“I don’t think I can isolate what I need as a writer from what I need as a Black woman, mother, wife—which is to live… And to know that my children have a future. And to know that my husband will not be hunted down.”
Ms. Muse (Series)
Ms. Muse is a discovery place for riotous, righteous and resonant feminist poetry that nourishes and gives voice to a rising tide of female resistance—brought to you by Ms. digital columnist Chivas Sandage.
Ms. Muse: Patricia Spears Jones Fights Patriarchy and Racism with Feminist Poetry
“If the idea of the human is to be truly re-made, then women will do the making.” In this installment of Ms. Muse, acclaimed poet Patricia Spears Jones opens up about growing up in the segregated South, the literary world’s ageism and Eve’s resistance—and shares three new poems.
Ms. Muse: Amy King on the Power of Stories and the Weight of the Current Political Moment
For this installment of Ms. Muse, award-winning poet and author and VIDA co-founder Amy King opens up about learning to speak up and step up—and shares three previously unpublished poems with Ms. readers.
Ms. Muse: Mary Oliver’s Escape
The fact that this master poet, in the last decade of her life, felt inspired by other women writers to be “braver”—and worked to write those new poems—suggests that Mary Oliver finally exited the building that had once sucked all the air out of her body, and escaped that “broken house” of her childhood once and for all.
Ms. Muse: Jessica Helen Lopez on Writing like a Xingona, Poetry as Medicine and the True Honey of Freedom
In this month’s installment, Jessica Helen Lopez—two-time Women of the World City of Albuquerque Champion and former Albuquerque Poet Laureate Emeritus and Poet-In-Residence for the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History—shares a new poem and talks to Ms. about jumping out of the shower to write, reclamation and thriving between languages.