Judy Rae Grahn | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1940-07-28)July 28, 1940 (age 85) |
| Occupation | Author, poet |
| Nationality | American |
| Website | |
| www | |
Judy Grahn (born July 28, 1940) is an American poet and author.
Inspired by her experiences of disenfranchisement as abutch lesbian, she became afeminist poet, highly-regarded in underground circles before achieving public fame. A major influence in her work isMetaformic Theory, tracing the roots of modern culture back to ancient menstrual rites, though she does not regard the philosophy as exclusively feminist. Grahn teacheswomen's mythology andancient literature at theCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies and other institutions.
Judy Rae Grahn was born in 1940 inChicago, Illinois. Her father was a cook and her mother was a photographer's assistant. Grahn described her childhood as taking place in "an economically poor and spiritually depressed late 1950sNew Mexico desert town near the hellish border ofWest Texas."[1]
When she was eighteen, sheeloped with a student named Yvonne at a nearby college. Grahn credits Yvonne with opening her eyes togay culture. Soon after that she joined theUnited States Air Force. At twenty-one she wasdischarged (in a "less than honorable," manner, she stated) for being a lesbian.[2]
Grahn experienced a fair amount of homophobia during the odd jobs she did to earn money for school, trying to find housing, and was beat up for herbutch attire. "These jolts taught me everything I would ever need to know about the oppression of Gay people," she mentioned in an interview withTongue.[3]
At the age of 25, Grahn suffered fromInoculation lymphoreticulosis, or Cat Scratch Fever, which led to her being in a coma. After overcoming her illness, she realized that she wanted to become a poet. This realization was partially due to the abuse and mistreatment Grahn faced for being openly lesbian.[4] Of the incident, Grahn stated "I realized that if I was going to do what I had set out to do in my life, I would have to go all the way with it and take every single risk you could take.... I decided I would not do anything I didn't want to do that would keep me from my art."[5]
Grahn then moved to the west coast where she became active in thefeminist poetry movement of the 1970s. During this period, many rumors surfaced pertaining to Grahn's weight and a possible eating disorder. Grahn attributes her thin frame to poor eating habits, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee.[6]
She earned her PhD from theCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies.[7] Until 2007, Grahn was the director of the Women's Spirituality (MA) and Creative Inquiry (MFA) programs at theNew College of California.[6]
Grahn knew she was a poet by the time she was nine. She had written poetry until she was sixteen, but it wasn't until she was twenty-five that she consciously committed herself to her work after overcoming her illness.
Grahn was a member of theGay Women's Liberation Group, GWLG, the first lesbian-feminist collective on the west coast, founded in 1969. Grahn and her partner at the time, artist Wendy Cadden, produced books, poems, and graphics. This contributed the basis of theWomen's Press Collective (WPC), which strived to devote "itself exclusively to work by lesbians disfranchised by race or class." GWLG is also responsible for founding the women's bookstore A Woman's Place.[8] Grahn's poems circulated in "periodicals, performances, chapbooks, and by word of mouth, and were foundational documents of lesbian feminism."[8] Her work did not extend to a commercial audience until the late 1970s; however, it garnered a wide underground audience before 1975. Carl Morse and Joan Larkin cite Grahn's work as "fueling the explosion of lesbian poetry that began in the 70s."[8]
Grahn's poetry is at timesfree verse, and is infused with her feminist lesbian identity. Her works stay true to her working-class roots, covering racism, sexism, classism, and the struggles of being female and a lesbian.[6] She usesplain language and what thePoetry Foundation describes as an "etymological curiosity that often eschews metaphor in favor of incantation."[7] Grahn does not limit her work to just written poetry, but also collaborates with other artists such as singer-songwriterAnne Carol Mitchell and dancer and choreographerAnne Blethenthal.[7] Her writing is heavily political and focuses on the strength of lesbian culture and critiquedheterosexist biases and thepatriarchy.
Today, Grahn co-edits theonline journalMetaformia, a journal aboutmenstruation and women's culture.[7]
Her first poetry collection,Edward the Dyke and Other Poems was released in 1971, and was combined withShe Who (1972) andA Woman is Talking to Death (1974) in a poetry collection titledThe Work of a Common Woman in 1978. In 1974 she held a reading of the poetry from the first two books at an event organized by theWestbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective. OnA Woman is Talking to Death Grahn stated that it began "a redefinition for myself of the subject of love."[6] A collection of selected and newer poems,love belongs to those who do the feeling (2008) won the 2009Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry.[7]
Grahn's poetry has been used as a source of empowerment and a way to reestablish possession of words and signs of lesbian culture that are often used as derogatory by outsiders. In a short poem from theShe Who collection (1971–1972) she confidently asserts, "I am the dyke in the matter, the other / I am the wall with the womanly swagger / I am the dragon, the dangerous dagger / I am the bulldyke, the bulldagger."[4]
In 1993, Grahn wrote her second book,Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World which focuses on menstrual rituals as the origin of human civilization by using anthropology, history, archeology, myths, and stories.[9]
In addition, lines from herCommon Woman collection became "touchstones for the women's movement in the seventies, such as 'the common woman is as common as the best of bread/ and will rise.'"[10]
Margot Gayle Backus cites Grahn's best work as her poem, "A Woman is Talking to Death". She argues for its "extraordinary impact on its audiences and readers", and attributes this to "Grahn's assumption of an utterly believable, vulnerable poetic voice that fearlessly and scrupulously speaks the truth to an overwhelming but nonetheless nameable, identifiable, and therefore negotiable power."[10] Backus argues that Grahn's "prophetic poetic voice" may be attributed to works such as "Lycidas" or that of the poetsShakespeare andDonne.[10] Backus writes that in "A Woman is Talking to Death", "the central themes of the elegy and the love lyric interpenetrate in complex and innovative ways... Grahn thematically consolidates two major canonical poetic genres with deep roots in the historical development of poetic representation in Europe while radically transforming them by introducing into poetic form a broad nexus of trends in twentieth-century lesbian writing."[10]
Grahn is a chief theorist behindMetaformic Theory, a theory that traces the roots of culture back to ancient menstrual rites. The theory first emerged in her bookBlood, Bread, and Roses.[9] Although some believe that Grahn was a separatist due to her involvement inlesbian feminism, she states that her Metaformic philosophy was inclusive.
Grahn also plays with language in her poem "The woman in three pieces". Lydia Bastida Tullis cites Grahn as emphasizing language's formal properties "by increasingly straining its ability to make 'sense,'" and ultimately calling into question "the speaker's (and reader's) relationship to language."[11]
From 1981 to 1986, Grahn lived in a committed relationship with poet and author,Paula Gunn Allen. The couple held regular Sunday gatherings at Mama Bears Coffeehouse and Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in northBerkeley, to discuss topics related to women’s spirituality.[12][13]
Today, Grahn lives in California and teaches at theCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies, theNew College of California, and theInstitute for Transpersonal Psychology.[7] There she teaches women's mythology and ancient literature, Metaformic Consciousness (a philosophy created by Grahn), and Uncommon Kinship – a course that uses theories from her Metaformic philosophy.[6]
Grahn has received a grant from theNational Endowment for the Arts, anAmerican Book Review award, anAmerican Book Award, aStonewall Book Award,[14] and a Founding Foremothers of Women's Spirituality Award.[7] She received theBill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement fromPublishing Triangle in 1994.[15] In 2022, she received the Second Annual Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism fromPEN Oakland forEruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power.
In 1997,Publishing Triangle, an association of lesbians and gay men in publishing, established theJudy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction to recognize the best nonfiction book of the year affecting lesbian lives.[7]
From 1981-1986, Judy lived with the Native American critic, novelist, poet, and teacher, Paula Gunn Allen. The two of them held weekly Sunday morning meetings on subjects pertaining to women's spirituality at Mama Bears Coffeehouse and Bookstore at 6536 Telegraph Avenue in north Oakland, just across the Berkeley border, across the street from the White Horse, said to be the oldest gay bar on the West Coast and possibly unique in being a place always friendly to two spirit people of all flavors.
