When I finished compiling my poetry anthology Scanning the Century over a decade ago I wanted to follow up poets I’d discovered during the process. The one who really caught my attention at the time was Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980). The more I learnt the more fascinating she became. She was a pioneer political and feminist activist and she also had a strong interest in science, writing a biography of the physicist, chemist and mathematician Willard Gibbs. There is an urgency in her work that sounds even more compelling now than when it was written:
I lived in the century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices . . .
I wrote an essay on her, ‘Power of a Poster Girl’ which has only now, ten years later, been published, in the anthology The Voyage, edited by Chandani Lokuge and David Morley, published by Silkworms Ink.
I lived in the century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices . . .
I wrote an essay on her, ‘Power of a Poster Girl’ which has only now, ten years later, been published, in the anthology The Voyage, edited by Chandani Lokuge and David Morley, published by Silkworms Ink.
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