The Role of Poetry in Bringing out Sexual Diversity and Gender Construction

Abstract

The paper focuses on the role of poetry in bringing out sexual diversity and gender construction. Furthermore, the paper discusses how trans poets use poetry to form the trans identity while female poets and male poets use poetry to construct female gender identity. The objective of this study is to explore the way these poets employ gender, body, power and identity politics to contest the normative and dominant ideologies centered around them in the society. The data for the study is based on the selected poems about women by three poets, Carol Ann Duffy, Lakdas Wikkramasinha and Sylvia Plath and trans poets, Lee Mokobe and Shilok Mukkati. In order to portray how poetry supports in the construction of gender in detail, poets from different backgrounds have been selected. Trans theory has been used as a theoretical basis to give a detailed analysis of trans gender poetry. At the same time, feminist theory is used to analyze poems written on women. Incorporating these theories, this study demonstrates that the trans poets and other poets who have written about women are successful in constructing gender identity by using the so-called politics to contest the hegemonic and normative norms and ideologies.