Women Slash Lyric. Not a hyphen - but a membrane.

Women and - the language. Two sides. The one (women) rarely seen. Women slash poetry. Just not: women's poetry (uh...). But rather: Women writing poetry. And women in poems.

The first text: The Merseburg Spells. And yes, an epiphany: why should they be written by men or a man? Right away, the (glass - and not so glass) ceiling lifts. What follows: a journey of discovery, page after page. Chronologically ordered. We know: women were not able to publish, or hardly at all. Nevertheless, they wrote. We know: they were rarely included in the canon. But their poems do exist.

Here, in the anthology edited by Anna Bers, we see them. The tradition stands out. Songs, sayings, thoughts, frivolities, researches, explorations: what a chorus. Women map out themselves and the world. In between, as a counter-mirror to this, chapters gathering poems by men about women. So many voices to discover. So many lives that touch.

An invitation to a journey. To browse, to listen, to lose oneself, to find yourself.

A source of immense joy.

Ulrike Draesner, 13 June 2022