This week we take a look at lesbian poet, Audre Lorde. Lorde was born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants. Lorde wrote her first poem in the 8th grade. In 1954, Lorde spent a year at the University of New Mexico, a time that she stated transformed her and cemented her identity as a lesbian and a poet. When she returned to New York, she became an active participant in the gay culture of Greenwich Village.
Lorde finished college and got a master's of library science degree from Columbia in 1961. She also married and had two children, later divorcing her husband. Lorde's work was published regularly throughout the '60s and her themes were civil rights, anti-war, and feminist. Lorde then began exploring lesbian themes in her poetry and life. She met Frances Clayton, who became her partner until 1989. Then Lorde met Gloria Joseph and was partnered with her until Lorde's death in 1992 from breast cancer.
Lorde's poetry is significant for its focus on the erotic. She was one of the first women writing lesbian erotic poetry and is regarded as one of the founding mothers of this genre. Lorde did one of the first public readings of lesbian erotic poetry in 1971. Lorde had this to say about the erotic-
"We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way."
The following is one of Lorde's best known erotic poems-
Love Poem
Speak earth and bless me with what is richest
Make sky flow honey out of my hips
Rigid as mountains
Spread over a valley
Carved out by the mouth of rain.
And I knew when I entered her I was
High wind in her forests hollow
Fingers whispering sound
Honey flowed
From the split cup
Impaled on a lance of tongues
On the tips of her breasts on her navel
And my breath
Howling into her entrances
Through lungs of pain.
Greedy as herring-gulls
Or a child
I swing out over the earth
Over and over
Again.
