I Arrive without Leaving - The Story of Women Surrealist Poets

New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza tells the little-known story of the early women surrealist poets and writers and how they shaped the surrealist movement.

Surrealism is often associated with visual arts – with melting clocks and headless torsos. But it was in the realm of writing and poetry that surrealist experiments first began. Some of the most radical work was produced by a group of women poets who embraced the movement as a vehicle for innovation and liberation.

“When one is overcome by demoralization and defeat, depressed or on the verge of suicide, that is the time to open one’s Surrealist Survival Kit and enjoy a breath of magical fresh air. To lay out its marvellous contents carefully before you and let them play …” wrote artist, novelist and poet, Leonora Carrington in 1936.

Leonora was one of a group of surrealist women poets who were key thinkers in the build up to and in the decades following the publication of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. And yet at the time they were often perceived to be muses more than artists in their own right by some of the men in the movement.

Drawing on rare recordings including an interview with Leonora Carrington as well as readings of poems by Méret Oppenheim, Joyce Mansour, Gisèle Prassinos, Claud Cahun and Suzanne Césaire, Alexandra examines how these women writers’ confronted issues of gender identity, the erotic, colonialism and power structures using the tools of surrealism to reimagine the world.

With contributions from contemporary surrealist poets and writers Penelope Rosemont, Beatriz Hausner, Rikki Ducornet, Selena Chambers, Aja Monet and Professor Robin DG Kelley.

Readings by Anne Gallien and Emily Bruni
Produced by Sarah Cuddon
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3