Women revolutionizing poetry

CAIRO – 26 July 2017: The newest generation of Poets is unlike any other; they are fiery, fiercely political, passionate and honest, and they're mostly all women.

BBC's feature story by Holly Williams 'The Women poets taking over the world', explores these amazing new voices bringing change and diversity to a medium long believed to be relegated to stuffy classrooms.

The Internet has gone a long way in allowing a platform for these voices and spreading attention to them. Instagram's 'Instapoet's' section provides such a platform to a wide range of voices, such as British/Somalian poet Warsan Shire, whose work was used in Beyonce's Lemonade.

In many ways, these women are the voice of this generation. Young American Nina Donovan's poem, Nasty Woman, harshly criticized Donald Trump and was read out by activist Ashley Judds, receiving critical acclaim and being hailed as a weapon against the Trump Administration.

Another example is Maggie Smith’s poem Good Bones, about a mother trying to explain the bad aspects of the world to her children, which went viral in 2016 after multiple terror attacks.

Poetry's power can lie both in its truthfulness and ability to expose inner pains to a broader audience. BBC quotes Welsh poet Emily Blewit as she explains her thoughts on "confessional" poetry; “I rather like it, as far as labels go. For me, it means sharing something of oneself in order to connect with others' experiences.

There is a tradition of confessional women's poetry that is brutally honest…Writing about uncensored experience is an act of resistance."

And indeed, these women resist through their poetry; whether it's through expressing pain and injustice felt through life, opposing stereotypes or fighting tyranny, this new wave of female poets have breathed new life and radically changed the way we view poetry.