Audre Lorde, poet, gay, lesbian, LGBT, history

b. February 18, 1934
d. November 17, 1992

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

A self-proclaimed "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated her life to combating social injustice. She helped found Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the world's first publishing company run by women of color.

Lorde was the third daughter of immigrant parents from Grenada. She began writing poetry at age twelve and published her first poem in Seventeen magazine at age fifteen. Lorde was strongly influenced by her West Indian heritage, which she explored in her autobiography, "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name."

In 1954, Lorde attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she solidified her identity as both a poet and a lesbian. She entered the Greenwich Village gay scene after her return to New York in 1955.

She continued her studies, receiving a bachelor's degree from Hunter College in 1959 and a master's degree in Library Science from Columbia University in 1961.

Lorde worked as a librarian while continuing to write and publish poetry. In 1962, she married Edwin Rollins. The couple had two children before their marriage dissolved. Much of Lorde's poetry written during these years explores themes of motherhood and love's impermanence.

In 1968, Lorde received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and published her first volume of poetry, "The First Cities" as a poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. She began a romantic relationship with Frances Clayton that same year that would last until Lorde's death in 1992.

Rich with introspection, Lorde's work contains extensive sociopolitical commentary. As a lesbian woman of color Lorde asserted, "I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain."

Lorde explored her long battle with cancer in her last work, "The Cancer Journals" (1980). In an African naming ceremony shortly before her death, Lorde took the name Gamba Adisa: "Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known."

Bibliography

“Audre Lorde.” Lambda. June 29, 2007

De Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. W. W. Norton, 2006

Green, Becky and Aletnin Nguyen. “Audre Lorde (1934-1992).” VG: Voices from the Gaps, Women Artists and Writers of Color. December 6, 1996. June 29, 2007

Sullivan, James. “Audre Lorde (1934-1992).” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Modern American Poetry. June 29, 2007

Selected Works

A Burst of Light: Essays (1988)

Coal (1976)

From a Land Where Other People Live (1973)

Need: A Chorale for Black Women Voices (1990)

New York Head Shop and Museum (1974)

Our Dead Behind Us (1986)

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

The Black Unicorn (1978)

The Cancer Journals (1980)

The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978)

Undersong: Chosen Poems, Old and New (1982)

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982

Related articles

• Ten Lesbian & Bisexual Poets To Fall in Love With [Womanly Wordsmiths] (Jezebel)
• Fool That I Am: National Coming Out Week (The New Gay)
• We were there: Stonewall Honors 2009 (Time Out NY)
• Womanist Roots: Our History with Homosexuality (Clutch Mag Online)
• Emanuel Xavier, Poet (Its a Queer World)

Valentine Ackland ( U.K.), Writer

b. May 20, 1906
d. Nov 9th, 1968

Decades before Stonewall encouraged us to be out and proud, Valentine Ackland was openly, defiantly lesbian. Even at school, she fell in love with a fellow pupil, to her parents' displeasure, and at the age of 17 embarked on a full-fledged lesbian affair with an older woman, Bo Foster - but still there were family pressures to resist.

To escape them, she impulsively entered a dmarriage of convenience with a young homosexual man, Richard Turpin. This disastrous venture ended six months later, unconsummated. At this point she comprehensively reinvented herself, changing her name from Molly Turpin to Valentine Ackland, and wearing trousers. In addition to Bo Foster, she had affairs with Dorothy Warren, Nancy Cunard and Anna May Wong, before falling in love with her life-long partner, Sylvia Townsend Warner, in 1930.

Together, Ackland and Warner embarked on an unusual poetry venture - a book of poems, at the heart of which is a group of celebratory, erotic love poetry, published under both names simultaneously, with no indication which poem was the work of which poet.

Valentine Ackland, born 100 years ago today, was haunted by the first world war, like so many others of that generation. Too young to fight, yet old enough to witness the carnage, these guilty survivors had a sense of missed opportunity. Valentine's gender, as well as her age, denied her the chance of participation, and heroism always held a complex fascination for her, as did its companion, death.

There were no Ackland sons; Valentine was christened Mary Kathleen, but called Molly by her family. She soon noted social patterns of male privilege and female submission, and began early on to subvert gender expectations by usurping male prerogatives whenever she could. When her father allowed her to drive, shoot and even box, her sister Joan - older by eight years - was insanely jealous, and believed Molly was his favourite. Her revenge on the interloper was to abuse Molly, with psychological torment and physical punishment.

Guardian, 2006 

Born in London into a well-to-do family who had and unsettled and unhappy early life, including a marriage at 19 that remained unconsummated and was annulled. Ackland is mainly known for her relationship with Sylvia Towsend Warner whom she met through T.F. Powys and with whom she lived from 1930 until her death.
In her autobiographical essay For Sylvia: An Honest Account, she writes details on her relationship with Sylvia aas well as about other relationships with both women and men, and her coming to terms with her lesbianism. 

Gabriele Griifn, Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay Writing

Books:

Whether a dove or a seagull: Poems (1934)
The Nature of the Moment (1973)
For Sylvia: An Honest Account (1985)


Reviews:

Review of Valentine Ackland (1906 - 1969)
Reviews of 'Journey From Winter: Selected Poems'

Sources:


Gabriele Griifn, Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay Writing, Routledge, London, 2002
Guardian, 2006 
Matt & Andrej Komasky Living Room - LGBT Biographies