Addressed also in WW is exactly the figures for publishers, why there are so few editors and exactly the point about editors merely picking what they think best poems.

"Good job, Eva! It looks like you're right that there is a problem so far as anthologies are concerned."

Thanks for vote of confidence. As I said you might wish to read the rest of the essay, although I recall someone said they weren't interested, which seems a big bizarre, as being part of of this discussion surely indicates interest! Also, I was thinking of accusations of making up one's mind without the facts...

"Now the question becomes what kind of material those editors had access to when selecting their poems...Your open query about the mindset of the heads of publishing houses appears to ring true, although even then I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it is definitely misogyny. It's quite possible that those editors and publishers truly believe that those poets who were selected were indeed the most relevant poets to publish, without thought to gender."

Working on this anthology for 3 years, believe me I jumped to no conclusions. That would make me a sloppy editor and writer indeed. As for editors believing their choices bet, here too, I refer to rest essay and indeed the many sources writing on same, who also didn't jump to conclusions but wrote after not only a lifetime of experience as writers, but only after careful research and thought, being professional and able writers.

We all have our crosses to bear, Eva. I am discriminated against by the Poetry Establishment because I read The Daily Telegraph. How do I know? I feel it in my bones.

John,

You are?! In that case might be adding to crosses, as I read it a lot too! How do they KNOW you read it?

best,
Eva

As this long thread progresses, I keep thinking of this prose poem

Myth
Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the
roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was
the Sphinx. Oedipus said, "I want to ask one question.
Why didn't I recognize my mother?" "You gave the
wrong answer," said the Sphinx. "But that was what
made everything possible," said Oedipus. "No," she said.
"When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man. You didn't say anything about woman."
"When you say Man," said Oedipus, "you include women
too. Everyone knows that." She said, "That's what
you think."

-- Muriel Rukeyser

Although by no means all poems in WW, nor even most of them have a political agenda, outside of section of Intro, this is indeed pithy and funny poem by Muriel Rukeyser I chose. Thanks for posting it.

Anthos are rarely assembled by anonymous submission. When submissions are anonymous (some mags and most competitions), I think I read that the M/F ratios are more equal. As others have pointed out, there are extra factors at play in older anthos. As Jed Rasula pointed out in "Syncopations", "Age is important because it takes a generation (at least) to overcome a dominant paradigm" - pioneers (of writing, editing, admin, life-style) become role-models and pave the way for a later generation's change en masse. And UK anthos might be rather different from UK ones in this regard - UK changes happened at different times and the links between women's poetry, feminism and avant-garde poetry were rather different here, I think. So the antho stats can be sliced and diced in various ways. I don't think the trends are so disappointing, nor is history so surprising.

You're not alone. Here's the ever-quotable Germaine Greer again (from "Slip-shod Sibyls")

• "The dilemma of the student of poetry who is also passionately interested in women is that she has to find value in a mass of work that she knows to be inferior"
• "This is not to say that we should not work at reclaiming women's work but simply that we should be aware that we are more likely to find heroines than poets"

This is true. And other excerpt:

"Many women poets disagree with the separatist ideology to which anthologies like this are assumed to subscribe. Some distance themselves from what Germaine Greer calls “the spirit that produced anthologies such as Diane Scott's Bread and Roses and Louise Bernikow's The World Split Open…” and “the reinvention of poetry as a propaganda tool of the women's movement [that] must have galled independent women poets who had been toiling away for most of a lifetime, only to see their small market overwhelmed by a froth of publishing on the part of literature co-operatives and writers' workshops.” Irritatingly, anthologies sometimes do perpetuate the very stereotypes about women’s subjects we aim to disarm in this volume. An anthology compiled to prove a point would be top-heavy with its own agenda. Nevertheless, my own internal, and heated, debate on this subject - and some poets’ ambivalent feelings about women’s anthologies - impelled me to address not only what is a routine gender bias, but also our problematical relationship with efforts to redress it."

However, too often this becomes the justification for not addressing a a real problem. In fact, it is a convenient and insulting way of reiterating status quo. There are plenty of mediocre male poets in anthologies, nevertheless deemed superior for no particular reason I can see. When one presses the point, one finds that many people, including many editors simply don't KNOW the leading women poets, hence this anthology, and often have a dismissive idea of them based on received ideas. If there is only room for these poets in women's anthologies, which men/editors don't read,thinking these anthologies are setting the separatist agenda when in fact it's the other way around, then the problem is conveniently insoluble.

By the way, in reply to things slowly getting better, some of the figures for recent anthologies are as bad as any from many years back.

Here's the stats for m/f written poems in Shit Creek issues which were picked by almost-anonymous selection. I strip bio details and send the bare text to Nigel Holt and Angela France. They score them, and so do I off the anonymous bare text version. I might remember some of the authors but by and large I don't. Angela and Nigel have no idea whose is what. I'm guessing that the submission m/f ratio is 35% F, based on the Flea and on my general impression -- I'll keep stats in future.

SCR 4

22 poems -- 10 by women


SCR 5

28 poems -- 11 by women


SCR 6

26 poems -- 8 by women


SCR 7

24 poems -- 11 by women


SCR 8

21 poems -- 10 by women


SCR 9

17 Poems -- 4 by women

If only all journals had such figures. If only more editors cared to think about why they don't! Other than women just being inherently lousier poets, of course.