Tag: 25 Pins in a packet women creators
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Hamlet [By Mirjam Tuominen]
You want to go behind the realm of the forehead.
You want your inner realm.
Behind the forehead is the realm of dreams.
But your forehead bears the seal of peace.
Where you lean your forehead
in the moon’s reversed sign
O Prince of Denmark!
in the moon’s transforming radiance
in the pellucid night
there the realm of peace is mirrored.[Excerpt from Hamlet].
Mirjam Tuominen appears on the blog a couple of times, a short poem in the War Category and Fornicating with Demons. The excerpted Hamlet comes from The Selected Writings, Trans, David Mc Duff and Published by Bloodaxe.
I had started a minor critique/appreciation of Mirjam’s poetry on google docs, because she is woefully under-rated as a writer and I hope to upload it in a few weeks. Two of her books were bequeathed to me (along with many others) by the daughter of Marianne Agren Mc Elroy (RIP), who also translated Nelly Sachs . Marianne’s translation of Comes Somebody is also on the blog, categorised in 25 Pins in a Packet and More Women Poets
Let Go Of My Hand
Let Go of My Hand you idle grasp!
Here no human hand can help
Neither father nor mother
Neither brother nor sister.
Neither Husband nor wife
Neither doctor’s advice
nor doctor’s knife.
A child has known what you know.
Do not fear
The fall, the deep one!
Vertigo
Only takes the one who is afraid.
Be silent!
Go forward!”[Mirjam Tuominen –Under the Earth Sank. 1954].
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“T’ither nicht A wuz in mae bed wunnerin
what A cud write fur the Ullans, an then it
cum tae mae. A cud write aboot mae ma’s
mixin’ spoon. A wuz that axicted it was
fower in the mornin’ afore A went tae sleep
efter thurnin ower in mae heid what A shud
say and the wye A shuid say it.When A was a waen , sawenty yeir ago , there
were a lot of fowk that trevelled roon the
country goin frae dure tae dure; wans wur
jist beggars, askin fur a slice of breed, or
lake big Mery, for a gopin of oatmale which
she kerried in a poke tied roon hir waist;
ithers ye micht ca pedlars , and yin of these
wuz P.Q.He cum frae Striban, about five miles awa,
an unner his airm he had a wee wudden box
fu o needles and pins, an spools of threed an
the lake.wan day Paddy cum jist as mae ma wuz
reddin up efter bakin, an she still had in hir
han the oul spoon that had been used tae mix
the dough fur a lifetime. Seein Paddy eye the
spoon mae ma said:‘Och Paddy, A wish yea cud get mae a guid
big spoon: this wan’s worn tae a skiver.”Ok, this is an excerpt until I can type up the rest later on
Margaret Rowe and the Ulster-Scots Society.
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Where We Find the Words That We Use.
It’s Monday Morning and the first day of the new school term. Many Mothers are bringing their daughters to their schools, wherein they will learn to use computers and libraries. Where they learn the joy of self and have to deal with issues of bullying and learn to make friends. Once upon a time it was not ok to educate daughters, indeed some of our most incredible women writers learned their words from the books left about by the tutors of their brothers, or in one case I am aware of from the labels of co-op medicine bottles. Little girls have a complete and all embracing thirst for knowledge as much as their brothers indeed, and the next basic step on accquiring that knowledge is to use it- all the better if it is communicate and teach to others.
And yet, in so many societies women are abused, murdered , imprisoned and bullied for using the very words that they have found and discovered in the little school yards, or amongst the beetles and ladybirds of a busy place where others are playing round them.
Lift the Ban
(I always think bans and censorships come from fear and denial, and those who bully their daughters are Utopians involved it seems in the betterment of societies with a bewildering ethnic cleansing of the individual female voice at root). I wonder what kind of Utopias can be constructed without the voices of women in the hospitals, working the land and singing old songs into their daughter’s ears?
For many of us , the first experience of language, song and complex linguistics come from listening to our mothers , that complexity is an inheritance that is developed in education . A lot of young women writers currently on the threatened and banned lists have small children who absorb with that intelligence unique to small kids the atmosphere of repression that pervades Utopian societies. Those failures will eventually emerge either creatively or violently.
Wajeha Al Huwaider -
The Wyf of Bath. It’s really been a while since I read Chaucer with any attention. But I really remember The Wyf of Bath for two reasons:
i). Sylvia Plath loved her: and so instead of focussing on the accepted degree course I haunted the libraries and looked at women poets and their relation to metaphysics, the other reason was I that had heard
ii).That the RSC had been disallowed perform The Canterbury Tales a couple of years ago in Spain (in a church) and had been offered another venue (also a church) for the performance.
I downloaded the above image sometime ago, knowing that I would be using it in some way in relation to the issue of censorship. In my mind two men really wrote women very well, but the blog is almost wholly dedicated to women’s poetic discourse.., one of the men is Chaucer whose Wyf is lovely. She doesn’t like being boxed into a feminine role and is on the trail to Canterbury to find another hubby (prompted by Venus apparently).
…and the other writer is James Joyce , who wrote the beautiful Anna Livia Soliquoy in Finnegan’s Wake which I touched on briefly in the blog in relation to the beguine Marguerite Porete. But mostly I find us women are well able to vocalise our experience- personally I love to natter. How and ever the issue of Pornography came up and I responded, the link is on the righthand column under Westwood Censorship:
Two things that we should utterly reject as human beings are:
1. Materialistic philosophies that deny the issues of choice to grown-ups, especially with regard to the individuation of women. (and I do speak of Choice not corralling/imposition and violence).
2. Any attempt to crystallise our metaphysics into systemized ideas of what makes a woman or man, because it’s hard enough to live in this world without an outer imposition or pattern of what we should adhere to.
Grown-ups are grown-ups and censorship at any level of artistic discourse indicates a complete lack of understanding of basic humanity.
(this reminds me of the Berlusconi episode which involved his adjustment of the ‘Time Uncovering Truth’ Painting, but I decided not to re-publish the image on the blog cos mostly people are familiar with it).
The Silvio Berlusconi debacle , ‘Time Uncovering Truth‘ : http://poethead.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/covering-paintings-and-twiddling-with-art/
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One Wink and they Plump nipple-blossoms more like,
neatly sewn onto her blue bodice.
Virgin surprise, one wink and
they’re blown confetti on wet ground.© C Murray
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Charlotte Salomon Image. There is a brief Wiki on the Painter in the blogroll. I Just wanted to publish one
of her paintings this evening. The weather being appalling and no poems in my
head.Information on Salomon can be got through the Jewish Historical Museum also.
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Dedicated by the Author to Artist Leonard Baskin.
To his house the bodiless
Come to barter endlessly
Vision, wisdom, for bodies
Palpable as his, weighty.Hands moving more priestlier
Than Priest’s hands, invoke no vain
images of light and air
But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone.Obdurate, in dense-grained wood,
A bald angel blocks and shapes
The flimsy light; arms folded
Watches his cumbrous world eclipseInane worlds of wind and cloud.
Bronze dead dominate the floor,
Restive, ruddy-bodied,
Dwarfing us. Our bodies flickerToward extinction in those eyes
Which, without him, were beggared
Of place, time and their bodies.
Emulous spirits make discord,Try entry, enter nightmares
Until his chisel bequeaths
Them life livelier than ours,
A soldier repose than death’s.Leonard Baskin’s art is on the Sibyl’s and Oracles page :’The Matriarchs’ and his ‘Abundant Bird’ is on the threads for Saturday Woman Poet. Sylvia Plath‘s ‘Purdah’ is mentioned in relation to The Restored edition of Ariel. ‘Sculptor’ is published in ‘The Collected Sylvia Plath’, Faber and Faber.
Chris Murray 