Ready for the World
Author: Becca Klaver
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press (2020)
What does it take for a girl to get ready for the world, and is it ever possible to go back? Ready for the World is a book of poems, spells, performance scripts, and feminist fairytales that derives its magic from tarot and astrology, feminist artist foremothers, and virtual and IRL covens. In her update of the lyric "I" for the digital age, Klaver claims for poetry the trivialized tones of femininity, unwilling to give up on the possibility of an outside to patriarchy as she loops around in cyclical time to access a spirit of magic, play, friendship, and artmaking. Written in the years Klaver was collaborating on feminist writing, performance, ritual, and activism in person and online in the form of the (G)IRL writing group, The Real Housewives of Bohemia podcast, the Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants website, the Anti-Surveillance Feminist Poet Hair & Makeup Party roving mob, and the Enough Is Enough proto-#MeToo activist collective, Ready for the World explores how alternative practices and communities can resist destructive forms of power and conjure other ways of being and knowing.