I’ve told the story
before, of how I went to QUB wanting to be a writer. (Actually I already was a
writer, albeit a fledgling one. I had been writing stories and poems for as
long as I could remember. When I was in sixth form, I had won the Belfast Telegraph Short
Story Competition.) Yet, when I emerged from university in the late 1970’s, I
had stopped writing and lost all confidence. I no longer thought that I had anything
of value to say; never mind the ability to say it. I was silenced.
During my time at
university there was no-one to look to. No women poets that I could find as
contemporary references in NI. There was no sense from anyone I spoke to that a
woman could be a serious poet. I felt it was stupid of me to have thought I
could. This was despite me considering myself a feminist. There wasn’t even
anything creative about the degree; no ‘creative writing’ option. I moved on to postgraduate study in a completely different area of life.
I have blamed
the university for my silence and I have also blamed myself – for not being braver,
cleverer, more tenacious.
Well over a decade had
passed before I allowed myself to consider re-visiting my ambition to be write
poems; though in the meantime I had continued to scribble bits and pieces that
didn’t see the light of day. Second time around there were supports in place,
put there by women who were more tenacious than me, Joan Newmann, Ruth Carr,
people determined to have women’s voices heard. There were writers’ groups that
allowed a platform for everyone, with great tutors like Damian Gorman and
Martin Mooney. I will always be grateful to those who encouraged and supported
me at that stage and to both Lapwing Press and Lagan Press who opened the doors
to publication.
All this is by way of
a preamble to draw attention to a very interesting academic paper from Alex
Pryce – Ambiguous Silences? Women in
Anthologies of Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry
When I came across it
recently, I was able to see myself in the historical context of the NI of my
youth. It allowed me to put my experience in context and to understand more
fully why I felt the way I did. It saddened me, but in a strange way reassured
me that it wasn’t just my own inability that held me back. It validated the
sense I had as a twenty year old woman, that I was expected to not expect
anything, to just shut up. Almost four decades later, it validates the truth my
experience.
See what you think.
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