Author Archives: Marisa Crawford

by | December 1, 2014 · 9:00 am

ALL THE FEMINIST POETS: Bettina Judd

ALL THE FEMINIST POETS features a single poem and an interview from a feminist poet that we love.

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bettina_judd

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Bettina Judd was born in Baltimore and raised in Southern California. She teaches courses in Black women’s art, Black culture, and Black feminist thought. She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, the Vermont Studio Center and the University of Maryland. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry by Mythium Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. More about her can be found at www.bettinajudd.com. Continue reading →

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by | November 23, 2014 · 3:53 pm

Rah! Rah! Roundup

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“While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.” – TIME apologizes for including “feminist” on its list of banned words for 2015 (but not for the fact that the entire list is basically language used by people other than straight white men, so like, whatevs, thanks TIME).

WEIRD SISTER’s own Morgan Parker’s brilliant personal essay “White People Love Me: Dispatches from the Token” over on VIDA: Women in Literary Arts’ site brings up really important ideas about tokenism and “diversity,” specifically within literary communities.

Transgender pioneer and author of Stone Butch Blues Leslie Feinberg died this week. We’re so grateful for hir incredibly important, insightful, beautiful work. Read Feinberg’s obituary, written by hir partner Minnie Bruce Pratt, here. Continue reading →

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by | November 14, 2014 · 9:00 am

ALL THE FEMINIST POETS: Geraldine Kim

ALL THE FEMINIST POETS features a single poem and an interview from a feminist poet that we love.

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Geraldine Kim Geraldine Kim is the author of Povel (Fence, 2005) which was featured in The Believer and Village Voice‘s top 25 books of the year. She has contributed to Starting Today, a collection of 100 poems for Obama’s first 100 days (University of Iowa, 2010), to Gurlesque (Saturnalia, 2010) and to the e-version of Gurlesque (forthcoming, Saturnalia). She also wrote the play Donning Cheadle, which was performed in venues in San Francisco and Oakland.

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by | November 8, 2014 · 12:15 pm

Rah! Rah! Roundup

rahrahroundupPart Two of the Female Aesthetic(s) Symposium, moderated by Metta Sáma, went up this week on The Conversant. It features Racquel Goodison, Monica A. Hand, Patricia Spears Jones, Tracy Chiles McGhee, and Arisa White.

“Avant-garde poetry’s attitudes towards race have been no different than that of mainstream institutions.” – Cathy Park Hong in her essay, “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde.”

Delirious Hem’s forum on Rape Culture and the Poetics of Alt Lit continues during November.

Sarah Seltzer’s interesting take on the Lena Dunham controversy explores the distinctions between triggering art and abuse.

Various cartoonists give their perspectives on writing characters of different races than your own.

Read an interview with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, the artist behind the “Stop Telling Women To Smile” anti-street harassment campaign.

Women, Action and the Media (WAM) has partnered with Twitter to support women experiencing gender-based harassment on the social media platform. You can report any instances of harassment through this online form.

Poets in NYC met this week to talk about sexism and accountability in local poetry circles. Read the meeting handout here.

What did we miss? Share your links in the comments.

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by | October 31, 2014 · 2:30 pm

Welcome to WEIRD SISTER

My mom and my Aunt Laura on Halloween (they’re BFFs; not actual sisters.)

A bunch of us have been talking for a long time about wanting to start a blog—one that fuses and fuels our interests in and obsessions with feminism and literature and pop culture, and the places where all of those things intertwine. When we finally landed on the name WEIRD SISTER—partly in reference to the Macbeth witches, but also to the weird sisterhoods of our various and intersecting feminist communities—it felt just right. It captured the importance of feminist solidarity with a nod toward the literary, and an acknowledgment of the glittery, complicated and strange forms of poetry and culture that we find most compelling.

Shakespeare’s “Weird Sisters” are witches, of course, and the name points to a specifically female-coded brand of black magic. It reminds us of the 90s goth girls and hippie chicks that we were or could have been. Of placing spells and chanting The Craft-style and reading tarot cards and devouring astrology books and staring into our mood rings and choosing to trust in something beyond logic, something dark and bright and otherworldly as central and important and of great value. Continue reading →

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