Poetry and Everyday Sexism

This thesis is a creative-critical examination of the challenges and opportunities that arise when using lyric poetry to explore experiences of everyday sexism and female desire, as well as how they intersect. Although many contemporary poets have written about more extreme forms of trauma, abuse and gender-based violence, it is only recently that poets have started to write about experiences of sexism in a direct manner, despite it being wide-spread and prevalent in society. This project addresses this gap through a portfolio of poetry which explores how experiences of everyday sexism can be represented in poetic practice, and through a critical illumination of the interplay between female desire and sexism. Through creative-critical practice, this project explores the ways in which lyric poetry, balanced between public and private discourse, might play a part in moving beyond merely naming the problem of sexism and instead become part of a movement for individual and social change. The thesis is a reader-directed text. It consists of fourteen sections of prose, seven groups of poems and four individual poems. Although it can be read in a linear fashion, and will make sense when approached in this way, the reader is invited to make their way through the thesis by using a series of textual signposts to follow desire paths through the text, deciding as they go along what they would like to read next. Using bricolage methodology to draw on a range of theories including feminist, film and lyric theory, this format reflects the process of the research and is a physical embodiment of how the creative and critical texts grew out of and into conversation with each other. The female gaze and what we choose to look at and whom we address in poetry is a theme that underpins the creative and critical work. The project utilizes performative auto-ethnography, drawing on Judith Butler’s theories around address and Luce Irigaray’s concept of the ‘between-us’ to reflect on the process and performance of the creative and critical work. This enables an exploration of how engaging with everyday sexism and female desire in lyric poetry can create a radical space for the process of individual and societal transformation