The poetry collection – Monika Radojevic: the politics of poetry

Monika Radojevic is a half-Montenegrin and half-Brazilian writer born and raised in London. She has an undergraduate degree in Politics and International Relations at the University of Bristol, as well as a Master’s degree in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Radojevic also works in the political sector for women’s rights and equality, a role that is prominently reflected in her literary works. In 2019, she was made the first winner of the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize leading to the publication of her debut poetry collection: Teeth in the Back of My Neck. In 2022, she launched ‘Feminist Invoicing’, a poetry project and series of workshops primarily discussing the dismantling of oppressive institutions. Radojevic is now working on a collection of feminist essays that will be released in 2025 and her very first novel coming a year later. In between her writing endeavors, Radojevic maintains her blog Aphrodisia, a mixture of literary work, social commentary, and personal essays that is accessible through her social media platforms.

Although I am patiently waiting for her newer works to be released, my first encounter with Radojevic was through her debut collection, Teeth in the Back of My Neck. The collection explores the intersection between womanhood and ethnicity, particularly within the context of modern Britain. The collection is split into two parts: ‘teeth’ (the external) and ‘neck,’ (the internal), which according to Monika is to “represent the impact of external injustices on the internal psyche” as her way to portray the mantra – ‘the personal is political.’ In the 1960s, on the cusp of second-wave feminism, Carol Hanisch coined the slogan, ‘the personal is political,’ in order to express the common feminist belief that personal experiences of women are rooted in a large political framework. This remained influential within feminist theory and is weaved throughout Radojevic’s poetry. Through her realistic portrayal of what it means to be a woman of colour and a person of dual-heritage while growing up in the UK, Radojevic presents an intersectional interpretation of the slogan. I would like to look at two poems that intrigued me the most, one residing in the ‘teeth’ section of the collection and the other in the ‘neck.’

The former section includes a poem entitled “To Be A Woman” that uncovers the impossibility for women to maintain unrealistic standards that society has constructed for them. The poem is laced with irony and contradictions that contribute to this notion of impossibility for women. The poem begins with the lines:

“To be a woman is to be mute.

Make no fuss, shout no poison. This is what I’ve been told since the

       beginning:

that life is a race and to be a woman is to start tongue-tied”

(Taken from “To Be A Woman”, 2021)

The opening line, “To be a woman is to be mute”, conveys a dual-purpose: the first outlines the suppression of female speech, perhaps within a political realm, as well as somewhat “silencing” the reader of the poem in order to properly illustrate the female experience within the remainder of the text. The use of the word “mute” acts as a grounding device that underlines the sincerity Radojevic is trying to advocate, showing that overall her political messaging cannot be undercut by her wit and irony displayed further in the poem. In the line following this one that state “this is what I’ve been told since the beginning”, Radojevic draws upon ‘the personal is political’ by showing how women tend to be imbued with the fact that they are secondary within patriarchal power structures and that they are expected to conduct themselves in a certain way in order to adhere to societal norms. The ambiguity behind the phrase “since the beginning” reminds me of how one would start a children’s storybook, perhaps alluding to this devaluing of girls that begins during childhood. Despite the childish tone, we are harshly reminded that this is no tale of fiction. In the remains of the poem, Radojevic goes on to the detail the societal pressures put upon women to be perfect, to “hide [their] rage”,”‘to always be a shoulder to cry on”, “to grow up quickly” and to be in a continual state of “exhaust[ion]” when doing so. The poem traces the external to the internal as the ending introduces the personal pronoun “I” to show the impact of these expectations upon the individual speaker.

“Why can’t you take me as I am?

I learnt it the hard way, but I learnt,

to be a woman is to be one’s own woman.”

(Taken from “To Be A Woman”, 2021)

In the ‘neck’ of the collection, I’d like to discuss the poem “Jane” that explores the realities of being a woman of colour within white, British spheres. Through Radojevic’s witty anger she is able to show the exclusionary encounters that women of colour undergo, while synonymously adding a level of earnestness through the speaker’s desire to be  born as an “English rose with lighter hair” and to possess a name that is easier to pronounce. In the first stanza of the poem this irony is introduced:

“My name walks into the room before I do,

it’s my badge of (dis)honour,

my invisible birthmark,

my raised red flag”

(Taken from “Jane”, 2021)

The personification of the speaker’s name and the removal of it from herself, shows Radojevic’s conviction that the speaker has been defined by their name and thereby their ethnicity, creating a separation between them and their white counterparts. The use of parentheses in the term “(dis)honour” not only indicates how her name is a symbol of shame for her but also displays the duplicitousness between the dishonour she feels within a white space and the honour she may feel for her heritage (if the parentheses were to be removed). The contradictory phrase “invisible birthmark” also illustrates the erasure of her roots within narrow spheres while also furthering the idea that she is ultimately defined or “birth[ed]” by them. The latter section of the collection truly captures the inner impact of wider societal structures that Radojevic is attempting to convey. The ideas of honour and birth are deeply personal notions to the speaker and thereby pay homage to the ‘personal is political’ notion that Radojevic is pushing forth.

Radojevic’s upcoming works include A Beautiful Lack of Consequence (2025), a collection of feminist essays that explore “the ways in which the world bends and breaks women with the pressure it puts on them – and what happens when those women snap.” In addition, there is Strangerland (2026), a fictionalised retelling of her parents’ love story wherein a couple “fall in love and marry within three months of meeting each other despite not sharing a language, country or culture.”