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We all have trouble getting published regularly (who doesn't I guess), but most do get published from time to time if they send their poems out! And there I think is the issue. Many of the women I know who write poetry either don't send their poems out, or don't send them out as regularly (let alone relentlessly) as most of the male poets I know. Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D ~ Poet

So many women got their foot in the door with the vigorous feminist press movement of the late 70s/early 80s. Some of those journals are still in existence. On the other hand, the beat poet movement was largely male. What tradition is more influential to today's independent literary journals? The question is complex/nuanced and far reaching into the history of women in literature and society. Liz Bradfield ~ Broadsided

Several years ago, as part of my master's thesis, I interviewed four women poets: Stellasue Lee, Denise Duhamel, Naomi Shihab Nye and Shara McCallum. Stellasue Lee spoke about this very issue. This interview was published in Margie, The American Review of Poetry, issue two and can be found online at www.margiereview.com under the link: Chautauquas. Lee told me that as poetry editor of RATTLE, she would publish more women writers, but fewer women writers submitted. When I asked Lee recently if this were still true, she said that the overwhelming number of submissions to Rattle came from male writers. I do think that some women are happy to just write and not play the whole publishing game. I've never encountered malicious bias. If it's out there, I may be naive to it. Karla Huston ~ Poet

I don't believe that women are better poets, but I do believe that women poets need to get off their collective asses and start submitting work in greater numbers. The ratio of women to men submitting work to poetic diversity is 1 to 3. I also don't believe that women improve their craft with age just because they are women. What I do believe is something my mother Michelle Lecrivain (a painter and quilt artist) once told me: "Women have been creating art in their everyday life since the beginning of time. It's as natural to our sex as breathing, but we're not taught to look at our creation as art. We're only taught to look at our creations as 'labours'." Marie Lecrivain ~ Poeticdiversity

Maybe it doesn't matter that women are less represented in poetry small press if they don't want to be. After all, the genders are different; and getting published may not matter as much to women as it does to men. But the number and variety of replies to my query - forty of the sixty poets, editors and publishers I contacted responded - suggests equal opportunity is on people's minds.

In the mid-70's an act of congress called Title Nine required schools to invest as much in girls athletics as they did boys athletics. Not surprisingly the numbers of girls participating in athletics has grown to numbers never imagined in the 70's. Equally interesting to me is that enrollment of women in universities is rising steadily and has now outpaced men. Maybe when we give a generation of women the same access and the same belief in themselves as we have traditionally given our men, they will not hesitate to compete, even in the poetry small press - if they choose to.

I am not sure we have arrived at a time when we can just write well and forget about gender (or race for that matter), when it comes to equal representation. The Beats hardly had women in their ranks. The poets of the 70's didn't do much better. Today we can look around and say we've made progress, there are more female poets getting published, but have we arrived? I don't think so. I don't believe that in 2007 the doors to well written poetry are as open to female poets as they are to their male counterparts.

So what do we do about it? To those of you who think we have arrived and good writing has prevailed over sexism - nothing. To those of us who feel there is still a ways to go, doors to open, and opportunities to give; we must take an active role to make sure the poetry of talented men and women is brought before the widest audience possible. Talent alone is not enough to create equal opportunity. We must all participate in leveling the playing field.

NOTE: I would be happy to send the over forty pages of responses to my query about women in the small press as an e-mail attachment to anyone requesting it.
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