Poetry has existed for thousands of years as an expression of human curiosity, pain, love, confusion, grief and everything else it is possible to feel. Poets from as early as 2000 BC have been attempting to capture what it means to be human: our struggles, joys and anxieties borne from the complicated ordeal of living. 

Though much of the poetry canon has been dominated by male voices, female voices have been present throughout history. They have catalysed social, political and emotional change. They have been met with praise, criticism and outright denial. They have been celebrated, censored and studied. And they remain critically important to our understanding of what it means to live. 

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’ve gathered a small selection of poems. We hope they offer a moment of reflection within the busyness of life, and pay tribute to some of the individuals who are able to communicate emotion across time, space and circumstance. 

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Excerpt from My God, It’s Full of Stars
Tracy K. Smith 

Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,

That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip— 

When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic, 

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.

Excerpt from Six Fragments for Atthis
Sappho (c.630-570 BC)

Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time

Excerpt from August
Dorothy Parker 

When my eyes are weeds, 
And my lips are petals, spinning 
Down the wind that has beginning 
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds; 
When my arms are elder-bushes, 
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart… 

Excerpt from Reinforcements
Marianne Moore 

Still water—waiting to change the course or dismiss

    The idea of movement, till forced to. The words of the Greeks

Ring in our ears, but they are vain in comparison with a sight like this.

The pulse of intention does not move so that one

    Can see it, and moral machinery is not labelled, but

The future of time is determined by the power of volition.