2. About the poet - Adrienne Cecile Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich was born on May \(16\), \(1929\), in Baltimore, U.S. She was an American poet, Essayist and feminist. Her father, a pathologist, encouraged her to read books and write poetry from a very young age. She started writing from her father's library, who aimed to make her a child prodigy. She was home-schooled until her fourth grade. She went to Roland Park County School and did her diploma in writing crafts from Radcliffe College.

 

 

Her first published poem was from her collection 'A Change of World', which was selected by America's famous poet W.H Auden for the Yale Series of Young Poets Award, which contained an introduction from him. She even enrolled in Oxford for a brief period of time. She published her second volume of poetry named 'The Diamond Cutters'. But it was her third collection that established her as  a proper writer. It was called 'Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law'. She explored female identity, her experience as a mother, wife and daughter. She also received controversies and criticisms.

 

She was actively involved in feminist activism, the civil rights movement, and anti-war associations. Rich's famous speech Notes Toward a Politics of Location, which she gave at one of the conferences in the Netherlands, is still considered the forerunner of concepts such as female locatedness, birth, female thought, and representation of women. She was also one of the earliest writers to advocate for LGBTQA rights.

 

She is the recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize, National Book Award and Bollingen Prize.

 

Famous works: