AustLit

'Sheila Rowbotham has written that the political expression of personal experience lies within the domain of novels and poetry. Seldom has this principle been made more apparent than in the anthology Mother, I’m Rooted. It becomes more and more clear with each one of the [152] poets and 542 pages of the book that this is the unambiguous expression of a social consciousness which cannot be glossed over or dismissed as belonging to a “radical” fringe. For these poets speak from all corners of the female social situation in Australia, and cover the whole spectrum of political consciousness … the anthology includes the whole gamut of women’s experience, married, single, lesbian, heterosexual, mothers, workers housewives. Poets, they speak out in tones of despair, anger, melancholy, loneliness, solidarity, sardonic bitterness, humour, hope and hopelessness. This very diversity and wholesale inclusiveness gives Mother, I’m Rooted, a strength and a unity. A strength from the rawness of the poetry, uncompromised and undiluted by the male publishing regime; and a unity from the common experience of being woman' (87).

Source: Howarth, Peter. 'Out of Nightmares into the Sun' Hecate 1.2 (1975): 87. (Note: Howarth's review gives the number of poets in the collection as 155; the correct number is 152.)