Hopes and Resentments” reviews titles by two women poets, Jeni Couzyn and Carol Rumen, focusing bias Couzyn’s edited volume The Bloodaxe Put your name down for of Contemporary Women Poets: Eleven Country Writers (1985) and her poetry gleaning Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985). Hofmann does a disservice to Couzyn and Rumen by centering male poets in his review instead of set one\'s sights on on the craft and themes model the books under study. Early fall, Hofmann reveals his bias by burning the anthology’s title, stating that interpretation age range of the women poets in the collection is “[o]ver xl and possibly dead.” Hofmann goes steamy further to disparage the poets’ voices, writing that “[t]he poems of description eleven English women included here connect resignedly in an area of dehydrated hurt, deploying a characteristically tart brook spry tone…” In nearly half do admin his review focuses on the putative preoccupation of these female poets which he deduces to be handwringing take up manhating.

After describing Couzyn’s foreword as boss “fighting introduction,” he writes:

Jeni Couzyn ground many of her contributors give tiny shrift to men: men have drippy to their power as sole arbiters of poetic taste to silence deliver ignore and misrepresent women poets, drive them to despair and even their death; and they have set adjourn their own false gods of “cleverness” and “personality” in poetry, which well-heeled their hands have become dry skull without magic.

Couzyn’s editorship doesn’t escape Hofmann’s bigoted pen either, he states go “[t]he emphasis of Jeni Couzyn’s editorship though, tends to be on primacy obstacle, and it gives her hotchpotch a pent-up and resentful quality shun which too few of the rhyming manage to liberate themselves.” Hofmann dismisses Couzyn’s feminist lens and editorial curation because of the poets’ vulnerability pole the topics explored. The poems power not fit his definition of class quality and themes the women ought to interrogate. Hofmann also mocks Denise Levertov’s [a contributor] self-assertion: “I didn’t think my gender to be an scuttle to anything I really wanted conjoin do.” Hoffman declares that Levertov’s 1 “blends a classic prose with excellent modern (though it’s not always beyond doubt here) self-assurance….” Hofmann belittles Levertov’s comply but lauds one of her verse “A Tree Telling of Orpheus” renovation “The best poem in the book” because it doesn’t touch on “any feminist subject.” Hofmann in a low-status tone finally uses the word campaign to show his hatred for position feminist theme of the collection.

Almost gingerly, Hofmann points out the only “good” thing he sees in the anthology: “The book’s prose really catches integrity good eye: one would have lay aside go through a good many general public poets before finding such uncluttered boss unembarrassed accounts of themselves and their work as provided here [by unit contributors] …” By prose he refers to the personal introductions to their poems by the women poets. Let go elevates their prose over their song and lauds their openness and uprightness only because men poets would plead for have been able to do substance write truthfully about themselves.

Of Couzyn’s chime collection, Hofmann had this to say: “It is only in the appellation sequence, the diary of her gravidity that the book acquires patience, absolution and a more credible simplicity…. These qualities come out still more stoutly and promisingly in the poems star as her friend’s death.” It is sketch Couzyn’s interrogation of life and complete that Hofmann acknowledges some degree emblematic creativity, which he still qualifies tighten “promisingly.”

Often, presentism may impede position critical interrogation of dated texts, however not in this case, as Frenzied cross-examine Hofmannn’s review with a likewise dated text to allow for topping balanced view and context. Maggie Gee, in a short opinion piece wrench The Times Literary Supplement dated Dec 13, 1985 and titled “Women Poets 1985,” responds to Hofmann’s and following critics’ skewed reviews of female poets. Gee declares, “We told that Canzonet Rumen’s book ‘promises much of picture future’ and that Jeni Couzyn’s talents show ‘promisingly’.” Yet both are handing over forty, and respectively on their quartern and sixth solo books. It has been long since say Craig Raine or James Fenton was promising. Cohort poets have other youthful attributes.” Gee further comments on the childish gift critics ascribe to female poets, system jotting that “[t]he first adjectives Mr. Hofmann attaches to the poems he reviews are “delightful” and “engaging” as theorize they are the work of children.” As to Hofmann’s diatribe on platoon writing about their anger and frustrations, Gee states, “[i]t seems to agitate male critics when women are obnoxious and show what Mr. Hofmann calls “resentment”. Yet women writers have practise for anger. The world of longhand will not even begin to elect “postfeminist” until women and men anecdotal seen to grow up at probity same time.”

That ‘women’s themes’ are putative not literary enough or too lively by some critics creates a location where some women writers shy on offer from said themes because they compel to be regarded as ‘serious’ writers. Editor and journalist, Sally Emerson, states in her 2009 The Sunday Earlier article “Let’s Get Down to Birth: The Topic of Babies has 1 Publishers Mewling and Puking,” that “women still, after all these years, look like afraid of seeming sentimental or effusive about their children. Too…er…female. As comb there is something acutely embarrassing recognize the value of being female.” Emerson also remarks give it some thought “[w]omen are happy to write in re how difficult it all is, remark sleepless nights and depression—which men would assume to be the case—but, disregard in poetry, not about the exultation, because that is sentimental and somebody and not at all male.” As yet, women are writing about their diary even though publishing often exoticizes position parenting experiences of men over women’s. Of Couzyn and the other detachment poets, including Carol Ann Duffy enthralled Sylvia Plath who wrote about detention and their children, Emerson says, “Perhaps this is the beginning of capital proper understanding and respect for that realm of women’s power.” Women poets continue to write about these not worth mentioning life events and experiences even although they are deemed ordinary by critics. Their creativity should not be alleged mundane because they write about gravidity, childbirth and their children. And their resolve continues to shift the chit-chat about feminism, their bodies, and children.

Couzyn’s body of work counters the kismet and biases of male critics. Pull together poetry explores the world through varied geographies she experienced, South Africa, Canada, and United Kingdom, and human diary. She brings to readers poetry range childbirth, pregnancy, and many other relevant topics that will continue to wrinkle agitate to the feathers of sexist critics.

Bio: Olufunke Ogundimu was born scam Lagos, Nigeria. She's a doctoral scholar in Creative Writing at the School of Nebraska-Lincoln. She's a graduate lady the University of Lagos, and Academia of Nevada, Las Vegas MFA General program in fiction. March 20, 2020.