Vindication E-Book

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 35

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The third of our #WomenVote100 Anthologies:a showcase for poets Arachne has previously published in anthologies, giving an opportunity to explore their writing in greater depth. These are poems made of myth and family, origins and anger, journeys and home: witty, clever, beautiful and sometimes harsh. Whilst not directly reflecting on the experience of women fighting for the vote, the concerns of women are foremost and are passionately addressed. My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, as if they were in perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. From Vindication by Anne Macaulay, a found poem based on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft.

Leseprobe

Contents

Sarah James

Model Child

Ye Olde Tavern

Only Child

Waking Woman

Tracing My Origins

The First Step Afterwards is Simple...

The Chimera and Her Son

Like Fur

Elinor Brooks

Lines from the Creek

Men an Tol

Mathew Trewella and the Mermaid of Zennor

The Tinners, The Knocker and the Fuggy Hole

What Country Friends...

Consulto Et Audacter

At Whispering Tree Studio, Tasmania

Jill Sharp

Dada

Dogs of Delhi

Cuckoo

Installation

The Emperor’s New Ode

Frontier

Vlad the Impala

Green Man

An Audience With Dirk

Elizabeth’s Last Progress

Sarah Lawson

Animal Liberation

Driving Up to Renfrew

Leda

Coming Home in the Fog

Next door to the Capulets

Anne Macaulay

Vindication

Daughters of the Sea

Here Lived

Identification

Fathers and Daughters

The Jackal

A Man Once Told Me

Traje de Lunares

Exhibition

Palmas Return

Adrienne Silcock

Burn Out

Drought, Winter 1929

Bees

Offering

Recluse

Tying Laces

Sarah James

Model Child

Hours of her trapped in glass distortions:

the pink of 05 tinted lips, porcelain powder,

and that extra long-lasting black effect

of eyelashes fluttered against the glitter

of a film-cast gaze. Her petal toes pinned

in strange stilettos. The tiny sliced moons

of kitten heels and clinging sequins.

Everything other-suited; her tastes muted

in glossy mags’ ringlets, dyes, bleaches…

Behind the mirror’s made-up eyes, cold

perfection’s thin-fleshed shadow bruising.

Skeletoned desire curls into bed beside her.

Ye Olde Tavern

Forget press gangs. It were never the King’s men

who pushed a man in his drink to join the Navy.

There’s a good reason for pubs’ wooden bars:

our full rack of plump breasts, serving up pints,

yet not a glimpse of leg. Our shapely tails curve,

fishboned beneath us, as we sink that silver glint.

No need to waste our voices on song. We slip

magic in his booze and know he’ll lose himself,

while we glisten in the lap of Davy Jones’ locker.

Listen! Next time you’re on the coast, stop by

ye olde tavern, sign swinging with brine rust.

Watch closely as we handle glass, and wink.

Once our coral lips part, you’ll find oceans

in our throat, and not a boat to save you.

Only Child

Perhaps this is how it went:

a haggard night / a deck of tarot

& desperation as a guest

One gent in many hats / Dad

plays The Magician / The Emperor

& then The Hanged Man / flailing

towards The Hermit / but failing

Almost all that’s left is Old Fool

& her mom leaving \\ Just one card:

The Poppy in June – an unblown

swelling across a reed bed

where tadpoles flit / threading

the curve of her bones / with moon-

silk \\ In the black-seeded heart

of Mom’s womb petals

the stitches that will bind her

the stitches she calls fate –

though really she means mistake

Waking Woman

(or Eve’s great-great-great granddaughter speaks…)

My self-portrait is a blur:

an ageing face unsettled

by a misted mirror.

In the postcard on my wall,

Adam’s hand is a limp arch

of painted flesh and bone.

God’s index is a stronger

arrow, directive,

pointing straight to man.

Eve isn’t even in the picture.

Just out of sight, an apple

surely in her mouth,

snakes hissing on her head.

Centuries of sins later,

were my being worth a postcard,

my hair would be a whirlwind

of broken-tree fingers

and unknitted nests,

with a red smear for lips

that no longer know

what God to speak of.

Tracing My Origins

The water that carries my heart in its trickle

draws from the dark flow of the Thames

and the Wye’s Welsh wandering.

Part-London-brick, part-Celtic-river –

lacking firm-banked roots,

my shape’s the mudded-silver scurry-

then-slow of a roadside ditch

that skirts homes, shouts over rocks

and gutters through gritty tarmac.

Drowned Sabrina rises in the Severn bore,

Sequana’s duck-prowed boat guards the Seine,

but I glide with the secrecy of mute swans.

I carry more places in my bloodstream

than I’ve space left for memory;

they’re mapped into my cells.

No deep-channelled ocean song

or settled lake, my voice is a whisper

in small drops, always distant;

nomadic. This restless belonging

is nothing less and nothing more

than making like the rain:

falling wherever each day takes me,