titration 1960-97

Titration of a protected fluid

I have been working (over several years) on analysing total poetry publications by year. I have to say that dealing with poets as individuals tells us more, but I thought at this point to release one set of figures, for the share of female poets in the annual set.

tabulation of gender ratios (in volumes by individual authors)
% female
1960 29.8
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965 30
1966
1967 25.6
1968 25.8
1969
1970 24.7
1971 22.7
1972
1973
1974 27.0
1974-5 18.8
1975-6 18.8
1976-7 21.8
1977-8 19.8
1979 26
1980
1981
1982 28.4
1983 26.3
1984
1985 26.2
1986
1987
1988 28
1989
1990 28.2
1991
1992 29.5
1993
1994
1995 32.1
1996 34.6
1997 32.2
1998
1999 37.1
2000 41.1

These figures are drawn mainly from the British Library catalogue. Interpretation is inevitably less accurate than a count. The presence of women poets is rising, on a fairly smooth curve, from 1978 onwards. But, it is worth commenting on the declining figures in the stretch between 1965 and 1974. I looked more closely at the 1965 records. So 1965 has 91 titles to show by female poets but 61 of these were by vanity presses. And 8 more by a firm which asked authors to contribute to costs (while also selecting the manuscripts). And 2 self-published. All told this was not a good moment for female poets. The scene in the 1970s was very different, with “alternative” publishers eager to publish poetry they liked even if it wasn't really a commercial proposition. That is not to say that vanity publishers were losing their livelihood.
I have posted elsewhere on the speculation that as poetry was taken over by the universities (including recent graduates) in the second half of the 1960s, and student bodies then were overwhelmingly male, the period 1965-75 saw a decline in the position of female poets. This reversed, again within the speculation, as a flood of female students began to reach universities – a few years later. To follow the changing history of poetry, we need to ask, what was the opinion of students in a given year?
The figures for 1974-8 come from a source, Poet’s Yearbook, which does not list vanity publications. This accounts for a drop in the female percentage in 1974 – on investigation, vanity publications were absolutely dominated by female poets and leaving them out (for quite good reasons) makes the share of male poets rise sharply. In 1974, the rise is roughly from 72% to 81%.
During the work, I have changed my view of vanity poets quite considerably. The description would shift from “egoists uninterested by their fellow poets and ignorant of modern poetry” to “those without cultural capital”. Excluding them from consideration means excluding the vulnerable – the literary process left them as losers but we don’t have to make them losers all over again.
Sam Gardiner (editor of Poet's Yearbook) records that Outposts only accepted manuscripts when the author had collected enough advance orders to cover their costs. This could actually mean the poet buying half the edition of their own work. (If you are a totally unknown poet, the pre-orders are likely to be few.) Outposts also claimed to have quality control, they only accepted typescripts of good quality. I am cynical about this, but the number of books or at least pamphlets they produced by women poets was outstanding and there is nothing suspicious about that. I can't measure frustration, but I am sure that Outposts reduced it.
From the figures, we seem to have a period of highest male share between about 1968 to 1990. It is open to speculation how this plateau on a graph affected poetic style. If we look at social groups where people learnt and shared culture, where poets met their future audience in fact, it is credible that people who later used vanity presses didn’t understand the literary world specifically because they had never been part of those groups or sites. Wherever you find insiders, those people were on the outside. The predominance of women in the vanity press lists is related to the predominance of young men in universities and in sixth forms, at the time. That predominance is incomprehensible to people born since 1970.
I don’t want to go back and reclaim the outsider poets. It is just too apparent that if you want to write modern poetry you have to read modern poetry. If you hang out on the scene at all, people will tell you not to use vanity presses if you want to be read. People who didn't understand the publishing process quite possibly didn't understand the composition process either.
To go back to 1965, it saw a book by Kathleen Raine: The Hollow Hill. I liked this and I have written about it. But that is the only woman’s book from 1965 which I recognise or have read. Feminism changed everything for the better.