Showing posts with label Beth Espey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beth Espey. Show all posts

International Women's Day 2015

Yesterday was International Women's Day.

To mark this occasion I was invited up to Manx Radio to take part in a live challenge as part of a Women Today special program.  This year's theme for Women's Day is "Make it Happen" and the challenge was to Make something Happen in the two hours we were on the air.

The challenge was to write a poem.  In two hours.  With specific items. And then, half way through the challenge, extra words were added to be included.

(I don't know if any of you guys knows Triple J in Australia and the Song in an Hour challenge with the group Tripod, but it was a bit like that. Those guys are absolutely hilarious. If you don't know them you should check them out.)

The items:
The Venus symbol.
A ring.

The words to be included:
Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

I had a whale of a time and can't wait for the next challenge. Pressure calls the muse wonderfully well. The resulting poem is below. Huge thank yous to everyone on the Women Today team, but especially Kate Holland for being a star. Xxxx


For International Women’s Day
I’m sitting here on Women Today.
Challenge set and yet I find
confusion in these female signs.
Venus: lollipop with cross
since renaissance thaw of cultural frost
has meant the 51%
in shorthand for illiteracy’s argument.
Distaff, mirror, domesticity,
spinning the fabric of life through history.
The Norse Gods though, gave Freya this power;
Spinning the clouds while from raindrops men cowered.
The archetypal figures of fate-
Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos make
us realise the strength held within
the masterminding of the tangled skein.
And if life’s a tapestry as sang Carole King
What now do we think of the gilded ring?
The fourth finger on the sinister hand
Has a vein to the heart, or so folk understand
In times gone by... (Look, I know, I tried.
My tenses are out, but time’s not on my side.)
Miniature yokes of marital oppression
Or religious symbol of soul felt confession
Or one to bring them, and in the darkness bind them
Or heirlooms passed down with memories inside them.
What change do they make, these circles of fidelity?
Do you wake up one morning and believe in eternity?
And if you do, don’t you think you should start
on the immediate world making your mark?
We’re talking today about Making It Happen
in reality, not just in worlds we’ve imagined.
The movement was started in 1909
by New York socialists supporting a strike
of the Union of Ladies’ Garment Workers.
Great shouts will grow from grass root murmurs.
The advancements we've made in society over all
in a century of campaigns, of fighting, of appall -
- ing misdeeds and practices we’re trying to assign
to yesterdays. To the unenlightened times.
To change the world there’s a secret trick
that I learned while working on a cross-stitch.
It’s that tiny actions eventually make
tomorrow’s reality yours to take.
Even one step is one step closer.
Take your time, keep the faith, retain your composure.
You won’t believe when they all combine
how far you can go, one step at a time.
Identifying lacks is all very well
but unless you do something, don’t bother to tell
me you’re bored, you’re unhappy, there’s nothing to do.
This is opportunity.  It’s up to you
to fill in that gap; to give your life meaning;
to refuse to do anything you find demeaning.
The theme for this year is most motivational.
Look out for figures unassuming and inspirational.
How much did your mother give up for you?
And those people doing what you want to do
have just accepted the greater timeline.
They don’t give up in the face of bad signs.
So Women Today celebrate femininity.
Embrace your power.  Salute your divinity.
Do that thing you've always wanted to do.
Make no excuses, just steps to the new.