World Poetry Day: In a post #MeToo world, feminist poetry is flourishing

The rise of the #MeToo movement allowed women around the world to express the extent of the gender-based violence that they suffer every day.

On TV, on social media or in the streets, celebrities and anonymous women alike put their experiences into words and for once, they were heard. Among them were poets.

In the past eight years since #MeToo came about, new feminist voices have emerged in the field of poetry. At the same time, historical women poets, whose work had almost faded from popular memory, are the subject of renewed interest.

Poetry has been a feature of feminism for as long as the movement itself has existed. In the American Women’s Suffrage Movement, activists like Alice Duer Miller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were also poets. In the UK, Sylvia Pankhurst wrote verses during her detention at Holloway prison in London.

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence”, African American writer and civil rights activist Audre Lorde wrote in 1985.

Feminist poets have in common to share certain themes, that are sometimes intimate and difficult. "[At the start of my career], it was important for me to talk about violence", Franco-Tunisian author and performer Nelly Slim told Euronews Culture. "Sexual violence, sexist violence, racist violence, all kinds."

For Belgian slam poet Lisette Lombé, poetry as an art form mirrors the urgency of the feminist struggle. “In the poetic language, there is a fire, a kind of tension that's well suited to the struggle. It takes several years to write a novel, but fighting demands something that is perhaps more urgent, more direct”, she said.

Language seems to be one of the key elements of the profound connection between poetry and feminism. “Poetry tends