ELLARAINE LOCKIE (from Sunnyvale, California)writes poetry, nonfiction, magazine articles/columns and children's stories. Well-published LOCKIE garners awards and has received 9 nominations for Pushcart Prizes in poetry. LOCKIE has four published chapbooks: Midlife Muse (Poetry Forum); Crossing the Center Line (Sweet Annie Press); Coloring Outside the Lines (The Plowman Press); and Finishing Lines (Snark Publishing). She teaches a poetry/writing workshop on the creative process for schools, writing groups and libraries. Ellaraine is also a professional papermaker who teaches workshops on the craft. Find more information about her books and workshops at
.
PS : to sponsor poetry
visit Poetry Sponsors
  |
ELLARAINE LOCKIE
Are Women Underrepresented in the Small Press?
When Charles Ries queried why there are so few women represented in the small press,
I didn't have a clue what he meant because that has been neither my personal experience
nor my observation. But then, I don't generally think in terms of gender, and maybe I
just hadn't noticed. The sociologist in me was curious, so I did a statistical analysis of
the last issues of publications that ran my work. Here are the results. (Contact me at
elockie@comcast.net for a list of the publications, if interested):
In 20 hard-copy publications, 374 women were represented and 334 men.
There were 13 men editors and 7 women editors.
In 15 online publications, 113 women were represented and 109 men.
There were 13 men editors and 10 women editors.
Of course, this is by no means a definitive study, as it reflects empirically only one
poet's work and style of submitting . Yet the publications are very diverse, and plenty
of responses to Charles" query support my findings. Liz Bradfield from Broadsided
says she has received a fairly even distribution of submissions from men and women.
Since her retirement, Rhina Espaillat reports a 'nice even balance between men and
women" among writers she encounters.
Lee Vowell, Editor of Underground Window, says it never seemed to him
there was a large minority of females in poetrydom. He's published over 150 poets,
and roughly 45% of them are female. To counterbalance that, John Amen, at
Pedestal Magazine, gets probably 60% submissions from females.
Ken Gurney, Editor for Tamafyhur Mountaion Poetry, reports that submissions
there split about 50/50 between men and women and that his acceptance rate is
about the same. At March Street Press, Editor Robert Bixby says that he, too,
gets a nice mixture of men and women. Jennifer VanBuren, Editor of
Mannequin Envy, says they get more submissions from men but publish about 50/50.
When Pris Campbell counted the poets in Mipo's last issue, she found more than
half of them to be female. During the nine years as poetry editor for Poetic Voices,
Ursula Gibson found no lack of submissions from either males or females. Ray Foreman,
publisher of Clark Street Review, has the same opinion about the small press in general.
Louis McKee at One Trick Pony, indicates that 60% of his blind submissions are from men,
but yet he tries to publish balanced issues .
Charles Coe says, " Maybe certain publications--either because of editorial focus or name
or whatever--just aren't appealing to women contributors. But I just don't see that as an
industry-wide issue. Charles take the issue one step further and informs us that, 'The
Council of Literary Presses and Magazines is a service organization for independent
publishers funded in part by the New York Council for Arts. If you go to their home
page (htp:www.clmp.org), click on the 'Member Directory" and poke around at random,
you'll see women editors and contributors all over the place."
A few editors indicate they do go out of their way to publish women's work, giving their
gender more exposure in the small press. editors CL Bledsoe, Jillian Meyer, and Donna
Epler at Ghoti Magazine say they 'solicit the hell out of female poets" because
they have learned that if they don't, female submissions drop.
Louis McKee at One Trick Pony indicates that 60% of his blind submissions are
from men, but yet he tries to publish balanced issues. Gordon Purkis, Mastodon Dentist
editor, says twice he's had to seek female submissions or the issues would have been
completely male dominated .
Karla Huston submitted an excerpt from an interview in Margie, The American Review
of Poetry, where she interviewed Stellasue Lee, editor of RATTLE. In the
interview, Stellasue tells of a writing workshop she conducted a few years ago with 39
women, after which she invited them to submit to RATTLE. She even called each
of them on the phone after the workshop with the invitation: 24 submitted work. Of course,
who knows if men would have reacted statistically different? Also, this interview took place
several years ago and may not result in the same consequences today.
Editor Jonathan Penton says if he didn't actively pursue submissions from female authors,
fewer and fewer would show. He goes on to say, 'To prevent UnlikelyStories.org
from becoming a complete boy's club, I try to publish a certain percentage of women
in every issue.'
Jonathan is also one of the few responding male editors who claimed to have a preference
for the 'masculine aesthetic." Joseph Farley at Cynic Press, who has published two books
by women and ten by men, says that maybe he too has an unconscious bias toward 'male
qualities" in writing. Louis McKee is another who identifies more with perceived male
writers" themes and points of view, although he believes, 'the good poems cannot be
denied, and the good, persistent poets will find an audience.'
But is this perceived gender subject preference the norm among male editors? I doubt it,
based again on my personal experience and observations. Of my four published collections,
two address women's menopausal years, and I found no reluctance in men editors to
publish the individual poems in these collections or to write enthusiastic and positive
reviews of them. Karla Huston reports that she also feels her work has never suffered
gender bias.
However, I believe the style of writing between men and women might affect
the quality of their poems and result in a different gender statistic. I know many excellent
women poets who pull away from using words like fuck or asshole when those words
are appropriate to the poems they're writing. It's as though they don't realize those words
are not a personal reflection on them but rather an accurate depiction of something or
someone they are depicting. Respondent Anita Wynn hit on this when she wrote,
'people seem to forget that a poet doesn't always use his/her own voice, and that the
speaker is not necessarily representing the writer.'
Even the opinion that women's subject matter drastically differs from that of men's is
open for debate, until it is scientifically studied. But several poet and editor respondents
feel that there exist definite gender content differences. In addition to the men mentioned
above, Ken Gurney notices it. He says, 'The majority of rants and experimental poetry
I receive as submissions are from men. The majority of healing, life affirming poetry
I receive is from women.'
There are also some women who express their affirmative opinions that gender content
differences exist. Ursula Gibson thinks that women's poetry deals more with their life
circumstances and their relationships and men's more with protest, anger or politics.
Laura Stamps feels the reason she gets a much higher rate of acceptance from magazines
that are edited by women is simply because she writes about what interests them. She
says, 'Men tend to write about. . . their current depression, bars, heavy drinking, their
girlfriends/wives or the one that just dumped them" and that they are more likely than
women to curse or write about feminine topics like nature. Laura also thinks that most
of the women poets who get published a lot in the small press do so because they write
'like men." However, Ania Wynn says her 'masculine style" has been a constant criticism.
On the other hand, Gordon Purkis prefers women's writing. He thinks it's superior in
many ways and says that the highest percentage of 'junk" coming to Mastodon Dentist
is from men who don't know when to quit.
True, there are some responders who either just accept Charles" assumption that
women are underrepresented in the small press or who enthusiastically agree with it,
making this topic one of complexity and one ripe for a full-fledged study. (Too bad
I left sociology for poetry.) One conclusion that I strongly draw from these responses,
however, is that the number of published women in the small press has increased
dramatically in the past few years.
Rosemary Cappello from Philadelphia Poets best summarizes this with her
publishing history. She tells us: 'When I first started writing poetry back in the 70s,
I received enough acceptances to encourage me, but here are some of the rejections
I'll never forget. 'Why don't you try the women's section of the newspaper?" 'Your
poem is quite acceptable, but in it, you mention a famous woman. If you change her
name to a [certain famous] man's, I'll publish it." She goes on to say that when she first
founded, edited and published Philadelphia Poets in 1980, she received
more poetry from men than from women. However, now she receives an equal amount
of poetry from women, and in her next issue, women will have the edge.
We women have clearly come a long way in the small press world, and there's no reason
to think the journey is slowing. Mostly what I see indicates that we are at least close
to an overall satisfactory 50/50 publication percentage with our men poetry friends.
We're all in this world of poetry together, and some good advice in these varied query
responses came eloquently from Rhina Espaillat, who says, 'Certainly there's a need to
watch out for injustices and under-representations in any field, but the sooner we can
move away from that to a consideration of artists as artists, undifferentiated by sex,
religion, national origin, political ideology or any other such category, the more we can
concentrate on doing what we do as well as we possibly can, and judging the resulting
work on its own merits.'
Charles Potts sums up perhaps the best and most succinct conclusion to the matter
when he says, 'Write well and forget your gender."
Copyright 3006, all rights retained by the poet |
 |
|
|
|
