Research Information System
World Women Conference II, Baku, Azerbaijan, 11 - 12 February 2021, vol.1, no.1, pp.67-78
Stevie Smith, a 20th
century English poet and a novelist, left an indispensible mark on English
literature with her poetry. Having been widely acclaimed as a talented poet
while she was still alive, Smith enriched her works with her philosophical
ideas and drawings. Such poetry collections like Harold’s Leap (1950), Not
Waving but Drowning (1957), Selected
Poems (1962), and many other contributed to her success as a world-wide
famous poet. It is possible to grasp the maturity process of a speaking persona
in Smith’s poetry starting from her early poetry up to her last works. As the
speaking persona matures, philosophical content becomes more intense. This
study examines Stevie Smith’s poetry in terms of such topics like rejection of
categorisation, feminism, escape, death, and loneliness. In several of her
poems it is easy to see Smith’s struggle to escape categorisation in terms of
content. This rejection of categorisation leads Smith into a discussion of
gender issues in her poetry, which becomes more vivid in some of her poems
where she questions the patriarchal order. Next, there is a theme of escape
through which Smith tries to express her ideas related to the suffocating
environment people may have. The idea of death in Smith’s poetry is a kind of
mystery that the speaking persona wants to deal with. The sense of estrangement
and loneliness in Smith’s poetry usually appears as a result of a lack of
communication between people. Throughout the study, it is possible to see that
Smith’s poetry is difficult to pin down to a particular period or theme because
of her tendency to cross various boundaries. This study will come to a
conclusion by stating that Stevie Smith’s poetry is her way of expressing her
ideas related to the ever-changing world; she tries to challenge patriarchal
world marked by fixed frames and the existence of isolated individuals severed
from each other.