“Writing As Re-Vision”: Female creative agency in the poetry of Adrienne Rich

In this seminal poem, ‘Diving into the Wreck’, Rich elucidates that female self-creation is a political and imaginative labour - there must be a symbiosis between internal self-articulation and external self-manifestation. Writing at the pivotal moment of second-wave feminism, Rich’s poetry is both testament to the idea that ‘The personal is the political’, whilst delving deeper into questions of motherhood, sexuality and female complicity. Rich’s poetic oeuvre offers up the dual journey between aesthetic transformation and the awakening of a feminist consciousness. For Rich, self-inscription - being able to define and construct versions of womanhood creatively - goes hand in hand with political agency.