The Thriving Women collective recently returned to Thrive Teesside to write for International Women’s Day on this year’s theme of embracing equity.
Julie Easley, Thrive Group Leader says, “that’s all very lovely but it is an idealistic dream if you are a woman on the intersection of feminism – not all women are equal. In our Thriving Women group we are the underrepresented, the women who some sections of the sisterhood would rather be silent or even not exist.”
With that in mind, the group embarked on a four week journey of writing about embracing equity in the context of women with lived experience of poverty and social injustice – as an act of activism rather than celebration – because at its heart, International Women’s Day is a day of protest.
The women studied poems of imagery, crisis and identity. They listened to Kae Tempest, Reece Lyons and Carmen Marcus, and read Stevie Smith, June Jordan, Trace Peterson and Fady Joudah. “We flipped fairy tales upside down and inside out, imagined our poverty as a single image and embedded our inequality as women on the margins of society – in poverty, disabled, black, queer, transgender, abused, refugee/stateless. We wrote poems of solidarity for our Trans sisters, who, when embracing equity in the real world are met with hate and fear,” Julie told us.
The Thriving Women International Women’s Day poems are a mirror to life in the UK right now, reflective of those who feel excluded, unaccepted or held back (opposite to embraced), and highlighting factors of inequality that fight against their ability to embrace equity.
You can find out more about the Thriving Women group, and follow Tees Women Poets on Twitter for up to date news and events.
Please see all featured poem text here:
They blamed the kettle
They blamed the kettle,
It started full,
Topped up to the line,
Starts with a click
The shouting, the hurting
Water into steam,
The cries, the rage,
Almost half empty
Distractions left and right,
Click after click,
It boils and boils, heat and energy
No tea for anyone as the kettle runs dry
It keeps going,
Plastic warps, metal bends
Unrelenting hate,
Burns through the table
They blamed the kettle,
When the house burnt to the ground,
And yet you never refilled it,
So what did you expect.
Sarah York
Blackbird
Blackbird lifeless
Eyes staring, still warm
Brought down
By the whim of a cat
Reminder of the fragile span
Between comfort
And crisis
And demise
Sandra Falconer
Not Good Enough
When she tried to hide the bruises
They said, ‘Not good enough,
‘She shouldn’t have got married so young’
So she left
When she struggled to live on benefits
They said, ‘Not good enough,
‘Single parents are just a drain on the system’
So she got a job
When she tried to rise above the typing pool
They said, ‘Not good enough,
You need qualifications if you want to get on
So she got an education
When she graduated from a Poly,
They said, ‘Not good enough,
For high level jobs
So she taught
Other kids from the streets
To stand up and fight
And NEVER to take
‘Not good enough’
Sandra Falconer
The Wiz of Was
The world gone wrong
golden streets dyed red
The witch’s ghost sounds out
though everyone knows she’s dead
With the fall of the wizard
We hoped the sun shines soon
But he escaped his tarnished city
ran off with his green balloon
The strawman given brains
to lead against the fight
The robot given heart
to question what is right
And the kingdom of the lions
“The bravest of us all”
They only attack what scares them
so their leaders can stand tall
Yet left alone is the displaced child
searching for her queen
But alas the queen was born a man
so will forever go unseen
Sarah York
I am a Woman
I am a woman.
I am a black woman.
I am a woman.
I am an ally with trans women.
I am a woman.
I am a woman in pain of my colour identity.
I am a woman going through pain
of what I call injustice.
I am a woman going through the pain
of inequality.
I am a woman going through the pain
of people being taken away
from her with no just cause.
I am a woman of faith
that keeps me going strong
every day of my life.
I am a woman living in poverty
due to not working.
I am a woman.
I am a trans ally.
Adetutu Diana Agunbiade
Rapunzel
Down, down, down
She allows her eyes to drop
To the dots that are people
On the ground
Far, so far away
She sighs
They are aliens
On another planet
She’s imprisoned here
Yet she holds the keys
Her cheek feels the tear
As she falls to her knees
Alone, cold, so dirty
Her head rises up
Hands touch her matted hair
It feels like straw
When did she last care?
She tugs the brittle strands
Plaits the length, so long
Oh so long
What went so wrong?
Him
It was him
She was never good enough
Too tall, too goofy, too fat
Yet what was he
But a bad tempered twat
His words still swim in her head
Will they ever go away?
Maybe she’d be better off dead
The letterbox rattles
The noise makes her jump
She stands, retrieves the letter
The familiar brown envelope
Heralds the truth
Nothing can get better
Another assessment looms
Tears sting her eyes
She sobs into that mass of hair
But nobody will hear her cries
She takes her box of Prozac
Shallows the pill hard
It scratches as it descends
Sharp just like a shard
Of glass
The pain will pass
Essential but evil
Addiction arrived
Without an invitation
She jumps at a sudden noise
Her paranoia strong
It’s the lads who hang in the next flat
Laughing and high on their bong
She catches her foul breath
As her little heart beats fast
Remembers grounding by counting
The moment soon passed
Her body stinks to high heaven
She knows the stench is rank
But there’s no hot water
No pennies in her bank
Sanctioned for not turning up
To the nazis at the job place
But how could she go outside
When she cannot show the world her face?
Her bare arms
Have dark patches
But it’s now dirt
Not his inflicted bruises
He can no longer beat her now
But hey, who wins? Who loses?
Because scars run deep
In the bowels of her mind
A puzzle to other folk
Nothing good for them to find
Oh she so wants to leave this place
Throw off that invisible fetter
But there’s a price to pay
To her historical debtor
There was a life when she was fine
Once upon a time
She had choices
But she turned the other cheek
Listened to the wrong voices
Once daddy’s little princess
Until told to lie in the bad bed she’d made
Disowned and deleted by family
When her stupid bid was bade
There’s no escape, it seems
No friends left, no phone
She’s here for eternity
A life lived all alone
Not a soul is coming
To her rescue
Endure her lot
Is all that she can do
Her options are
Starve or have a can
Of cold tomato soup
No leccy for the microwave anyway
Stuck in her filthy flat forever
In a perpetual loop
Sue Crawford
He/him, She/her, They/them
I accept my identity as who I am.
This is who God created me to be
and I live my life
the way I am created.
Whatever I tell you I am
is who I am.
Adetutu Diana Agunbiade