Gender

I've just been looking at The Poetry School's latest brochure. Some interesting courses on offer. This caught my eye, but I don't think I'll sign up for it:

A woman’s voice cannot escape its sex, so female poets who write ‘I’ will be read as writing either about their own experience, or the experience of other women. Does this matter and, if it does, why? Vicki Bertram will discuss some of the ideas explored in her book Gendering Poetry: contemporary women and men poets.

Oh, really? So where does that leave 'The River-Merchant's Wife'? Or the farmer, for that matter, in 'The Farmer's Bride'?

It is not what she meant at all, that is not it at all. Why should female poets be constrained this way? Why should male poets be constrained? Aren't we free to choose the voice we use in a particular poem? Doesn't the reader who wants to pin it down biographically need to get out more?

PS - later I read the actual heading and discover she's writing about the lyric voice. Hmm. I'm no longer sure what 'lyric' means.