2018 Massachusetts Poetry Festival

Three women poets discuss and read from their own work centering around abuse, violence against women and girls, inherited trauma and survival. The poets use a combination of myth, fairy tale, pop culture and personal history as metaphor and through which to view an ages' old cultural disease. Panelists will read from their work and discuss the ways in which misogyny, abuse, and violence against women and girls manifests in their poetry. They will touch on how they approach personal subject matter, how they navigate the terrain of secret and taboo, especially when telling stories not exclusively their own, what it means to inherit trauma and a lineage of abuse, and how claiming a poetic voice with which to tell these stories, whether personal or ancestral, shatters the traditional role of secret keeper.