feminist poetry

THE ONENESS IS THE GREATEST – #SANCTUMBRISTOL, by @elizabethethird

November 13, 2017
Cross-posted from: Elizabeth the Third
Originally published: 19.11.15

Every time I have read about spirituality, and usually when I am reading anything vaguely self-help-y, and sometimes when I am trawling through the Internet, there is a message that keeps coming back. That we are one. All of life, all of the Universe is, or is part of, the same organism, essence, energy.

I’m not too interested in debating or justifying this though I’ll happily discuss it, and often do, when someone is willing to engage with the idea. But without any religion, I have always believed that somehow we are all connected. I don’t know why, and I can’t really explain it. I don’t need to.

My best friend believes that we are imbued with the Holy Spirit, the same spirit of her God; my other best friend is an atheist, but does believes that we each have a soul, or spirit of some kind, and that we are connected to each other through mutual dependence and a moral responsibility to each other, simply by being alive and in proximity.

I’m not sure I can describe my experience of ‘oneness’, other than to say that at times I feel a connection, an emotional mirroring, and a rush and pull so visceral that it’s frightening, as though the soul I haven’t yet decided whether or not I have is being clamped and dragged from my body. I often shut that feeling down, especially since this happens most often when I am faced with the pain of others. Pain I’d rather not feel with no power to act on it, that’s not mine to fully grasp anyway, that’s distorted and egged on by my imagination and my adrenal glands.
Read more THE ONENESS IS THE GREATEST – #SANCTUMBRISTOL, by @elizabethethird

Categories: Featured Blog, Theatre Reviews
Tags: , , , ,

Wound—A poem by Fat Fem Pin Up

February 3, 2017
Cross-posted from: Fat Fem Pin Up
Originally published: 18.01.15

Sometimes I want to be the “wound” Ntozake spoke about

and sometimes I simply want freedom…

oh that wound…

so you never forget

you ache in forgotten places when the weather grows cold and heavy

…tickles like phantom

sometimes I want to be a limb cut off….

slow healing, seeping scar….

i want to be that ugly thing your new lovers trace with solemn finger tips, questing in the dark….

yet my descent has slowed by pity’s hand and time’s quiet call to blush, i cannot sustain my own decay

…to wound you

 

Fat Fem Pin Up: I am a fat activist, child rights advocate, womanist/feminist, poet with an affinity for selfies. I have a bachelor’s degree in social work and I work for a children protection agency. I plan to obtain a masters before I become a mother. I’m single but quite taken by good books, fancy living and chicken wings. @FatFemPinUp

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: ,

Passing Moments by @carregonnen

September 20, 2016
Cross-posted from: Carregonnen
Originally published: 18.02.16

Just a passing moment

A breath of air on my face

reminds me of something I can’t quite recall

and the moment has passed

Looking out of the window a cup of tea in my hand

a quick flurry of snow and then gone

Catching someone’s eyes as I pass them in the street

a connection a recognition a nearly smile

A wren in the garden I thought was a brown leaf

left over from winter blowing across the path

On a dark grey clouded day

a break shows me enough blue sky

The cold smoky familiar smell of a November night

crowds my head with memories

then gone for now

The sweet moist smell of cut grass

Leaves in autumn

Raindrop Racing down the window on a wet afternoon

An old song pulls me back

Glancing in the mirror above the sink I see my mother’s face

My daughter looks at one of her children and I see her father

A passing moment of a memory allows despair to wrap me up

and I try to let it pass

How much of life is made of passing moments

All the emotions in a brief encounter or thought

The lives of my children

My life

The earth is millions of years old

I am a passing moment

 

Carregonnen – I do life writing in poetry and prose about child abuse and mental health – politically I am a radical feminist.

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: , ,

I was born by @cateleven

June 13, 2016
Cross-posted from: The Feminist Poet
Originally published: 30.05.16

I was born this knot of nerves
Of great heat and flux
I swelled and ebbed
An abundant churning sea
And I soaked up all the hard truths
And I carried the layers
Of frowns and smiles
On my skin
All those words spat
Sat just below the surface
All those hands that touched me
Slept deeper
Behind my ribs
Waiting for a pause
For the tide to be out
When I was grown
When I was greyer
And my edges softer
And the skin a little laxed
When those hands would be remembered
With a ferocity
That would tear the skin from my bones
I would turn and turn
Over and over
Looking for a different space
Another place in the bed
Where it could not be felt
Where those words could not be heard
And the only place
The only free spot
The only calomine for my ever-burn
Was the constant motion
Of a sea swim-a rising tide
Or a long hill and valley run
Never sitting still
Never finishing

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: ,

Little Heart by @CatEleven

April 18, 2016
Cross-posted from: The Feminist Poet
Originally published: 12.04.16

Be gentle with me
She said
Hold me like a baby bird
Just out of its eggshell
Hold my little heart
In your palms
Watch my pulse
Watch me beat for you
Be gentle
Listen and breathe
Lightly over my surface
Be careful
I shatter when the air cools
When the acid spits
When the dark dog calls
But I soar
At a joyful touch
Revelling in my beauty
And spark
Watch my wings
Watch me fly
See me fly back down to you
My love
My lifeline in the chaos

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags:

Passing Moments by @Carregonnen

March 31, 2016
Cross-posted from: carregonnen's Blog
Originally published: 18.02.16

Just a passing moment

A breath of air on my face

reminds me of something I can’t quite recall

and the moment has passed

Looking out of the window a cup of tea in my hand

a quick flurry of snow and then gone

Catching someone’s eyes as I pass them in the street

a connection a recognition a nearly smile

A wren in the garden I thought was a brown leaf

left over from winter blowing across the path

On a dark grey clouded day

a break shows me enough blue sky

The cold smoky familiar smell of a November night

crowds my head with memories

then gone for now

The sweet moist smell of cut grass

Leaves in autumn

Raindrop Racing down the window on a wet afternoon

An old song pulls me back

Glancing in the mirror above the sink I see my mother’s face

My daughter looks at one of her children and I see her father

A passing moment of a memory allows despair to wrap me up

and I try to let it pass

How much of life is made of passing moments

All the emotions in a brief encounter or thought

The lives of my children

My life

The earth is millions of years old

I am a passing moment

 

Carregonnen : I do life writing in poetry and prose about child abuse and mental health – politically I am a radical feminist.

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags:

The Not So Blaze-A Poem by @FatFemPinUp

October 8, 2015
Cross-posted from: Fat Fem Pin Up
Originally published: 14.02.14

We’ve been reduced to regurgitating memories and feeding on phantoms

To hoping old fires could spark from melancholy fuel

I kept it alone

You lay beside the flame with empty hands
Driving need, some desperation

You took the heat
Read more The Not So Blaze-A Poem by @FatFemPinUp

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: ,

Behind

October 4, 2015
Cross-posted from: Helen Blogs

Behind smile is sometimes a heart that cries
There is often a body that is so exhausted
a mind that is in need of rest,
and a life in need of healing

Behind the smile is a person

Behind the face is someone in need of love
Someone in need of friendship
A life needing to be restored
And wandering if and how it will ever happen

Behind the face is a person

Behind the laugh is someone so unsure
Of how people will think,
And trying hard to be the smile,
The face, and the laugh

Behind the laugh is a person

Behind the smile, behind the face, behind the laugh is
A person who can dream
A person who can hope
A person who can learn to live again.

 

Helen Blogs This is reasonably new having blogged under the pseudonym of ‘fragmentz’ for 5 years (which is now defunct) I write about things including my own experiences of being a survivor of child hood abuse, and rape as an adult. I’m passionate about seeing an end to violence against women and am on a journey of learning more and more about feminism as each day goes by.  I also write about God and my faith. Twitter @helen_a13

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags:

Relationships by @carregonnen

August 18, 2015
Cross-posted from: Carregonnen
Originally published: 20.05.15

Relationships are important – friendships, family, lovers, acquaintances. They are complex things these relationships. Good and fulfilling if they work heartbreaking and damaging when they don’t. We can learn from them, grow within them, say hello to new ones and goodbye to old ones and try and repair the damage from ones that leave us for whatever reason. We are attached to our relationships sometimes with strong ropes sometimes with fragile threads that need care and attention often. When they work they can be joyful and life-giving. When they end the pain and sadness can be almost unbearable. But we somehow go on, making new ones nourishing the ones we have and living without the ones that have ended.
Read more Relationships by @carregonnen

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: , ,

Girl and Woman @Carregonnen

April 14, 2015

cross-posted from Carregonnen

orig. pub, 18.2.15

I wrote this poem five years ago. I have tried to edit it, to improve the language, to make it better but I can’t. I don’t know how else to say this in a more ‘good poetry’ way – so I have left it because at the moment it says what I want it to say. My mental health problems have been severe over my life and I have made some very poor behaviour and relationship choices. Like many other women, I think about what my life would have been like if I had not had a violent abusive father. If I had grown up with few problems and had fulfilled whatever potential I had. If I hadn’t been such a damaged teenager and had been able to stay on at school and go to University like my brothers eventually did. If I hadn’t been so desperate to get married and have children but had been able to wait till I was really ready. If I had been a mother who was not driven by anger and despair and fear but one who was able to give her children a more stable childhood without screaming rages that made them fearful of me and my responses and reactions. I have said before that the guilt I feel about the way I was as a young mother will stay with me forever – no matter how much insight into and understanding of the reasons why I was the way I was. I cannot do any more to fix this although I still try. I no longer have rages, they ended many years ago when I realised why I was so angry. Now I have fear and this immobilises me and creates feelings of despair and pointlessness. But I am still here and I have a good life and I do enjoy many parts of it – friends family lots of interests. There’s bits of me I quite like and many bits I do not like and actively scrutinise and judge far more harshly than anyone else could!

I am a girl
I am eleven years old
soon I will sit my Eleven Plus examination
and I will go to Grammar School
to not go to Grammar School
would be ‘unthinkable’ says my Father
My Mother is beautiful
I have a handsome Father
so he says.
I have two brothers
they are both younger than me
and I love them both

I am a woman
I am sixty three years old
I have three children and nine grandchildren
now I have only one brother and I love him
I have good friends
I have a job a house and a car
I enjoy most of my life
sometimes I go a bit crazy
then I take pills
this has been happening on and off
most of my life
I have friends who understand me
I have children who don’t
This is not their fault
This is my fault
But it is His fault in the first place
If I try to imagine a different girl who is eleven
If I try to imagine a different life
then I can’t imagine a different sixty three year old woman
I have no idea what she would be like
at least I know who I am
this sixty three year old woman
I know her crazy as she is
I am glad I have the children I have
I am glad I have the friends I have
But the life I have is difficult to live

February 2009

 

Carregonnen: I do life writing in poetry and prose about child abuse and mental health – politically I am a radical feminist. [@Carregonnen]

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: , , , ,

The Denounced by @CatEleven

October 3, 2014

(Cross-posted from One Woman’s Thoughts)

Sat in a pod
Or at a desk
A sofa
A lawn
Lying in bed
You scan with your code
And your algorithms of shame

Eyeballing for the sleights
The choice keywords
Juicy tidbits to wave under
The noses of your allies
Tracking
The allegiances formed
Through shared experiences

And you frighten
Condemn and denounce
These keyboard “aggressors”
You are known to us
You scream
From a page backlit
And we are watching you

Looking at your language
Looking for your hate
Avoid these scum
You warn
While actively searching them out
These women
With voices

These questioning
Inquisitive women
These thinking
Breathing
Challenging
Women
Reducing them to sound bites

Stereotypes
Privileged and hated
Ostracised
For expressing opinions
For naming their oppression
For questioning
For speaking

 

One Woman’s Thoughts: I am a feminist and this is my blog; a collection of perspectives, poetry and ideas. [@CatEleven]

Categories: Featured Blog, Poetry
Tags: , , , , , ,