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