Hallelujah for 50ft Women Read online

  HALLELUJAH FOR 50ft WOMEN

  Raving Beauties women’s theatre company was born out of a deep sense of frustration with domesticity, naivete and a burning need for a creative outlet. It led to an enormous personal, political and professional learning curve. Hallelujah for 50ft Women is their third anthology of women’s poetry. Their first book, In the Pink (The Women’s Press), sold thousands and was reprinted six times.

  Our relationship to our bodies is affected by many things including culture, religion, family, sex, hunger, pleasure and pain. This new anthology is inspired by a passionate desire to celebrate our bodies in a fully realised way, leaving Barbie’s grotesque silent pliability in her box for good. Instead of pouting, our mouths have the power of language, our romantic fluttering hearts give and receive compassion, skin ages with grace when we see beauty in everything, a pierced belly button connects us to our ancestors and a belly needs to be strong before it’s flat.

  This book has been selected from over a thousand submissions. New poets published here for the first time are proud to share this anthology with established writers such as Selima Hill, Kim Addonizio, Jackie Kay and Helen Dunmore. By revealing the complex depths of our relationships with our bodies Hallelujah for 50ft Women makes a much needed contribution to a compassionate understanding of our evolving selves.

  ‘In their performances and anthologies Raving Beauties have done a great service to women writers’ – Guardian

  ‘…brilliant, actually’ – Observer

  HALLELUJAH FOR

  50ft WOMEN

  POEMS ABOUT WOMEN’S

  RELATIONSHIP

  TO THEIR BODIES

  EDITED BY RAVING BEAUTIES

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  INTRODUCTION

  Chase Twichell: Horse

  Sinéad Morrissey: Genetics

  Lydia Towsey: In Praise of My Legs

  Tishani Doshi: The Magic of the Foot

  Anna Percy: Wearing Sexuality

  Alex Toms: The Mermaid in the dime museum

  Bogusia Wardein: Her Mother Hides in the Wardrobe

  Julie Egdell: Katie’s end of week routine

  Helen Dunmore: Three Ways of Recovering a Body

  Suzanne Batty: Grandmother

  Ruth Aylett: Ventriloquist

  Mary Noonan: Bright Day

  Ana Blandiana: Armour

  Frances Kay: If

  Sarah Hymas: Nude

  Deborah Alma: I put a pen in my cunt once

  Kerry Hammerton: On New Year’s Eve

  Deborah Alma: He Sees Me

  Leanne O’Sullivan: Bulimic

  Katie Donovan: Underneath Our Skirts

  Kris Johnson: Clear Cut

  Kim Addonizio: What Do Women Want?

  Warsan Shire: The Ugly Daughter

  Sunayana Bhargava: Biosphere

  Chris Kinsey: A Clearing

  Kiran Millwood Hargrave: Pomegranates

  Kate Clanchy: Miscarriage, Midwinter

  Siobhán Mac Mahon: Churched

  Eloise Williams: The only body I have

  Selima Hill: Chocolate

  Patricia Ace: Does My Bum Look Big in This?

  Grace Nichols: Invitation

  Alice Tarbuck: Regular Checks Advised

  Eliza: To a Friend for Her Naked Breasts

  Janis Freegard: Trichotillomania

  Miki Byrne: Mobile Gallery of Me

  Rosaleen Glennon: Busy Dying

  Bethany W. Pope: A Room of Her Own

  Kristina Close: Bowled, again

  Kristina Close: And then he said: When did your arms get so big

  Claire Askew: High school

  Phoebe Winstanley: Utility Room

  Leah Watt: Marks

  Julia Webb: Good Friday

  Vicki Feaver: The Woman Who Talked to Her Teeth

  Caitlin Bagley: Friendship

  Kerry Hardie: Flesh

  Nicola Daly: This Woman

  Hollie McNish: Embarrassed

  Caron Freeborn: For Lucy

  Judy Brown: Room 204 (Double for Single Use)

  Barbara Smith: Pair Bond

  Niamh Boyce: The Beast Is Dead, Long Live the Beast

  Sarah James: For Her, A Different Skin

  Jean Gill: Refined to bone

  Elisabeth Sennitt Clough: Unmade

  Susana Thénon: Nuptial Song

  Jacqueline Saphra: Rock ’n’ Roll Mama

  Becky Cherriman: Wolves

  Gemma Howell: Madame’s Menu

  Shash Trevett: Dowry

  Kimberly Campanello: The Green

  Gemma Howell: Anuva Bun inee Ovun

  Patricia Lockwood: Rape Joke

  Zoë Brigley: The Shave

  Anna Crowe: Trunk of fig tree from Ses Rossells

  Jackie Kay: Where It Hurts

  May Swenson: Question

  Zoë Brigley: Infertility

  Róisín Kelly: Bog Child

  Maggie Harris: Meditation

  Tracey S. Rosenberg: Country Cousin

  Rita Ann Higgins: The Liberator

  Jessica Traynor: Leaving My Hands Behind

  Sally St Clair: Cunts and Cocks and Balls

  Caroline Gilfillan: Animal (1975)

  Sally Read: Breaking Fish Necks

  Arundhathi Subramaniam: Rutting

  Lesley Saunders: In Praise of Footbinding

  Imtiaz Dharker: Honour killing

  Janet Rogerson: The Dowry

  Wendy Klein: Five Years of Growth

  Anna Woodford: Darling Kisses

  Sujata Bhatt: White Asparagus

  Maya Chowdhry: genderality (1978)

  Sophia Blackwell: Vintage

  Angela France: A Fallow Blooming

  Rebecca Elson: Antidote to the Fear of Death

  Dimitra Xidous: Peach Season

  Moniza Alvi: Picnic

  Alison Brackenbury: Falling down, falling down

  Maria Jastrzębska: The Room of Coughing

  Mary Matusz: Dress

  Vicky Scrivener: Poem at Sixty

  Carol Ann Duffy: Recognition

  Sharon Olds: Self-portrait, Rear View

  Mary Barber: Stella and Flavia

  Claudia Daventry: Longbarrow

  Cheryl Follon: The Doll’s House

  Barbara Smith: Achieving the Lotus Gait

  Kirsten Irving: Recipe for a Saint

  Menna Elfyn: A God-Problem

  Katie Condon: Pamela Asks the Right Questions

  Selima Hill: The Bed

  Gwerful Mechain: To the Vagina

  Rebecca Smith: Cunt Artist Boyfriend

  Hira A.: The trials and tribulations of a well-endowed woman

  Eveline Pye: Across the street

  Una Marson: Kinky Hair Blues

  Elaine Beckett: Hollywood Biltmore Hotel

  Vicki Feaver: Women’s Blood

  Lani O’Hanlon: Cherry Blossoms

  Hannah Brockbank: Stained

  Donna Beck: Petals

  Moniza Alvi: Blood

  Sally Goldsmith: Down There

  Cheryl Follon: Horses Sally or Ivy Blue

  Sue Spiers: Fanny Farts

  Angela Kirby: Jardi D’Eros, Barcelona

  Susan Utting: For the Punters

  Janis Freegard: Trinity

  Anna Swir: Happiness

  Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze: Could it be

  Grace Nichols: My Black Triangle

  Katherine Lockton: Reading My Skin

  Kirsten Irving: Full-length Mirror

  Katie Condon: On Nudity

  Pippa Little: I Think of You and Think of Skin

  Amy McCauley: No, Mon Amour

  Nicola Daly: God Save me from women with Choppy Bobs

  Ja
smine Simms: Sexted

  Katie Byford: Not Andromeda

  Lorna Scott: The Blossom Queen

  Angela Readman: How to Make Love Not Like a Porn Star

  Lucille Clifton: homage to my hips

  Katie Donovan: Woman Solstice

  Kris Johnson: Descendant

  Eva Salzman: Professor

  Rita Dove: After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed

  Siobhán Mac Mahon: Bless me Father

  Radmila Lazić: I’ll Be a Wicked Old Woman

  Lucille Clifton: to my last period

  Angela Readman: Hallelujah for 50ft Women

  Heidi Williamson: On seeing the Furies in the sky

  E.J. Scovell: Deaths of Flowers

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INDEX OF POETS

  ABOUT RAVING BEAUTIES

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  You think you’re doing it for someone else but it’s never the whole story is it? This collection of poetry written by women with intelligence, grace, wit and honesty is for you Dear Reader. But it’s also for us, Dee, Sue and Fan, another adventure to stop us from falling into the deep sleep of fairy tales where we can still dream of perfection and rescuers, shape changers who will bring us to the happy ever after ending. Let us pinch ourselves. Hard.

  When Raving Beauties were performing and publishing poetry anthologies with The Women’s Press in the 1980s we were still enmeshed in very personal struggles to achieve a utilitarian sanity which would bring personal and professional balance into our lives. It’s been a long, rich road.

  When we first addressed our desire to work together again a year or two ago we thought we’d look back over the thirty years (impossible!) that have passed since our first cabaret In the Pink and spend some time examining the changes, improvements and growth in women’s lives. How could we not have flourished, we had worked so hard on ourselves, on nurturing our children, our jobs, our relationships, our precious creativity, our souls?

  But somehow that task was too huge – a work of prose perhaps not poetry. So instead we decided to focus on an area where there was still trouble enough. A place where abuse, commerce, politics, time, culture and religion still have their battleground – our bodies. When will Eve ever be naked and sinless?

  In the preface to In the Pink, Fan wrote ‘We cannot exchange womanhood for personhood. Breast and cunt endure. We must go into the beauty of womanhood, not get out of it.’ And here are wonderful hymns to breast, cunt and blood. Yeah baby. There are also poems about surviving, hate, vulnerability, witnessing, lust, dresses, gender, violence, oppression, chocolate, fat, coughing, ageing, death, teeth, mermaids, shaving, mirrors, rock ’n’ roll, getting your feet done, earth and sky. And many, many more.

  Hallelujah for 50ft Women has been selected from over a thousand submissions as well as previously published poetry. Every poet and poem has contributed to its vitality. We hope it draws us together, reminding us yet again that more binds us than divides us. The power of poetic language as the magic tool in this enterprise, used with all the skills, integrity and experience at our poets’ command, is most precious. In the beginning was the word. And words belong to everyone.

  Free but not cheap.

  May we, in Heidi Williamson’s words, ‘ride the day’ together.

  And finally we’d like to mention two 50ft women in particular – Alexandra Viner and Karen Evans – thank you.

  SUE, DEE & FAN

  Horse

  I’ve never seen a soul detached from its gender,

  but I’d like to. I’d like to see my own that way,

  free of its female tethers. Maybe it would be like

  riding a horse. The rider’s the human one,

  but everyone looks at the horse.

  CHASE TWICHELL

  Genetics

  My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.

  I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –

  I know my parents made me by my hands.

  They may have been repelled to separate lands,

  to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,

  but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.

  With nothing left of their togetherness but friends

  who quarry for their image by a river,

  at least I know their marriage by my hands.

  I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.

  And when I turn it over,

  my father’s by my fingers, my mother’s by my palms

  demure before a priest reciting psalms.

  My body is their marriage register.

  I re-enact their wedding with my hands.

  So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands

  for mirroring in bodies of the future.

  I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.

  We know our parents make us by our hands.

  SINÉAD MORRISSEY

  In Praise of My Legs:

  Pillars. Scissors. Solid to their middles,

  sticks of rock, printed with my mother’s

  maiden name, Edwards – Potatoes –

  playground chant sung for

  knobbly knees, skipperty wickets,

  rickety from rickets – she was raised

  in a sweet shop – fed on jars of

  licorice allsorts and sherbet lemons.

  I have my mother’s laugh

  and my mother’s legs –

  they have their flaws:

  tiled, carpeted,

  lino, paved.

  Boughs, beams,

  turned, shaped.

  My legs run like ship-masts,

  lift up the sails of my hips

  to fall from the crest

  of their iliac wave,

  noble as whale bones,

  sheer as cliffs,

  walk me strident,

  drumstick defiant

  to the shops,

  to the park,

  to the pub

  through the rain,

  candy-striped

  and white with sun

  flashing brilliant,

  run, dance, bend

  through the hours,

  days, weeks,

  years.

  My mother.

  My mother.

  My legs.

  Amen.

  LYDIA TOWSEY

  The Magic of the Foot

  Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

  MARTHA GRAHAM

  After

  when your body

  no longer belongs to you

  when it’s still out there

  in last night’s darkness

  seeking its way

  into the sublime

  those tendril feet

  licking against the spine

  of the stage,

  After the lights

  and the thrum of applause

  have lifted into the streets

  and slipped

  into strangers’ apartments

  to live between wall hangings

  and philosophy books

  like remnants,

  After all this

  don’t be surprised

  to find yourself

  in the same position again

  splayed out on the bedroom floor

  legs prised open

  like a jewel box

  the hinges

  singing odes to joy

  and the feet

  those tiny miracles

  pushing up and around

  until they are joined

  like hands

  meeting wildly

  unforgettably.

  TISHANI DOSHI

  Wearing Sexuality

  There are ocelot coats in dusty wardrobes

  reeking of ancient amber perfume the kind formulated

  from rare creatures
musk: borrowed hormones

  There are these skins belonging to adults

  an air of naked flesh and fur

  the pelt of an adult woman

  It only figures in the mind later

  this habit of men buying women

  these exotic skins hoping to see more skin

  more shorn skin carefully defurred

  skin prepped for a scene to be conducted

  as under a low cloud

  and you are to be left deflated

  he has taken your breath with his promises

  and you are left anxiously, animalistically,

  sniffing your crotch surreptitiously

  for that familiar ore scent

  the smell of blood

  ANNA PERCY

  The Mermaid in the dime museum

  As her village recedes to a distant speck,

  she unpicks a loose stitch on the passenger seat. Her new boyfriend

  turns, assures her of the wonderful life

  waiting in the West. With her talent, she can easily

  make it as a dancer. This will be her fortune.

  A Japanese fisherman sits by the receding tide,

  sewing. Stitches smaller than rice grains

  seamlessly blend scales and fur.

  His finger tips trace the tail’s sensuous curve.

  He smiles. This will be his fortune.

  Hair extensions; Brazilian; spray tan; acrylic nails.

  She’s worried about the cost, but her boyfriend doesn’t hesitate,

  hands his credit card over. As she leaves the salon

  she sees Venus reflected in the glass:

  new born, radiant, shawled in ocean mist.

  The sum is more than five bolts of silk,

  but the Dutch merchant doesn’t hesitate,

  pays the Japanese fisherman, wraps it in a shawl

  and carries it, tenderly as a newborn,

  up the gangplank.

  She wonders why her dance audition is in a hotel,

  but her boyfriend tells her to shut the fuck up, stop asking questions.