WORLD POETRY DAY - WOMEN'S VOICES
FILIA WORLD POETRY DAY BLOG - UNBRIDLED
INTRO by poet and editor, MAGI GIBSON
Poetry is an amazing way for women to explore their experiences and feelings about the world and their place in it. So last year I decided to set up WomanWord, a micro-publishing house, and in October 2024 we published our first anthology, UNBRIDLED.
UNBRIDLED is merrily fat with poems personal and political, witty and hard-hitting, poems of courage and defiance, of the deeper truths of the female experience.
One reader said, ‘The poems in this book are so breathtakingly true, vivid, heart-wrenching and heart-soaring, I will read them over and over.’
Some poems are by well-established writers with several books and many awards to their names, others by women published here for the first time.
Below ‒ to celebrate World Poetry Day with FiLiA ‒ is a sample from the anthology. Dip in, be moved, be inspired.
STOP PRESS! Brilliant news for women on World Poetry Day! Submissions are now open for UNBRIDLED 2, to be published later this year. To be considered for inclusion, simply email up to five poems before 30th May 2024 to Magi at womanwordscotland@gmail.com
And if you’d like the whole 164 page experience of UNBRIDLED you can order a copy here: womanwordbooks.bigcartel.com
The Table
A woman full of the contentment of living comes home, and puts her phone on the table. Lights her favourite candle and puts it down there, she puts the tea and the chocolate on the table. She puts the grey, overcast sky and spattering rain on the table. The steamy, damp bus with the broken bits of chatter she puts on the table too. Next to them she puts the cheerful jangling sounds of the coins in the till and the ‘thank you’ from the woman at the shop. She carefully placed her Roisin, snuggling and sleepy on the table. Beside her, on the table she placed the memory of her girls excited and sparkly eyed watching Goosebumps on Sunday afternoon. Her hopes and fears for her future she laid down on the table. The people she loved were placed on the table and a few she despised were put there too. Her longing to be more was placed on the table alongside the certainty she was going in the right direction. The table was large and strong for an IKEA coffee table, and it stood solid under the weight she piled upon it. She smiled to herself, thanked it, and not for the first time considered it £35 well spent.
Sharon Frame
Scríob bean
Scríob bean, faigh dearg
dearg na fola, fuil na feirge, fearg fir, fir fiata, faobhar paisin
teasaíocht cuimilte, cuimilt craicinn, craiceann dearg, craiceann nua
cneá chiúin, nuabeirthe,
fiántas instinne
fanacht slán
sábháilte.
Scríob bean.
Scratch a woman
Scratch a woman, find red
the red of blood, the blood of anger, the anger of men, ferocious men, razor sharp passion
heat soothed, skin caressed, red skin, new skin
quiet wounds, newly born,
the savagery of instinct
staying safe
and sound.
Scratch a woman.
Réaltán Ní Leannáin
A Bit of Fun
‘It was just a bit of fun,’ he said.
‘We were having a laugh.’
As I sobbed over
the state-of-the-art Casio
that was just like my dad’s,
its face broken, the glass
shattered as I lashed out
in self-defence.
The teacher, shame-faced,
silently took my watch.
And replaced the glass.
Other things
are less easily
repaired.
Mairi Cameron
It Wasn’t a Woman
who used a stick to abort the baby in an 11 year old girl
who gang-raped a 4-year old who took a girl
to a room of shamrock green rugby shirts, later texting
about spit roast and sluts who gave money
to a rag-picker and took one of her five
to a faraway brown-dust city who sold her on to the businessmen
it wasn’t a woman who beat the children with an iron bar
so that vertebrae were crushed it wasn’t a woman
who ruptured the rectum of a small boy who broke the vagina
of a baby girl it wasn’t a woman who scalded a wife
because she spoke to another man who flung acid
in the face of a girl who did not want to marry
who poured acid on a wife’s genitals
it wasn’t a woman who broke a nose blackened an eye
bit a cheek so that the marks of those teeth
are a tell-tale circle of pits in the skin
it wasn’t a woman whose breasts were purple and green
whose pregnant belly was a violet bruise
whose child was punched out of her so she bled to death
it wasn’t a woman who rejected those twin girls
it wasn’t a woman who burned a widow to death
who shouted at a wife in the rich people’s shopping mall
who forced her to have sex who took the children away
who kept all the money who called out names like dog
and here, bitch, who put a collar around her neck
then led her on all fours around the apartment
who smashed her favourite things
who kept a gun beside the bed and threatened to use it
who blamed her even as he punched her
roared the rhythms of cunt-face cunt-face cunt-face
because it helped him hit harder it wasn’t a woman
whose lips were scissored to shreds by those knuckles
it wasn’t a woman it wasn’t a woman it wasn’t a woman
Mary O’Donnelll
Lilith
I’d had enough so I stood
on a tussock outside the house,
shouted the hashem hameforash
loud as a curse, felt a tickle
at my shoulder blades, the first
feathers sprout, an eruption
of wing cascading into cloak.
I stroked the air, flexing to test
the stretched-out span, lifted up
poised in passé en relevé
as my husband ran
the path from the porch
and grasped at my ankles
to anchor me back
but I slipped like smoke
into the smiling sky
and at last was above him,
surfing thermals and the Coriolis force.
I knew tapestries would be woven
depicting me as demonic for leaving,
later heard stories
of me strangling newborns,
having sex with demons.
They said I was the black moon,
succubus, riding the night,
tracing the sweet scent of chaste young men
to straddle and steal their semen.
They called my babies Lilin,
and for protection strung amulets
with angels’ names
on the necks of their children.
I didn’t care what they said
and laughed at their lies.
Now I had flight and truth and freedom.
Colette Colfer
This Is For Us
This is for all the bad victims
For the gobby bitches
For the girls who wouldn’t stay down
For the women who fought back
For the tattooed and the tearaways
The ones with sullen eyes
The ones who can’t speak about it
The women who didn’t know
They were supposed to take notes
The human women who cried
Hot tears of rage and frustration
Who weren’t dainty or diminutive
Who raised their eyes
Who hung on by their fingernails
Who asked for help
And were escorted from the premises
Who stood with their children
Behind them when he screamed
Don’t raise your fucking fists to me
For the women scarred for life by life
For the women who drank
To stop the dreams
To the girls who bled
Silently in the bathroom
The savage blossoms
Of a long dark night
This is for all of us who did
The wrong thing
Who paid the price
Who refused to lie
Who lived despite it all.
This. Is. For. Us.
Joolz Denby
Magi Gibson with copies of UNBRIDLED