World Poetry Day: The Female Ancient Poets Sappho, Enheduanna and Zhuo Wenjun

In honour of World Poetry Day which is celebrated on March 21st, we are introducing three prominent Female Poets from the Ancient World! Enheduanna is the first author that we know of by name, and she was writing in Mesopotamia between 2285-2250 BCE. As the High Priestess of the goddess Inanna at the Temple of Ur, the poetry left behind by Enheduanna tells us of the Mesopotamian people’s perceptions of the divine, the nature of their gods and Enheduanna’s personal responses to events during her lifetime. Sappho of Lesbos was a Greek poet who lived between 620 and 570 BCE. Much of her surviving poetry concerns itself with female homosexuality, and the words ’sapphic’ and ’lesbian’ both derive from Sappho of Lesbos. She wrote poems that are so intimate and honest that even in fragments, her understanding of enduring human emotion still resonates with readers in the modern-day Our final ancient Poet is Zhuo Wenjun who lived in China during the Western Han Dynasty. Zhuo