journal article
Open Access Collection
Via literary mothers: Kathleen Fraser and the ‘permission-giving’ moment of ‘projective verse’
2024 Textual Practice
doi: 10.1080/0950236X.2024.2417090
Poet, editor, and critic Kathleen Fraser underscored the significance of Charles Olson’s seminal manifesto ‘Projective Verse’, emphasising the vital role the text played in expanding the methodological possibilities of Avant Garde writing by women in the 1970s to the present day. I ask why Fraser, who maintained great concern surrounding the neglect of the female writers who pioneered the modernist tradition, and editorially and pedagogically resisted the continued marginality of innovative women writers in her contemporary, might controversially position ‘Projective Verse’ as an ‘immense, permission giving’ moment. Gesturing toward the importance of Fraser’s HOW(ever) and How2 journals, I make a case for the continued significance of Olson’s projective poetics in relation to feminist poetic practice in North America and across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom.