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The Path of Most Resistance: Poems on Women in Science
Poems about historical women in STEM fields.
Women have always worked in technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. Sometimes they made important discoveries and breakthroughs; sometimes they simply managed to exist and persist despite endless obstacles and a criminal lack of acknowledgment. Carefully researched, thoughtful, pitch perfect and precise, these poems about historical women scientists are hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time.
There are women here whose names you may know (Rachel Carson, Mae Jemison, Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, Beatrix Potter) and others you probably don’t (Tapputi-Belatekallim, June Bacon-Bercey, Eugenie Clark, Beatrice Medicine, Gladys West). Randall has a fine-tuned knack for metaphor and plain language, and her poetry unpicks injustice alongside complex scientific ideas. If you’ve seen Randall’s poems in Scientific American, Analog, or Asimov’s Science Fiction, you may already have been drawn into these extraordinary stories. Illustrated with portraits by NASA artist Kristin DiVona, these poems will resonate with scientists, feminists, thinkers, learners, philosophers, poets, and truth-seekers young, old and everywhere in between.
Women have always worked in technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. Sometimes they made important discoveries and breakthroughs; sometimes they simply managed to exist and persist despite endless obstacles and a criminal lack of acknowledgment. Carefully researched, thoughtful, pitch perfect and precise, these poems about historical women scientists are hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time.
There are women here whose names you may know (Rachel Carson, Mae Jemison, Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, Beatrix Potter) and others you probably don’t (Tapputi-Belatekallim, June Bacon-Bercey, Eugenie Clark, Beatrice Medicine, Gladys West). Randall has a fine-tuned knack for metaphor and plain language, and her poetry unpicks injustice alongside complex scientific ideas. If you’ve seen Randall’s poems in Scientific American, Analog, or Asimov’s Science Fiction, you may already have been drawn into these extraordinary stories. Illustrated with portraits by NASA artist Kristin DiVona, these poems will resonate with scientists, feminists, thinkers, learners, philosophers, poets, and truth-seekers young, old and everywhere in between.
94 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 23, 2025
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May 22, 2025
Faintly reminiscent of some of Nikita Gill's early work, this body of work is nonetheless completely its own thing and is an outcry of multiple factual women's voices calling out against the varying and terribly raw deals they were given.
Mistaken for men if they put forth any relevant scientific advances, or else having lives and work cut short if they allowed themselves to take a marriage veil and walk into the death that many child births ended in, this poetry collection is often brutal and always powerful. As we journey through time, we see that brutality and power change and present itself in different ways through the lens of these women of science.
I don't think there was a single poem in this entire collection that I didn't love. However there were some that stood out for me. I thought particularly clever the way the poem titled 'Trota of Salerno (ca. 11th-12th century)' offered the start of the concept of child birth often ending in death, which was then built up and intensified in 'Jane Colden (1724-1766)' because of this introduction.
There were also three sets of poems in here that were set up as a kind of call and response of each other, signalled only by 'see also' lines with a different woman's name, that read as equally clever.
I found 'Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793-1884)' a terrible and all too true account of the women who work against themselves and their gender in pursuit of what is accepted and expected, then to now. Meanwhile, 'Anna Atkins (1799-1871)' is a poem that asks whether a woman who thinks and writes needs to be *fixed*. And I think more than a few women today could see themselves in the so called 'problems' articulated in the poem entitled 'Ellen Amanda Hayes (1851-1930)'.
Many of these poems I read more than once just to really take in the meaning of those words. The power of these poems defy only being read once.
And I was delighted to realise that this isn't just a collection of voiceless white women, as it might have been. 'Ellen Eglin (before 1849-after 1890)' shows the invention of a Black American woman that was revolutionary before the common washing machine: that of the clothes-wringer, while 'Ida Gray (1867-1953)' contributing to the science of dentistry. And that's only two of the first that feature.
I've included some lesser known names in poems that I loved, but this collection also includes Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) and Dorothy Bernstein (1914-1988). The only name I was mildly surprised not to see featured here was that of Mary Shelley, mother of science fiction, especially given the Frankenstein reference elsewhere in the collection.
Mistaken for men if they put forth any relevant scientific advances, or else having lives and work cut short if they allowed themselves to take a marriage veil and walk into the death that many child births ended in, this poetry collection is often brutal and always powerful. As we journey through time, we see that brutality and power change and present itself in different ways through the lens of these women of science.
I don't think there was a single poem in this entire collection that I didn't love. However there were some that stood out for me. I thought particularly clever the way the poem titled 'Trota of Salerno (ca. 11th-12th century)' offered the start of the concept of child birth often ending in death, which was then built up and intensified in 'Jane Colden (1724-1766)' because of this introduction.
There were also three sets of poems in here that were set up as a kind of call and response of each other, signalled only by 'see also' lines with a different woman's name, that read as equally clever.
I found 'Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793-1884)' a terrible and all too true account of the women who work against themselves and their gender in pursuit of what is accepted and expected, then to now. Meanwhile, 'Anna Atkins (1799-1871)' is a poem that asks whether a woman who thinks and writes needs to be *fixed*. And I think more than a few women today could see themselves in the so called 'problems' articulated in the poem entitled 'Ellen Amanda Hayes (1851-1930)'.
Many of these poems I read more than once just to really take in the meaning of those words. The power of these poems defy only being read once.
And I was delighted to realise that this isn't just a collection of voiceless white women, as it might have been. 'Ellen Eglin (before 1849-after 1890)' shows the invention of a Black American woman that was revolutionary before the common washing machine: that of the clothes-wringer, while 'Ida Gray (1867-1953)' contributing to the science of dentistry. And that's only two of the first that feature.
I've included some lesser known names in poems that I loved, but this collection also includes Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) and Dorothy Bernstein (1914-1988). The only name I was mildly surprised not to see featured here was that of Mary Shelley, mother of science fiction, especially given the Frankenstein reference elsewhere in the collection.
Displaying 1 of 1 review