The Fat Poets’ Society
authors of
Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets’ Society
(Kathy Barron, Anne S. Kaplan, Corinna Makris, Lesleigh J. Owen & Frannie Zellman)
Fat Poets Speak 2: Living and Loving Fatly
(Kathy Barron, Anne S. Kaplan, Lesleigh Owen, Eileen Rosensteel, Mary Ray Worley, Frannie Zellman, with New Voices: Durette Hauser, Deb Lemire, Dr. Deah Schwartz & M.M. Stein)
Fat Poets Speak 3: FatDance Flying
(Kathy Barron, Durette Hauser, Lesleigh Owen, Frannie Zellman, with New Voices: Tolonda Henderson, Dawn Howard, Miranda Jacobson, Kris Owen, Michelle Kriz Parkinson & Sherrie Myers)
Excerpt from Fat Poets Speak: Poetry about (some) fat women’s experiences with oppression
Kimberly Dark review in Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, published online November 19, 2020.
“Speaking up when silenced is a radical act — particularly for a group of people who’ve been taught that their marginalization is their own fault. The very title of the Fat Poets Speak anthologies tell the reader that the aim of these poems is breaking silence. To do so as a group is particularly empowering, since silencing easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy….They are standing against othering by revealing aspects of experience that slender people don’t recognize, and often don’t wish to. Whether the fat person has been excused from derision because of illness or beauty or fitness or age, the audacity to even speak of being fat — let along being oppressed because of it — can cause outrage.”