Provided that we open our eyes and look at history concerning written poetry, we shall come across the reality that poetry has no father. Poetry has a mother. Enheduanna is his name. Who was born two and a half thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ himself?
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| Photo: Kireyonok_Yuliya |
She is a poet, a woman. He is so far considered the first poet in the history of this world.
But if you are asked to visualize a poet, it is not usually the image of a woman that crops up in your mind. The term poet comes into our mind; basically, a picture of a man comes to mind.
Even if you were asked to name 10 women poets of your time, you usually cannot answer quickly. I can't actually.
But the moment I wrote the two words together 'feminine poet', haven't we ever written 'male poet' separately in the case of male poets? can't recall Or have we assumed that the word 'poet' is a gender-specific property, and women are equal sharers of that property!
So if a poet is a woman from a social or physical gender position, we still have to remind ourselves as a poet before we acknowledge him, that this poet is essentially a woman.
We are not yet habituated to visualize women as poets, and enslaved to this habit, our brains have evolved many myths of their own. Among this, there is a widespread myth - "Women can't write poetry".
Historical reality is hidden in the source of any myth, myth is only a popular entertainment medium to propagate and spread it.
I won't get into the debate of whether or not women can really write poetry while explaining the myth. That would be hypocrisy directly related to the history of poetry.
I am just here to state some facts. After saying that, like any refugee, I will leave for an unknown destination.
The reality is that be it in the fields of literature or any other, women lag behind, and this is one reality that the 21st century cannot turn a blind eye to.
The word 'behind' holds within itself a ghastly patriarchal ingenuity. In basic point, it will be that a lot of fields—the women stay behind, including literature.
Poetry is not some sort of spiritual thing; I can tell it from my personal experience — no angel comes and delivers poetry.
Poetry is the mirror of reality, and it flows from real experience. Conversations with oneself are built out of experience, and the beautiful form for such self-conversations is essentially the poetry of this world.
But in this quite diverse nature of the world, what are the facts of experiencing something new for a woman? In contrast to men, that is. Most of the women I meet are simply compelled to lead a life with no mystery, no thrills, forever nailed down. One could even count on one's fingers the number of experiences created separately in their life outside of everyday events.
As poet Emily Dickinson once wrote – "The scope of the mind is wider than the sky."
But in the reality imposed by this society and world on women, where is the scope to experience two moments of seeing the sky in the open mind of a woman? No. When women write poems about that experience and lack of opportunities, it seems that the poems of every woman in the world are probably the same, they have no new words, no conversation, no new interest or desire. Nothing new. It seems that every woman's poem is actually the same. It seems like a repetition of a word, a repeat telecast of the same episode.
Since between two similar things there is no scope for determining good or bad, and since art is the self-assembly of innovation; So most of our brains assume "women can't write poetry", and in turn, they basically sing the same song.
To put it more simply, I walk the streets after 10 pm, witnessing one woman out of every 30 or so men; even this disparity gets more pronounced as the night wears on. That means 30 men move forward with as much experience in some path of life, and then only one woman can move forward in that path—not through the same experience. While 30 men on the road have to subconsciously consider the 30 different experiences they meet, a woman has to consciously think about her safety from 30 men on the road. And this thought is his daily routine. Reality is so harsh for women in this society.
Or, in other words, the life of a woman is less innovative compared with the life of a man living the same social reality, in the same class, and in the same situation. Which applies to everyone—from the most powerful women to the most helpless women.
In their poetry, there is as much impression of reality as their patriarchal social system allows them to experience. Which reality is basically the reality memorized in most people's lives.
Beyond that, there is another problem.
While sometimes lack of recognition stops the development of talent, often it makes the development of human talent faster than light speed. Whereas the second never happens in the case of false recognition. False recognition permanently stunts talent development.
When a woman defies all odds, defies all obstacles, and comes to literary practice - I have seen countless people beat the drum of strangely false praise around them. Incidentally, these are the people who can at any moment consciously say – "Women cannot write poetry".
Probably there is no second in poetry on such a sinister subject as false praise. Knowingly or unknowingly, women are the constant victims of this disaster.
The biggest problem with false praise is that it slowly destroys people's urge to excel, and destroys the challenges of self-achievement. And where a woman has to start writing far behind her male contemporaries, nothing can be worse than losing the urge to surpass herself.
Every 5-10 years we come across some noted poets; incidentally, we don't see a woman's name in that list either. We see poets getting lost with infinite poetic potential; if we do the statistics it may be seen, that percentage-wise there are majorities of women too.
False praise seems to me, along with many unavoidable realities, one of the reasons for this.
By doing so, this society is canceling all the paths of the poetic journey from the life of the majority of women in the first step itself. And beyond that, when a woman dares to move forward in the journey of self-realization, the stream of false praise sweeps her away in the middle of the black hole. From where there is no easy way back.
Then our social brain spreads myths created by our own participation-
"Women can't write poetry"
Conclude with a line from American poet Maya Angelou-
"I know why caged birds sing"