A Survey of African Poetry in the London Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement 1865-1985

Jeni Couzyn: Her Poetry and Motherhood

Depending on the source, Jeni Couzyn’s nationality is a blend of three countries: she is a South African born in Johannesburg in 1942 or a Canadian of South African extract who is also British. Couzyn’s bibliography shows the trajectory of her writing career and range. Her publications include poetry collections, Flying (1970), Monkeys' Wedding (1972), Christmas in Africa (1975), The Happiness Bird (1978), House of Changes (1978), Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985), In the Skin House (1993), Homecoming (1998), A Time to be Born: Poems of Childbirth (1999), The Selected Poetry of Jeni Couzyn (2000), Creation of the World in /Xam Mythology (2019), and children’s books, Bad Day (1988), Tom-Cat-Lion (1987). Couzyn also edited three anthologies, Twelve to Twelve: Poems Commissioned for Poetry D-Day (1970), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets: Eleven British Writers (1985) and Singing Down the Bones (1989).

By 1975, with three poetry collections under her belt, Couzyn was touted by Western critics as a well-established poet and was regularly featured on radio and TV programs on BBC and ITV. In The Sunday Times of February 9, 1975, John Howkins rounds up the radio and TV schedule for the day, noting Jeni Couzyn as the poet featured on the “Far to Go” show to discuss the future of poetry. When invited to “Time for Verse,” a show on BBC Radio 4 on February 5, 1981, Couzyn identifies the poets who influenced her work, mentioning Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrat Browning, Emily Dickinson, Christiana Rosetti, Anne Sexton, Kathleen Raine, and Stevie Smith. And in The Times Literary Supplement of November 29, 1985, “The Index of Books Reviewed” lists two of Couzyn’s books: The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets: Eleven British writers (1985) and Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985). They come in at #1370.

Couzyn’s best known poetry collection, Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985), examines pregnancy and childbirth. It is well documented that when women write about motherhood and pregnancies, critics tend to reduce these important life events to hormones, hysteria, and depression while blatantly ignoring the work’s depth and the writer’s creativity. Reviews of Couzyn’s work in The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The Sunday Times consistently show this patriarchal and misogynistic trend.

Some male critics show their bigotry when they encounter the work of female poets in their lack of openness to experiencing or reading about the lives of women. In The Sunday Times review of May 16, 1971, titled “Lyman Andrews Selects the Best from the Little Presses,” Andrews reviews the poetry collections of four young poets of which Couzyn is the only woman. Of Couzyn’s Flying (1970) published by Workshop Press he wrote, “[it] leaves me with feelings. A rather specious note of hysteria sometimes weakens her verse, but I like her bitter and black humour (“Preparation of Human Pie” is the woman’s page run by women’s Lib). There is no doubt in my mind that Miss Couzyn already shows her own poetic individuality and will be a name to watch.” Andrews’s take is a shallow interpretation that disrespects Couzyn’s talents and contributions to poetry.

In an April 2, 1972 TV schedule report titled “Action in Memphis and Islington,” The Sunday Times reviews three protest films, “King—Montgomery to Memphis,” “It’s Ours Whatever They Say,” and “Clouds of Witness,” all of which are based on real-life events. The report describes “It is Ours Whatever They Say” as a film about a group of mothers and their children in Islington who fought their local council for the wasteland that they wanted to repurpose into a playground from becoming a car park. The Sunday Times report describes Couzyn’s contribution to the film, its prologue and epilogue, as “apt and beautiful” but refers to her, then a thirty-year-old woman who had published two poetry collections with a third on the way, as “…the young poet Jeni Couzyn.”

Another reviewer continues the devaluation of Couzyn’s work and infantilization of her person. Michael Hofmann in his 1985 article in The Times Literary Supplement titled “Hopes and Resentments” reviews titles by two women poets, Jeni Couzyn and Carol Rumen, focusing on Couzyn’s edited volume The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets: Eleven British Writers (1985) and her poetry collection Life by Drowning: Selected Poems (1985). Hofmann does a disservice to Couzyn and Rumen by centering male poets in his review instead of focusing on the craft and themes of the books under study. Early on, Hofmann reveals his bias by roasting the anthology’s title, stating that the age range of the women poets in the collection is “[o]ver forty and possibly dead.” Hofmann goes on further to disparage the poets’ voices, writing that “[t]he poems of the eleven English women included here move resignedly in an area of dry hurt, deploying a characteristically tart and spry tone…” In nearly half of his review focuses on the supposed preoccupation of these female poets which he deduces to be handwringing and manhating.

After describing Couzyn’s foreword as a “fighting introduction,” he writes:

Jeni Couzyn and many of her contributors give short shrift to men: men have used to their power as sole arbiters of poetic taste to silence and ignore and misrepresent women poets, driving them to despair and even their death; and they have set up their own false gods of “cleverness” and “personality” in poetry, which in their hands have become dry and without magic.

Couzyn’s editorship doesn’t escape Hofmann’s bigoted pen either, he states that “[t]he emphasis of Jeni Couzyn’s editorship though, tends to be on the obstacle, and it gives her anthology a pent-up and resentful quality from which too few of the poems manage to liberate themselves.” Hofmann dismisses Couzyn’s feminist lens and editorial curation because of the poets’ vulnerability and the topics explored. The poems do not fit his definition of the quality and themes the women should interrogate. Hofmann also mocks Denise Levertov’s [a contributor] self-assertion: “I didn’t suppose my gender to be an obstacle to anything I really wanted to do.” Hoffman declares that Levertov’s poetry “blends a classic prose with a modern (though it’s not always self-evident here) self-assurance….” Hofmann belittles Levertov’s admission but lauds one of her poems “A Tree Telling of Orpheus” as “The best poem in the book” because it doesn’t touch on “any feminist subject.” Hofmann in a demeaning tone finally uses the word feminism to show his hatred for the feminist theme of the collection.

Almost reluctantly, Hofmann points out the only “good” thing he sees in the anthology: “The book’s prose really catches the good eye: one would have to go through a good many men poets before finding such uncluttered and unembarrassed accounts of themselves and their work as provided here [by women contributors] …” By prose he refers to the personal introductions to their poems by the women poets. He elevates their prose over their poetry and lauds their openness and honesty only because men poets would not have been able to do be write truthfully about themselves.

Of Couzyn’s poetry collection, Hofmann had this to say: “It is only in the title sequence, the diary of her pregnancy that the book acquires patience, understanding and a more credible simplicity…. These qualities come out still more strongly and promisingly in the poems about her friend’s death.” It is in Couzyn’s interrogation of life and death that Hofmann acknowledges some degree of creativity, which he still qualifies with “promisingly.”

Often, presentism may impede the critical interrogation of dated texts, but not in this case, as I cross-examine Hofmannn’s review with a similarly dated text to allow for a balanced view and context. Maggie Gee, in a short opinion piece in The Times Literary Supplement dated December 13, 1985 and titled “Women Poets 1985,” responds to Hofmann’s and other critics’ skewed reviews of female poets. Gee declares, “We told that Carol Rumen’s book ‘promises much of the future’ and that Jeni Couzyn’s qualities show ‘promisingly’.” Yet both are over forty, and respectively on their fourth and sixth solo books. It has been long since say Craig Raine or James Fenton was promising. Women poets have other youthful attributes.” Gee further comments on the childish characteristics critics ascribe to female poets, noting that “[t]he first adjectives Mr. Hofmann attaches to the poems he reviews are “delightful” and “engaging” as if they are the work of children.” As to Hofmann’s diatribe on women writing about their anger and frustrations, Gee states, “[i]t seems to upset male critics when women are disagreeable and show what Mr. Hofmann calls “resentment”. Yet women writers have cause for anger. The world of letters will not even begin to be “postfeminist” until women and men are seen to grow up at the same time.”

That ‘women’s themes’ are deemed not literary enough or too emotional by some critics creates a situation where some women writers shy away from said themes because they want to be regarded as ‘serious’ writers. Editor and journalist, Sally Emerson, states in her 2009 The Sunday Times article “Let’s Get Down to Birth: The Topic of Babies has Male Publishers Mewling and Puking,” that “women still, after all these years, seem afraid of seeming sentimental or gushing about their children. Too…er…female. As though there is something acutely embarrassing about being female.” Emerson also remarks that “[w]omen are happy to write about how difficult it all is, about sleepless nights and depression—which men would assume to be the case—but, except in poetry, not about the joy, because that is sentimental and female and not at all male.” Yet, women are writing about their experiences even though publishing often exoticizes the parenting experiences of men over women’s. Of Couzyn and the other women poets, including Carol Ann Duffy and Sylvia Plath who wrote about childbirth and their children, Emerson says, “Perhaps this is the beginning of a proper understanding and respect for this realm of women’s power.” Women poets continue to write about these important life events and experiences even though they are deemed ordinary by critics. Their creativity should not be deemed mundane because they write about pregnancy, childbirth and their children. And their resolve continues to shift the conversation about feminism, their bodies, and children.

Couzyn’s body of work counters the expectations and biases of male critics. Her poetry explores the world through diverse geographies she experienced, South Africa, Canada, and United Kingdom, and human experiences. She brings to readers poetry about childbirth, pregnancy, and many other important topics that will continue to ruffle to the feathers of sexist critics.

Bio: Olufunke Ogundimu was born in Lagos, Nigeria. She's a doctoral student in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She's a graduate of the University of Lagos, and University of Nevada, Las Vegas MFA International program in fiction. March 20, 2020.

Works Cited

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