I guess by now many of you have noticed that Fat Poets Speak, both 1 and 2, feature only women poets. I and Fat Poets Speak did not set out to exclude men. I am hoping that somewhere there are indeed fat men poets who are writing about their experiences of being fat in a thin-centric culture. I would like to think that there are fat men who are happy with, perhaps even proud of their fatness, and will embody it one day in poetry.
I somehow remember that there was one man in one of the poetry workshops I taught at NAAFA conventions and two or even three men in the others. However, they were not fat.
Perhaps a fat man poet needs to teach a workshop on fat embodiment in poetry for men.
Such a wonderful point! I'd love to hear poems by and about fat men. Unfortunately, poetry is gendered pretty feminine, and fatness can have an emasculating effect, so I understand fat men not wanting to further compromise their masculinity (and masculine privilege, shaky and tattered as it is for fat men). How very sad, though.
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ReplyDeleteAnd it is doubly sad because I have known some hot hot fat men!
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