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  The Poetry of Aphra Behn

  Aphra Behn

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  Aphra Behn was a prolific and well-established poet and playwright but facts about her life remain scant and difficult to confirm. What can safely be said is that Aphra Behn is regarded as a key English playwright and a major figure in Restoration theatre.  Her poetry is now far more appreciated and seen as a breakthrough for women of the 17th Century and beyond.  
   
  Aphra was baptised on 14th December 1640 and grew up with the gathering tensions leading to the English Civil War, a time of much division and difficulty as the King, Parliament, and their respective forces, came closer and then finally into open conflict. 
   
  By 1664 her marriage was over, less than a year after it began. She now used Mrs Behn as her professional name and moved towards pursuing a more sustainable and substantial career, working for the King's Company and the Duke's Company players as a scribe. Her first play ‘The Forc’d Marriage’, was staged in 1670, and thereafter many followed, including her later comic works, which were more commercially successful.  She wrote 19 plays in all and contributed to many others as well as several works of prose. 
   
  Along with her literary career there are claims she was a spy, that she travelled abroad, possibly as far as Surinam.  She also claimed to have met a slave leader in Africa and based her story ‘Oroonoko’ on his life.  Other accounts suggest that during her life she was also known as Ann Behn, Agent One-Sixty and Astrea. Her financial troubles seem to have also incurred her a brief stay in a debtors' prison. Whatever the truth, both her life and work seem rich, textured and full of adventure. 
   
  From the mid 1680’s Aphra’s health began to decline.  This was exacerbated by her continual state of debt and descent into poverty although she was often fond of saying that she had led a ‘life dedicated to pleasure and poetry.’ 
    
  Aphra Behn died on 16th April 1689. She is buried in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey and the inscription on her tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality."  
  1 - The Poetry of Aphra Behn - An Introduction 
  2 - The Disappointment by Aphra Behn 
  3 - On a Juniper Tree, Cut Down to Make Busks by Aphra Behn 
  4 - The Willing Mistress by Aphra Behn 
  5 - To Lysander by Aphra Behn 
  6 - Love Armed by Aphra Behn 
  7 - On Desire by Aphra Behn 
  8 - The Counsel by Aphra Behn 
  9 - Love's Witness by Aphra Behn 
  10 - The Invitation by Aphra Behn 
  11 - To Mrs B by Aphra Behn 
  12 - On Her Loving Two Equally by Aphra Behn 
  13 - The Dream by Aphra Behn 
  14 - Song by Aphra Behn 
  15 - A Ballad on Mr J H to Amoret, Asking Why I Was So Sad by Aphra Behn 
  16 - The Return by Aphra Behn 
  17 - Oh How the Hand the Lover Ought to Prize by Aphra Behn 
  18 - The Dog in the Manger by Aphra Behn 
  19 - Angellica's Lament by Aphra Behn 
  20 - A Congratulatory Poem by Aphra Behn 
  21 - A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation by Aphra Behn 
  22 - Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven That Died Before by Aphra Behn 
  23 - A Thousand Martyrs aka The Libertine by Aphra Behn 
  24 - On the Death of the Late Earl of Rochester by Aphra Behn

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  Machinations of A Feminist

  Margaret D. (Kawamuinyo) Gill

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  A semi autobiographical collection of poetry by an award winning poet, Machinations of A Feminist is a conversation between a Barbadian woman poet and each listener. It is an offering of communion between poet, reader and listener 
  "These poems share the romance the author has with words and her habit of uplifting the local (Barbadian, Caribbean), the extra-ordinary. In so doing it offers a validation of the poem as personal history, and therefore history. The words themselves are offered as the objective correlative, since what stands behind them may ultimately be un-shareable - an aim to delight God and fellowship with the reader in what may well be simply groans. Nonetheless, let all that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as seek thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified... " 
  Margaret D. Gill taught, variously, literature, written English, Caribbean civilization studies and critical writing for over two decades as adjunct staff at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies. She has been published in several anthologies, including the original BIM Magazine and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (2005). She was First Prize winner of the Inaugural Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award (1998), and in 2008 was one of nine international writers of the IWW (International Writers Workshop) in Hong Kong and China. 

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  From Both Hips (NHB Modern Plays)

  Mark O'Rowe

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  A gripping drama about revenge and absolution, from the award-winning author of Howie the Rookie.
  Paul has been accidentally shot in the hip by a policeman. Back from hospital, he is bitter and self-pitying. He is also two-timing his wife. Then the policeman appears with an apology, a gun and an extraordinary suggestion...

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  The Ballad of Reading Gaol

  Oscar Wilde

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  The poem written by Wilde while in exile about his time in Reading Prison and the hanging of Charles Thomas Wooldridge.

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  Lances All Alike

  Suzanne Zelazo

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  Modernist poet-painters Mina Loy and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven had many friends in common (including Djuna Barnes and Marcel Duchamp), yet there is no record that the two ever met. Their non-relationship presents a curious “absent presence�* in modernist history. Zelazo weaves lines of poetry by both women into an imaginary conversation, exploring the way their work has been suppressed, stitched, spliced, and edited by male editors and arbiters of taste.

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  Chavez Ravine

  Culture Clash

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  The controversial history of Chavez Ravine, the immigrant community that once existed on the site that is now Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, is explored with humor, brutal honesty, and pulse-racing music by the nation's premier Chicano/Latino theatre troupe, Culture Clash.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Culture Clash:  Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, Herbert Siguenza and Zilah Mendoza.

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