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The origins of The Forgotten and the Fantastical

Welcome to ‘The Forgotten and the Fantastical’ Carnival This post was written especially for inclusion in ‘The Forgotten and the Fantastical’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of their latest collection of fairy tales for an adult audience: The Forgotten and the Fantastical. Today our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘Fairy tales’. Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants.

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I haven’t written anything new for this blogging carnival, and yes, I’m aware that potentially it may look as though I’m taking a little creative holiday… but right now my creativity has been called elsewhere (I’m currently designing the cover for our next publication – a pamphlet of poetry duets by Sarah James and Angela Topping called Hearth) so I thought that in the absence of fresh words I would fall back on some ‘older’ ones. I read an extract from my Introduction to The Forgotten and the Fantastical at the launch of the book at Nottingham Writers Studio on World Storytelling day (20th March) and as it seemed to go down well then, I thought I’d do the same here.

I would like to add though, that I was really pleased with how the launch went. There was a lovely, friendly atmosphere, and the glow from the dimmed lamps and fairy lights made for a cosy environment. I’d put together a slideshow of some of the images from the book (each image was accompanied by a quote from the relevant story) and what with the wine, cake and fabulous readings from Becky Cherriman and Lisa Shipman (as well as gorgeous music from The Green Children on the DVD player) all in all it was a rather magical evening… Thank you to all those involved who made it possible. And not forgetting my wonderful children and husband (and mum) who supported me throughout those moments when I was a rather cranky and super-distracted person!

Becky Cherriman, me and Lisa Shipman

I hope that gives you a flavour of the launch and I hope you enjoy the rest of the carnival! Oh, and don’t forget that we’re open for submissions for the next in the series of The Forgotten and the Fantastical too…

INTRODUCTION

I have always been fascinated by fairy tales, particularly when I learnt that my name, Teika, means ‘fairy tale’ or ‘legend’ in Latvian. I loved everything about the classical fairy tale books I knew as a child: the intriguing titles of the stories, the short, pacy narrative, the characters and the happy endings… I adored too the beautifully-drawn illustrations that accompanied the stories – the heroines and heroes were nearly always dressed in incredible finery. I had to wonder if clothes so beautiful could exist in real life. No doubt inspired by these books and my love of all things fantastical I set about making my own collection of fairy tale books.

            The first book I remember making consisted of a small wodge of thick, shiny pieces of paper that were stapled together and illustrated in felt-tipped pen with pictures of characters from Star Wars. (Young as I was, it was clear to me that Star Wars was basically a fairy tale set in space. It had a princess, for goodness sake!) On the reverse of the pages there were images of computers that controlled paper-making machines; my father worked for a company which manufactured these futuristic-looking machines, and the paper must have been advertising material. On each page I’d drawn a character accompanied by a few wobbly-looking words. I even threw in the odd joke. I must have been about five or six years old at the time.

            Fast forward thirty-three years… I still had this passion to produce a marvellously fantastical book. Thankfully, other writers shared my passion for the fantastical too, so my call for submissions for the first ever fairy tale collection to be published by Mother’s Milk Books was met with great enthusiasm!

            I was, as ever, humbled by the quality of the submissions. What I love about this collection of stories is the depth and range of writing on show. I feel that these diverse voices, each with their own unique style, complement each other beautifully, giving the reader an insight into the storyteller’s psyche. For it is in the nature of fairytales to connect with their audience on an emotional level. There are some powerful connections to be made here.

            What I love, too, about this collection is the fact that there are no passive princesses here. Strong women, real women, are a feature of the book and although there may not always be a happy ending for them, we can at least give witness to their trials and learn from their tribulations.

            I really enjoyed putting together this collection, so much so that my intention is to publish a series of these ‘modern fables and ancient tales’.

            We are all in need of a little magic these days, and I sincerely hope that this book will provide some escapism; a flight, if you will, into the world of… the forgotten and the fantastical.

Teika Bellamy, Spring 2015

Taken from The Forgotten and the Fantastical 2015

The empty storytelling chair at Nottingham Writers’ Studio

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The Forgotten and the Fantastical is now available to buy from The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) and as a paperback from Amazon.

It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.

Any comments on the following fab posts would be much appreciated:

In ‘Imagination is quantum ergo fairies are real’, Ana, at Colouring Outside the Lines, explains why we should all believe in fairies and encourage our children to do the same.

‘Wings’ — Rebecca at Growing a Girl Against the Grain shares a poem about her daughter and explains the fairy tale-esque way in which her name was chosen.

In ‘Red Riding Hood Reimagined’ author Rebecca Ann Smith shares her poem ‘Grandma’.

Writer Clare Cooper explores the messages the hit movie Frozen offers to our daughters about women’s experiences of love and power in her Beautiful Beginnings blog post ‘Frozen: Princesses, power and exploring the sacred feminine.’

‘Changing Fairy Tales’ — Helen at Young Middle Age explains how having young children has given her a new caution about fairy tales.

In ‘The Art of Faerie’ Marija Smits waxes lyrical about fairy tale illustrations.

‘The Origins of The Forgotten and the Fantastical’ — Teika Bellamy shares her introduction from the latest collection of fairy tales for an adult audience published by Mother’s Milk Books.

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Results of the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize

I am delighted to be able to announce the results of the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. As there was an increase in the number of submissions compared with the inaugural year of the competition we were very happy indeed to be able to commend more pieces. The writing was of a very high quality and both judges commented on how they felt privileged to read the entries. To quote the poetry adjudicator, Cathy Bryant: “As always, Mother’s Milk has that extra something special.”

A big thank you to all who those who bought a ‘something’ and entered their writing. Thank you for trusting us with your precious words.

Please note: first publication of the winning pieces will be in the summer issue of the fantastic magazine JUNO (out June 2015). We will also be publishing an anthology of the winning and commended pieces this autumn. Please look out for it!

Poetry Category (adult)

The judge’s report is at the end of the results.

THE WINNER:

We Are Sleeping — Wendy Orr

THE COMMENDEDS:

The Story of Us — Eleni Cay

Mirrored — Angela Smith

Beholden — Stephanie Siviter

Time Stands Still — Ute Carson

with Alice, aged 4 — Nikki Robson

She is Autumn — Starr Meneely

Night Nursing — Lynsey Hansford

Lullabies — Finola Scott

The Story of Us — Stephanie Arsoska

to see you now — Emma Wootton

Birthday Parties — Karen Little

Blank Page — Sue Hardy-Dawson

Chuckle Chutney — Sarah James

Gem — Sally Jack

Inbetweeny — Fran Bailie

Mother Moon — Joanne Adams

Slow Movement — Sue Barnard

South Crofty Mine, 1948 — Abigail Wyatt

Urchin — Becky Cherriman

Us — Luschka Van Onselen

Vanishing Twin — Catherine Haines

Ward 3D — Laura Taylor

No Room to Be Ill — Julie Russell

Poetry Category (Children)

THE WINNER:

Me and My Brother — Isaac Lloyd

THE COMMENDEDS:

Lovely Family — Matilda Luna Furlan-Simmonds

The Family of Me — Surya Cooper-Ivison

Emily Butterfly — Shanti Cooper-Ivison

Lovely Family — Jordan Clarke

Prose Category

The Judge’s report is at the end of the results.

THE WINNER:

The First Winter — Jessica Bradley

THE COMMENDEDS:

Spinning Straw — Helen Cooper

A Journey to Love — Dawn Osabwa

Birth Stories — Becky Tipper

My First Born — Lucy Benton

Bernadette — Angi Holden

The Story of Us — Lynsey Hansford

A Nepalese Adventure — Caroline Cole

The Story of Us — Dawn Clarke

I Whisper His Name — Rose Topping

The Love of Five Dolls — Henrietta Job

Home From The Sea — Louise Goulding

Life Cycle: The Circle of Us — Liz Proctor

Our Dancing Hearts — Ann Abineri

Co-operative Shopping — Beth McDonough

The Story of Us — Lynn Blair

Cathy Bryant Poetry Report

The Adult Category

When I judge a writing competition, I usually read the entries three times each. The poems entered for this competition, however, were of such a high standard that I read them for pleasure as well as for judging purposes, and I devoured them a total of six times each, in the end.

Every time I read our winner, ‘We are sleeping (for my daughter)’, I was bowled over by it. It really is a perfect match of form and content, as the two-line stanzas are ideal for a poem about two such close people, and the use of enjambment, the lines and stanzas flowing into each other, emphasises the connection. The words and images range from the physical experiences we can identify with: ‘…her fingers reach/to the nape of my neck, in a flex of possession’ (I remember my sister’s twins doing that to me, one on each side!) to the surprising yet appropriate metaphors: ‘…a sleeping buttress solid and fed and rooting…Her palm the counterfort at my face’. There are so many quotable lines: ‘…and always her mouth an o, knowing her body, my body’s // echo’. I hope that this poem becomes well-known – it deserves to.

‘Urchin’ is a beautifully-constructed poem, and terribly sad. The protagonist has suffered domestic abuse and is taking her baby to commit suicide. Yet this isn’t a bleak poem, somehow — the wonderful sea images are exquisite: ‘glimpsed worlds in the/full hollow of her stiff skirts’, and the joining of the drowning pair — ‘…together in the/bluegreen of the gull cry’ is a triumph — though the reader longs to save them. Not a wasted word here.

‘Vanishing Twin’ is another sad poem, but again the form and content are so perfect that it’s uplifting to read. The mirror structure is ideal for the theme, that of a twin who vanishes in early pregnancy, between one ultrasound scan and the next. The imagery made me say out loud the rather inelegant word, “Wowser!” — ‘we two, alabaster cosmonauts/ sleeping naked in crimson cloaks,/two pistols in a presentation box’. The poem as a whole has an excellent idea, very well-worked and with some fine images.

‘Gem’ is an example of less being more. In just twelve short lines, we experience the ‘fug of labour’ amid the ‘mass of hands’, and are given the original image of the baby daughter as ‘…my miner/who tap, tap, taps/at my resources’. Tight, vivid and with a cracking ending, I enjoyed this enormously.

‘Time Stands Still’ is a charming poem from the point of view of a grandmother, with a baby grandson in the first stanza and his elder brother in the second. The images of the ‘…small animal,/heart to heart, rapid beat to my sluggish rhythms’ and lying in grass ‘…gently combed by an autumn breeze,/frogs croaking in the shimmering algae on the pond,’ are evocative and delightful. Another poem with a strong ending, too.

‘Birthday Parties’ paints a vivid picture of a girl and her brother having a difficult childhood. The mother is never mentioned, and her absence is painful to the reader. The descriptions are marvellous, whether of the cake with plastic figures of the Beatles ‘…because granddad works/ at Oddie’s Bakery and they must have/thousands of them leftover from the sixties.’ or the girl accidentally injuring her brother while playing Twister: ‘…it turns out he has/a twisted testicle. I believe this is why dad left home’. The reader feels immense sympathy for the girl and her brother, though there’s not a word of self-pity in the poem — if it’s autobiographical, however, then I’d very much like to give the poet a hug.

In ‘South Crofty Mine, 1948’, the narrator looks at a photo of his/her mother outside a mine, years before the narrator was born. The not-yet-mother, ‘restless to be wed’, is contrasted with the child-to-come’s world of great drifts of bluebells and hyacinths, and a world ‘…as warm and safe as milk’ in which s/he ‘…shuffled on my bottom like a crab’. We move to the present day, with everyone ageing and the mine closed, but the photo has survived. This poem achieves an awful lot and keeps to the theme really well.

‘Mirrored’ has great use of form (a villanelle) and metre, as it explores a woman looking into the mirror and seeing her mother’s face there. I particularly liked the different shades of meaning that attach to the repeated lines — for example, ‘Reflection takes me to a different place’ is used both of the reflection in the mirror and of mental reflection and contemplation. A thoughtful, clever poem.

What a rare joy it is to see understatement used as it is in ‘Ward 3D’. This is also an example of ‘showing not telling’, too, and all the more powerful for that. We are never told that the child had a difficult relationship with his/her parent, that the parent is dying or that the child (now grown up) is struggling to say, ‘I love you’, but it’s all there. The ‘tiny words… …tissue-thin and chalk for bones’ may be whispered — and the pain and fragility of difficult family relationships is beautifully conveyed.

‘to see you now’ is very nearly a prose poem, and again it matches form and subject — the flowing language matches the fractured wandering of the mother’s mind and the changing relationship between her and her daughter. The vivid descriptions ‘don’t fuss, you’d say, not that you would’, ‘now, you point/the tv remote towards the radio’ paint a vivid portrait of two people and the cruelty of dementia.

‘with Alice, aged 4’ is another example of less being more. This unpretentious short poem plays with language as if with bath-bubbles: ‘dip-scented, warm-bath froth’ and ‘soft skin-on-skin’. Warm and loving — even if there is a hint of changes to come in the last line. Another fine poem.

‘Lullabies’ partly belies its comforting title to bring us the thoughts of a grandmother cuddling her grandchild, and remembering being a mother in a Glasgow tenement. She remembers the radio phone-ins: ‘They’re missing their Da./He’s away – wee bit of trouble/with the police’ and this is contrasted with the loving intimacy of parenthood: ‘Sparks of love flame our den’. This is another poem that keeps well to the theme, telling a story of love through difficulty, and doing so with power and tenderness.

What a title — ‘Chuckle Chutney’! It’s ideal for this romp down memory lane, replete with the fruit scrumped ‘…from Nan’s full-lunged trees’. Reading about the apples, plums and greengages actually made me hungry! What is left is made into chutney: ‘…enough summer spice and colour/to warm us through the winters’. Indeed!

I was glad that I’d experienced looking after babies at night, to appreciate the poem ‘Night Nursing’, in which ‘…miraculous mother powers/match plug and socket’. The darkness of this is explored with love and imagination: ‘Darkness is where we consent/to the drawbridge lying flat’. The leaking and staining qualities of milk are again used as metaphors, too, and there isn’t a cliché in sight.

‘She is Autumn’ is a beautiful and rather mystical poem that makes no apology for its strong emotions and images. A mother describes her ‘Goddess child’ – ‘The one with hair the colour of leaves on the dawn of winter’. This is a poem like a painting, rich and evocative: ‘She is Autumn – fire and hush.’ Wonderful!

‘The Story of Us’ has a terrific opening: ‘The path between your wrinkles was never too narrow/for fairy tales’. The fairy tale motif is used throughout the poem in which a ‘princess’ loves, and then loses, her grandfather. This works very well when contrasted with prosaic details: the castle is ‘destroyed by the dragon’ when the old man dies, and the bereaved granddaughter ‘…cried openly into your freshly-ironed shirt’.

‘Mother Moon’ starts with an image of mother as moon to her planet child: ‘When you were born,/I started spinning,/And all these years later/I haven’t stopped’. The poem then explores the pulls and orbits and changes in the planet and moon relationship, and does so with originality and love. It’s charmingly done and lovely to read and reread.

‘Beholden’ is a glorious mess of the gritty realism of parenting: ‘All day he’s had a yoghurt propelling snotty nose’, and ‘the fatigued and frazzled baby-Father fights’. Yet love comes through too, and rhyme is used as we look at the child with images just as powerful: ‘his chimp-like rump/his bitty belly, portly and plump’. A strong poem about not taking parenthood for granted — and I love the shades of Sylvia Plath in, ‘…like gobbling down a podgy gold watch’!

Another poem called ‘The Story of Us’ has dragons and fairy tales again, but avoids cliché with strong and original images: ‘…these fire cracker/kids, the wildest of animals here’, and being shipwrecked ‘…in strange territory with tea/and biscuits, sweeties and juice’. This exuberant adventure in parenting deserves a happy ending!

‘Inbetweeny’ is in the form of a conversation between a menopausal mother and an adolescent son: ‘Strange thing, gingery and tall/who never comes down when I call’ is answered later on by, ‘Years passed by and hormones flowed,/your tiny tadpole became a toad’. The rhyme is fun, the repeated refrain ‘whence came you/what changed you?’ effective and just for even more fun, it ends with a clever and charming anagram.

‘Blank Page’ shows us the baby arriving ‘sweet but empty’ and being gradually filled by experience. The mother’s love for her ‘…red crumpled bundle/with doll’s toes’ is palpable: ‘For a while I shone/with such want/I hugged it’. It’s beautiful and very tender, and ends with the gentle acceptance of change.

‘Slow Movement’ has the original idea of describing a relationship using musical terms. This took me back to my piano and flute lessons — and the poor, patient teachers wincing at my cacophony! I loved this take on love — and the last line is full of warmth and joy.

‘Us’ is the moving tale of a mother’s bond with her child, including the awful moment of near miscarriage. The poem shows love and the mother’s bond flowing through time and beyond time, and the eternal nature of it. The contrast between fear at the rim of the toilet bowl and the mystical, ‘We have never not been’ is very effective.

‘No Room to be Ill’ is a wonderfully honest poem, showing the misery of feeling ill when trying to care for children. I loved the realism of it: ‘“Mummy?” says a little panic-stricken voice./Big sigh from me…’ But the realisation about a future that will have too much time in it for illness helps the mother to find perspective.

It was a privilege and an honour to read all the poems submitted.

Children’s Category

Anyone who spends time with children knows that as soon as they start to speak, they start to be creative with language. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that our winner is just three years old! ‘Me and my brother’ is full of honesty and invention. ‘My brother is a nasty beast/His claws are much too soft’ is the surprising opening, and the rest of the poem explores the contradictions of sibling relationships until the exuberance of the final line, in which we are told that the brother is: ‘…everything more and everything long and everything brothery’ — well, that tells us, doesn’t it?!

There were two poems called ‘My Lovely Family’. One, by a 14-year-old, is very well-structured and very tender, and the concise ending ‘Thank you and bye’ is a lesson in brevity that many adult poets would do well to learn. The sound of the words, particularly the use of vowels, is lovely too — cry, equally, me, die, too.

The other commended poem called ‘My Lovely Family’ is both tender and sad, asking the reader to ‘…please remember us all’. Love and loss are shown in evocative lines such as, ‘…we wish you could come back to us and never die’. This is a poet of sensitivity, who shows emotions very well.

I’m guessing that ‘Emily Butterfly’ and ‘The Family of Me’ were written by sisters, as one mentions her sister Surya and one says ‘I Surya’. These are vivid and delightful descriptions of a loving and vibrant family life. Emily is particularly good at noticing emotions and people’s characteristics: ‘Surya/is kind to me./And I also like Daddy he is funny.’ Surya tells us what each member of the family loves and then adds, ‘We love each other’. These are lovely family portraits, and I hope they will be treasured.

All in all the children have proved that they have just as much to say in a variety of ways as the adults have, and well done to them all.

Milli Hill Prose Report

As a writer I am acutely aware of the painful process, not just of writing, but of then taking that carefully crafted arrangement of words and putting it out into the world. This takes courage, and like all art-sharing, the experience leaves you exposed and vulnerable.

Judging this competition was therefore a difficult process for me — in particular I struggled to make a ‘no’ pile — as I could see something beautiful in every entry! Each one moved me in some way, had some little turn of phrase that captured my imagination, or simply impressed me with its rawness or honesty.

Nevertheless this was a competition and I simply had to pick some winners!

I have chosen The First Winter to be the winning piece of prose. It has an easy, well-crafted rhythm that took me on a journey, at first to familiar places that made me smile and reminisce about the early days of mothering my own first-born. But just as I relaxed into the tale, the writer jolted me so hard I gasped out loud. I found it riveting, and — although I have never found myself in the writer’s terrifying position — I could empathise so well with the dreadful anxiety that motherhood so often brings. I also liked the subtly implied idea that some episodes of our lives are like being underwater and holding our breath. The writer tied this idea in with seasonal references to bring another atmospheric layer. Overall, the effect was a very clear and simply told story that belied the writer’s efforts to create something with beauty and a deeper meaning. I enjoyed it very much.

I have chosen to award ‘Commendations’ to fifteen further pieces of prose.

I would like to give a special mention to Birth Stories – those of you who know of my work as a birth writer and activist will understand why this story in particular drew me in. It’s a truly excellent piece of writing and is brutally honest about the emotional experience of a traumatic birth. The writer takes us with her as she struggles to make sense of what has happened, and the last four paragraphs I found especially well-crafted and moving. Anybody who has ever trotted out the cliché, “All that matters is a healthy baby” should be made to read this work.

Bernadette is a great piece of writing, like a carefully made fishing net, imbued with the sights, sounds and smells of the sea. The woman of the title leaps to life from the first sentence, and it takes great skill to paint such a vivid scene in such a short word count. It was also good to read a story of motherhood in which the love of the child plays a supporting rather than a central role.

A Nepalese Adventure takes us to another world entirely, and is an inspiring story of adventurous travels with small children that made me want to broaden my own horizons. It was lovely to read of a mother’s love for her children as she considers her place in the world, against the pure and uncluttered backdrop of the Himalayas.

Co-operative Shopping offers no easy explanation for itself and I liked this quality very much. Is the person they describe autistic, or simply a difficult child, or something else? It is not revealed, but the quick, flicking prose seems to inhabit a place in between the mother’s voice and the stream of consciousness of Ruari as they navigate the everyday complexity of the grocery shop: a fascinating read.

Spinning Straw is a very heartwarming tale and of course reminded me immediately of putting my own children to bed and how I similarly feel so very tired and yet find the experience so incredibly precious. We must not wish these times away, I found myself thinking!

Home from the Sea traces beautifully the notion of roots, and adds in the poetic image of wings too as the writer celebrates her own small child against the backdrop of her seaside house. I liked very much the way the writer gathers together the threads of past, present and future with wonderfully evocative and rich imagery.

Life Cycle: The Circle of Us has a real confidence: the kind of writing that can seem ‘effortless’ but that can take an hour a sentence — well certainly for me anyway! I found it very poetic and I loved the links and connections that looped cleverly between the imagery.

The Story of Us (When people ask…) took me to a different place — the simple history of how our parents and grandparents met, which always, as the writer points out, highlights the randomness of our existence. This piece of writing is a lovely reflection on blood lines and the impact of the tiny details of our ancestry on our bodies and minds.

A Journey to Love won me over with its brutal honesty: this is not an idealised portrait of motherhood but somehow its realism ended in tenderness and reminded me very much of the ‘bad days’ we surely all have as mothers where, in spite of everything, our last thoughts as we fall asleep are still filled with love for our children and a resolution to do better tomorrow.

I liked the way The Story of Us (It started with you…) jumps from the writer’s day to moments of her children’s births as she reminisces on the pivotal points in the growth of her family. Some lovely writing — quite broad and rightly confident brush strokes in places painting a touching and life-like picture.

The Love of Five Dolls is a story of a mother’s love and loss, sewed carefully into the stitches of the dolls she crafts for her children. It left me feeling terribly bereft, as undoubtedly the writer herself must be. A moving story that, like the winner ‘The First Winter’, and indeed like every entry, takes the reader into the fragile world of motherhood, a place filled with infinite love and agonizing vulnerability.

Our Dancing Hearts painted a lovely picture of a day out with children: I liked the way the writer portrayed how the excited presence of children can transform a simple errand — in this case to buy ballet shoes — into a grand event.  The twist at the end was touching and sad, and revealed a pressure all mothers of siblings surely feel, regardless of their qualities or inequalities.

My First Born transported me at once to the difficult transition from one baby to two. I felt keenly the pain of the writer as she explored with honesty the tug between the first little child who is so very loved and the delicious newborn who demands so much of us. How can we ever find that elusive ‘balance’?

I Whisper His Name switches narrative between serenely pregnant mother and rather more anxious father in a way that is quite touching. I liked how the writer portrays the way that pregnancy and parenthood can divide the sexes, but also shows how the love for a newborn can transcend this. The Story of Us (Once upon a time…) also brings a father’s perspective to the journey of mothering and parenting, and it was good to hear so much praise for the comfort and stability that a man can bring to the ups and downs of conception, birth and motherhood. As the writer puts it, dads are also, “on the roller-coaster, just in a different seat.”

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Writing Prize update and other news

It seems to have been a very long time since I managed to write a post for this blog, but as most of you probably know I’ve been very, very busy! The busyness has been very positive though – some of it has been to do with the Writing Prize, and some of it has been to do with the new website (I hope it looks sufficiently stylish?!) and of course some of the busyness has been to do with the next book we’re publishing: The Forgotten and the Fantastical.

With regard to the 2014 Writing Prize I’m delighted to be able to say that after much deliberation, the two judges, Cathy Bryant and Milli Hill, have made their final choices. The winners will be announced next week, right here on this blog. If all goes to plan, Wednesday 4th March will be the day of the big reveal…

Although of course I can’t say much about the winning and commended pieces, I CAN say that we had an increased number of entries compared with last year – in particular, there was a huge amount more prose sent in. The quality of the writing was simply outstanding, with both judges being in turn humbled, moved and delighted by the poetry and prose on offer. They had to make some really tough decisions, and I certainly didn’t envy them their difficult task. The good news is that because we had an even greater number of entries this year the judges were able to select even more commended pieces. So I’m already looking forward to putting the book together and getting it published this September! In other news, our new book-to-be The Forgotten and the Fantastical is ready to be pre-ordered. If you’d like to get £2 off the RRP of £8.99, then why not pop along to the store and get it today? Pre-orders really, really help us. They give me a better idea of how many books to print, meaning there is less money trapped in unsold books. Mother’s Milk Books only just about keeps afloat through our sales (and of course the work of all us volunteers!) so if you want to support us, please do consider pre-ordering a book, making a donation, or buying a stack of greetings cards… We’re going to have a big old sale next week (2nd – 8th March) so it’ll be a great time to buy a ‘something’ in time for Mothering Sunday.

Lastly… if you’re about in Nottingham on World Storytelling Day (that’s the 20th March), please do consider coming along to the launch of The Forgotten and the Fantastical. There will be storytelling, drinks, and lots and lots of fairy cakes! The launch will take place at the Nottingham Writers’ Studio (of which I’m a member) and it’ll start at 7 p.m. It’s free to enter, and anyone interested in stories (or cake!) is very welcome to attend. And p.s. we’re also open to submissions for our follow-up to The Forgotten and the Fantastical. Details can be found here.

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Interview with Helen Lloyd, our new Editor

Helen Lloyd is a Bath-based writer, editor and technical accountant. She has had something of a lifestyle shift since having her two sons, and now makes her living with a portfolio of work that uses all her skills, while spending her days with her family and seeking out spare minutes to read and to pursue an unrealistically long list of interests.

1. Please can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your family.

I live in Bath with my husband Huw, and two small boys, Isaac and Aneurin. Before I had Isaac we were living in London and I had a very busy job working in technical accounting. After I gave birth to Isaac I quickly realised that going back to my busy job wasn’t going to work for me and Isaac! I surprised myself by becoming (what I considered to be) a hippy parent — breastfeeding for much longer than I’d expected and finding that I couldn’t think of anything more important than being at home with my son.

So I left my job and found work that I could do around my baby by working every evening and every time he slept. Thrillingly for me the work was mainly writing (albeit about accountancy) and, for the first time, someone was paying me to write! (I now have two accounting books to my name, with another on the way.)

I trained as a breastfeeding counsellor with La Leche League so I fit that around my part time job, some freelancing with real spreadsheets (once an accountant, always an accountant), and now, of course, my work with Mother’s Milk Books.

I’ve been lucky to have the chance to edit LLLGB’s members’ magazine Breastfeeding Matters too – it’s hard work but is giving me lots of editing practice.

To make sure I keep writing, I blog at http://youngmiddleage.blogspot.com about all sorts of topics, with a bias towards books and babies.

2. So… you’re now working for Mother’s Milk Books as an editor. How did you first come to hear of Mother’s Milk Books? What was it about the press that held your interest?

I think it was when I first became involved with LLL – I saw a call for submissions for the book that turned out to be Musings on Mothering. I thought this might be just what I needed to get myself writing, so I contacted Teika but I’d missed the deadline. It made me aware of the press, though, and I bought the book as soon as it came out.

I loved the idea of a press that’s focused on these topics that had suddenly became so interesting to me: mothering, and breastfeeding, and all with a sense of warmth that didn’t come at the expense of intelligence or intellectual curiosity.

3. What will you be doing as an editor? And can you explain a little bit about how editing works?

At this stage I’ll be working pretty flexibly doing whatever’s most needed at the time! I’ll be reading manuscripts and debating their merits with Teika, as well as acting as a general sounding board; I then love the process of performing a detailed review and giving feedback for authors on what is and isn’t working.

From my own experience of writing, too, I know that everyone needs an editor. When you’ve laboured on something it’s really hard to be objective enough about what works and what doesn’t. This might be at the very high level of which viewpoint is used, or the large structure of a piece, or it might be in the detail, whether it’s repetition, paragraphs that don’t flow, or something else. I’ve had a few pieces edited myself where my first response has been total dejection because it’s covered in red pen – but actually, it’s incredibly valuable to have someone helping you work out what could be rearranged, clarified, or cut – even if it does feel as though they’re pulling apart your baby.

4. When you read a manuscript what gets you excited, and equally, what makes you nod off?

I think the thing that really pulls me into any kind of manuscript is honesty. This doesn’t just apply to non-fiction, and it means so much more than telling the truth. When a piece is written from the heart, and the author has been careful to listen to their own inner voice and to be true to it, it always pulls me in. I don’t mean that I particularly love confessional memoirs, but I really do dislike pretentiousness, false tone, or anything that seems like an attempt at cynical manipulation of the reader. I am also an automatic proof-reader and it does trouble me when anything has basic spelling or grammatical errors in it. It seems to me that one way of showing basic respect to a reader is to ensure that this sort of error just doesn’t appear.

I read a fiction manuscript recently that Mother’s Milk Books will be publishing next year (note from Teika: Helen is talking about the incredible Oy Yew) and I loved pretty much everything about it, though what’s really stuck with me is the authenticity of the main characters. The author clearly knew them as she was writing about them, and this glows through the work, and leaves the reader frantically rooting for them because they feel so real.

5. Can you tell us what some of your favourite books are?

This is such a hard question! My best way of answering it is to give you a couple of examples across a few genres, with the caveat that I’ll almost certainly have forgotten to mention something I love.

In fiction, if I need to be sure of reliably escaping from the world for a while, it’s Dickens every time, with Bleak House winning. I do enjoy a lot of modern fiction, too (though I’m impatient with even more of it) – I could single out Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer) just because it came back into my mind recently, and is such a perfect example of a consistent voice (in fact, more than one) and of idiosyncratic language use that is genuinely funny and touching rather than irritating.

In non-fiction, I must have read Naomi Stadlen’s What Mothers Do at least half a dozen times. It’s genuinely shaped the way I think about my mothering and myself, and has given me rich reserves of ideas to draw on.

Then, and arbitrarily limiting myself to a small number, I have to mention Stephen King’s On Writing. Whether or not King’s novels are your thing, his advice on writing is provocative and stern and sensible and accurate and, most of all, inspiring. If you read that, and Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, and Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, and you’re not immediately overwhelmed with the urge to shut yourself away with a pen and a pile of books, then I’m going to suggest that you’re not quite human!

6. Some of your favourite authors?

Again, where do I start, and where do I stop?

In no order: Marilynne Robinson, Charles Dickens, Lorrie Moore, and Hilary Mantel. If I had a shelf full just from them then I’d be able to stay in one room forever.

This is based on a very personal idea of a favourite author being someone whose new work you would buy regardless of its title, described content, or critical response. I suppose Dickens fails that test, as he’s unlikely to produce anything new, and I can’t imagine I’ll ever read Pickwick Papers to the end, but he’s a reliable safe place, and bears infinite re-reading. With someone like Hilary Mantel, her voice is so eerily hers, despite the massive range of topics her novels and stories have covered. I hungrily seek out interviews with her, just to get a fix.

7. Any thoughts about the kind of literature being published nowadays?

It seems to be so hard for any book to make a mark. To my mind, this means we’re seeing a lot of low-risk literature being published, in the sense of covering areas or themes that have already been addressed again and again.

There’s still room for bravery and innovation, but it’s hard for publishers to take a leap where a work can’t be easily categorized.

I also have a personal bugbear about books that just aren’t edited enough. There has been flab in a lot of the modern fiction I’ve read recently, sometimes with whole sections that do nothing to move a story forward, or just with a general tendency to overwriting. In some cases I imagine this to be left in there through editorial fear of offending the writer, and it irks me. An editor should be able to be honest enough (and trusted enough) to be able to point out this kind of excess, because writers are usually too close to their own work to be able to be sufficiently ruthless.

8. Are there any up-and-coming authors we, as readers, should be watching out for?

I mentioned above reading a manuscript that I’d loved pretty much everything about. Ana Salote’s Oy Yew will be published in Summer 2015 and I’m so excited about it. Ana’s writing is so fresh, and although it’s a children’s book, it’s subtle and complex enough to have kept this adult enthralled – and it’s the first of a trilogy! I’m hoping to invoke some kind of editor’s rights to grab the manuscript of the second one the minute the ink is dry.

9. Now that the benefits of breastfeeding are better understood is there a need to publish books that celebrate femininity and normalize breastfeeding? i.e. is there still a need for Mother’s Milk Books?!

I do think there’s a very real need for this sort of book, still. The benefits of breastfeeding are well documented, but I’m not sure they’re fully understood yet, and there’s definitely not enough out there that celebrates the joy of breastfeeding (as opposed to the health advantages and so on).

Some people are embarrassed about celebrating the mother-baby relationship, worrying that it reduces women to their reproductive skills, but this ignores the possibility of rich transformation that motherhood brings. Mother’s Milk Books has a place in recognizing and valuing this.

10. What kind of books would you like to see Mother’s Milk Books publish?

I’m not unbiased here, since I’ve loved everything Mother’s Milk Books has published so far, but I do hope to see more straight non-fiction books celebrating the joys of mothering. (Note from Teika: Helen, your wish has been granted! more on that later…) The anthologies so far (Musings on Mothering and Parenting) have been packed with fantastically written short pieces – so many of these have themes that could easily grow into a book! I have a couple of particular hobby-horse ideas of my own, but I’ll keep them close to my chest while I nurture and develop them.

It would be great too to see Mother’s Milk Books printing fiction where breastfeeding is casually present, as it were – not a theme, or a preoccupation, but a natural and unremarkable part of the picture. Apparently, Baby X by Rebecca Ann Smith which is being published in 2016 fits this remit so I’m eagerly waiting to get my hands on this too!

11. Can you share any tips for aspiring writers wishing to be published? Or tips for how to get creative when you’re a busy mum?

For those hoping to be published, I’d say keep working on it. Write as much as you can, and read as much as you can, and work out why you love the things you love, so you can try to do it for yourself. But bear in mind that producing work that you’re proud of is only part of the battle, and be prepared for rejection and disappointment along the way. It may take a while to find a publisher who is a good fit for you.

As for creativity, I wish I managed this better myself. The best tip I’ve had, though, is to stop hanging on for those lovely great swathes of uninterrupted time that you used to be able to carve out for yourself in your life pre-children. Realistically, it will be years before this sort of luxury is available, so train yourself to work whenever you get any time at all, even if it’s only ten minutes as you hide in the kitchen while the pasta’s cooking. It takes strength and mental discipline to get good at using these slivers of time, but they really can add up – and besides, they are all that you’re going to get, so make the most of them.

12. If someone would like to support Mother’s Milk Books, what should they do?

Buy some books! Obviously there are other great things a supporter can do, such as sharing their love widely with friends and family and all over social media, but ultimately the way a business keeps going is by making sales – and this is a business that is worth keeping going.

13. Where do you work? Do you have a picture of your workspace that you’d like to share with us?

I’m in the smallest bedroom of the house, which comes complete with fitted wardrobe. I’d like to say that the picture is of my space on a messy day, but in reality this is as tidy as it ever gets. You can see that I have no separation of my interests/work streams except in having two computers so I can kid myself that everything’s under control.

One day I’ll have a long desk, the length of the room, with a work end and an art and craft end, with enough drawers underneath, enough shelves over, and a functional but pretty chair. Until then, it will be the folding dining table, spare dining chair, and books piled up wherever I can make room for them.

14. Final bit of frippery… tea or coffee? Milk or no milk?

Coffee, strong and black. I cut it with decaff at the moment, but there is just no joy to compare with that first cup of the day.

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Cue long pause and me thinking… (the random thoughts of a publisher)

When a friend recently asked me what was involved in publishing, it took me a fair while to reply.

Cue long pause and me thinking…

We’re all consumers, in one way or another. When I eat my toast, I don’t think about how it got on my plate. I’ve got a vague idea about wheat being harvested, flour being milled and then voila! it’s bread and it’s in a bag and then it’s on my plate…

Rather like consumers of food, it’s not often that ‘consumers’ of books consider the book-production process.

Before I became a publisher I had no idea of what was involved in the making of a book. The writer writes, right? And then the publisher does some talking to the writer. And then the printer prints the book and voila! the book is now in my hands and I am free to criticize it endlessly, with not a thought for all the effort that has gone into its making.

Now I know. I really do truly know what goes into publishing a book because I’ve overseen every step of that process. And although I haven’t counted the number of steps involved it’s probably about a fifty-step process! (And that’s not even including all the work of the author, by the way.) There’s simply so much involved. It can (roughly) be split into: 1) book acquisition 2) editing & proofreading 3) book production i.e. typesetting, cover design, printing 4) marketing, promotion & advertising i.e. getting the book known, and 5) book selling. Number 6) is the whole business end, which includes the writing of contracts, long-term publishing plans, selling rights, finances, accounting, website maintenance. And of course there’s all that reading to be done…

Although I pretty much like all the aspects of publishing, the one thing that really excites me is this: reading a manuscript that I fall head over heels in love with. I also get pretty excited about getting just the right image for a book cover (pairing art with words is my thing!). And planning which books I’m going to publish in the coming years is also very exciting, but much more fun when you’ve got someone else to discuss it with.

So after I’d considered all the above, I finally gave an answer to my friend, and probably rather bored her with all the details!

Recently, I had to admit that I was becoming overwhelmed by the amount of ‘to-dos’ on my to-do list. I really needed someone else to be involved with Mother’s Milk Books. It was time (and this is where I get to feel very grand) that I got an Editorial Assistant.

So today, I am welcoming my new Editorial Assistant, Helen Lloyd who, as you can imagine, is passionate about breastfeeding and great literature. I am incredibly delighted to have her on board.

Over the coming months I’m going to be shining a light on all those wonderful folk involved in Mother’s Milk Books, from the incredibly important tea boy to the Editorial Assistant, as well as all the many, and varied, fabulous authors whose books I am going to publish in the coming months/years. Some of you may be familiar with them already as Mother’s Milk Books authors and some of them will be new to you. So welcome, Sarah James, Angela Topping, Ana Salote, Rebecca Smith and Alison Lock. I am super-excited to be working with you all! So if things seem quiet, in reality they’re not. I’m either busy actually doing the things on my to-do list, or conversing with Helen, or drinking tea and chatting to the lad who makes my tea.

Thanks again to all those who support Mother’s Milk Books. If it wasn’t for the readers (or should that be book consumers?!) who actually part with cash to buy our books we wouldn’t be able to keep this whole show on the road.

p.s. there is also the brilliant book of fairy tales taking shape in the background (more on that later!) and

p.p.s. I’m also running a giveaway on Facebook right now. Why not pop along to our Facebook page and enter to win some lovely (and new) greetings cards?

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Photos of poetry in action, and a new book

Although I wasn’t able to make it to Cathy and Angela’s poetry readings at 8th Day Coop in Manchester last month it looks (and sounds!) to have been a great event, with an appreciative audience (and they were particularly happy to buy Cathy’s new book Look At All The Women. This is good news for me as a publisher!). And just a reminder, you can still get Cathy’s book, and Angela’s wonderful collection of poems Letting Go at a discounted price in our store at the moment. I thought I’d share some photos of the event, hopefully encouraging anyone who’d like to perform their poetry, to give it a go! Sarah Miller and Rosie Garland were also there, giving fine performances, so thank you to all who attended and made it a night to remember.

Angela Topping
Cathy Bryant

And another couple of lovely photos to share: the cover of our new book, and a box of the new books hot off the press!

It’s not too late to get £2 off the discounted price by pre-ordering from our store. The Writing Prize Anthology is officially published this Tuesday (30th September), so it’ll be shipped out to those organized folk who have managed to pre-order. And every copy of the book bought pays for one entry ‘fee’ to the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. Bargain! Go on, why not write your own ‘Story of Us’ and send it to me. It’ll make me very happy.

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Writing Prize & YouTube video goes live!

It’s official! The 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize is now open and accepting entries. For more details about the prizes, who the judges are and how to enter please click here.

Also… as I’m writing this post, two of my authors, the wonderful Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant, are getting ready for their poetry gig at 8th Day in Manchester tonight. They will be joined by the poets Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller. Due to family reasons I can’t be there unfortunately, but hopefully this video of Cathy reading her poem ‘Look At All The Women’ will be *almost* as good as being there in person! Please do have a watch and share it if you enjoy it.

‘Look At All The Women’ by Cathy Bryant

Wonderful reviews for Look At All The Women keep popping up. The reviewer in the summer issue of Mslexia thought it “wickedly funny” and Zion Lights – writer, journalist, mama – recently wrote on Twitter that she was “Blown away by Cathy Bryant’s poetry in Look At All The Women“. Stephanie Siviter, who won a copy of Cathy’s book in the Story of Mum Twitter party giveaway, commented: “Delighted to win a copy. Shed tears reading it & laughed too.” She also added that “it has inspired me to start writing poetry again. A woman definitely to aspire to.”

I don’t think you can ask much more from a poetry collection can you?!

If you’d like to get inspired by Cathy or Angela’s poetry collections why not pop on over to The Mother’s Milk Bookshop and buy yourself a book or two – they’re NOW ON SALE! Every purchase made provides the buyer with one paid entry ‘fee’ to our Writing Prize…. I hope that that is inspiration enough to GET WRITING and GET ENTERING!

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Latest news and dates for your diary

Things may seem quiet around here, but actually I’m busier than usual. I’ve been putting together not one, not two, not three but FOUR contracts (and unusually this isn’t for just 4 authors but 5. Hmm… intrigued? Hopefully you will be!). More about the contracts and authors another time, when everything has been signed, sealed and delivered.

In other news I’m putting together the first ever Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology. It should, fingers-crossed, be out mid-September, and I’ve also been looking ahead to the start of the next Writing Prize (beginning 28th August, to coincide with Cathy & Angela’s upcoming poetry performance). I’ve been in discussion with the wonderful judges and putting together flyers and adverts. I’m delighted to be able to announce that Cathy Bryant is going to be the sole adjudicator of the poetry category and Milli Hill is going to be judging the prose category. Many thanks to Cathy and Milli for taking on these tasks.

So come on wonderful writers, I dare you to make their job good and challenging by sending in some fab poems and prose pieces on the theme “The Story of Us”. Intrigued…? Details will be online in another week or two.

The Mother’s Milk Books authors (and past and present judges Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant) are also extra, extra busy as they are going to be performing some of their poems from Letting Go and Look At All The Women at the 8th Day Café in Manchester on 28th August 7 – 9.30 p.m. Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller will be joining them to make it a really fab (& feminine) event.

If Manchester’s just that bit too far, why not buy Look At All The Women and see if, unlike the reviewer at WriteOutLoud, you can read it and avoid getting sunburnt! Lowdham’s The Bookcase is the latest independent bookshop to stock our growing list of books (along with The Melton Bookshop in Melton Mowbray and Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham) so if you’re local to Lowdham, or passing through, you can always buy a copy of one of our books there.

Lastly… the ever-enthusiastic and energetic Pippa at Story of Mum is hosting a Twitter Party Make Date on 13th August from 8.30 – 10 p.m. UK time. Party-goers will be sharing where their eyes have lingered and celebrating what they see (both the bad and the good) in their day-to-day lives. One lucky party guest will be winning themselves some neat goodies – a paperback copy of Look At All The Women being one of them.

Enjoy the rest of August, and when I come out from under my mountain (well, okay, small pile) of contracts I’ll be blogging more about the anthology and the Writing Prize. Yay!

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The Lowdham Book Festival 2014

On Saturday 28th June Mother’s Milk Books (aka me, my husband and our two children!) set off early in order to set up our stall at the Lowdham Book Festival. This was the first year we’d attended, so obviously, we were a bit unsure of what to expect. However, as soon as we discovered there was a playground right next to the village hall where the stallholders were (and lots of interesting tents outside full of activities for children) we knew that everything was going to be okay… I admit it was a long day (especially for a highly sensitive person such as myself who likes nothing better than to stay at home all day) but it was a very rewarding day. I met with lots of readers and local writers – Paula Rawsthorne and Megan Taylor were wonderful to chat to – as well as other publishers and the wonderful folk (such as those involved with Nottingham Writers’ Studio, Writing East Midlands, Five Leaves Bookshop and of course Lowdham’s The Bookcase) who all help writers and publishers get their books ‘out there’. I also particularly enjoyed listening to the song ‘The Box of Delights’ (written to celebrate 15 years of the Lowdham Book Festival) when it was sung on stage – it was performed with real enthusiasm and is incredibly catchy!

My three assistants – husband, daughter and son – had fun doing a treasure hunt, playing Pooh sticks at a nearby stream and of course, eating plenty of snacks (!) and browsing the stalls. I bought our daughter a skirt and matching headband that was handmade locally – and my husband bought ‘The Old Woman and her Pig’ from a secondhand book stall for our son. It was a book that I’d owned as a child, and it was really wonderful seeing it again – the illustrations had really implanted themselves in my memory! My daughter also had a go at a real letter press (run by Nick Birchall of Cleeve Press) and was delighted with her own hand printed creation.

Our cards and prints were popular with those who showed interest in the Mother’s Milk Books stall (which also included a selection of books published by Lonely Scribe) and our book covers, as well as handbound books, met with many compliments. We didn’t sell as many books as we’d have liked, but we covered our costs and made some over, which was good because sales in the last part of June have been (expectedly) quieter.

There’s no doubt about it – book selling is hard. Particularly in these difficult economic times it can be hard to justify spending money on books when there are so many other much more ‘practical’ things that need to be bought. And I know that as much as I love buying books myself I also find it hard to give myself permission to simply read for pleasure.

But, but, but…! I am in the ‘business’ of publishing and selling books. Although I sometimes wonder why I decided to walk this sometimes challenging path, deep down I do know why. It’s because I’m in love with stories. I love being gripped by a story so page turning, so thought-provoking that it keeps my everyday worries – about accounts, website management, dirty carpets and overflowing laundry baskets – at bay. A good story will take me to another world, and yet it will also teach me something new about myself. Yes, publishing is not easy, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing else quite as magical that I’d rather be doing.

So fingers-crossed (and as long as the wonderful stories keep appearing in my email inbox) we will be at Lowdham Book Festival next year with more wonderful books!

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Guest post: Cathy Bryant on ‘Heroines and Inspirations’

Welcome to the ‘Look At All The Women’ Carnival: Week 3 – ‘The Eclectic Others’

This post was written especially for inclusion in the three-week-long ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of Cathy Bryant’s new book ‘Look At All The Women’. In this final week of the carnival our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘The Eclectic Others’ (the third, and final, chapter in Cathy’s new poetry collection).

Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants.

***

When it came to the third section of my book, ‘The Eclectic Others’, my editor and I worked hard to choose the right balance. After all, there was no way we could include every possible take on a woman’s life, unless the book was to have infinite pages! So we fiddled and discussed and put things in and took them out again and scratched our heads and argued for our particular favourites, until we came up with a selection that, if not wholly representative, was at least as strong and varied as we could make it.

Poems we were both keen to keep in included those about some of my personal heroines – those inspirational women who have made a difference to the way I live my life.

One of those was shared with me by an English teacher called Mrs Lawton. Our set text for poetry was a volume called ‘English Poetry 1900-1975’, which contained the work of many wonderful poets – only two of them, however, being women. One was Stevie Smith. The other was Sylvia Plath. (As poet Ali Smith said, between those two you get most of human experience, but still!)

So imagine me at 14, being abused at home by my violent father (who was also headmaster of my school), depressed and suicidal, self-harming and lost, opening the book obediently and finding the nursery rhyme rhythms of a hellish experience not far from my own: Daddy. You can see the poem here. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178960

It knocked my socks off, and my shoes and mind too. For terms we had been dissecting poems to see why and how they were clever, and now a strange, dead, American woman had reached right inside me and spoken to me in the language of my sorrow and fear.

I loved her after that and read everything she wrote, including her diaries – and found her to be a complex person, often far sunnier and funnier than the myths would have us believe, full of life and charm and brilliance. On the 50th anniversary of her death I went with my O.H. to visit her grave in Heptonstall, and when I came home I sat and wrote the experience down – it was so vivid. It came out partly as prose and partly as a poem. You can see the prose result here: http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=34328
And here is the poem:


Yellow Roses on Snow
(written after visiting Sylvia Plath’s grave on the fiftieth anniversary of her death)

It’s a plain grave, though thickly meringued with snow;
dark granite monolith open to the sky. The church
is old and friendly, proud with bells pealing
in glorious cascades. There is a sense of celebration
as well as mourning in the tan stone streets,
some cobbled, with views of hills, hills, hills
all covered in snow. But such a small grave.

There are several of us, strangers, women in black
lighting candles and laying the sunshine roses
(her favourite flower, her mother said)
on the grave, and mourning the dead woman
we didn’t know.

Sudden sobs – it’s so cold, she’ll be cold,
she hated the cold. Sympathy. Chilled hands
try to warm mine. My red skirt, the blue candle
the only spots of colour save the roses,
buttery as an American sun, yellow as
a New England leaf when Autumn falls.

As if conjured, the same sun breaks out here
over the grave and us, drawing yellow and white
into a new gold. We feel relief
at the literal lightening. We had not wanted to leave
her alone, but the sun is there to warm her now.

Departing, we see knots and threads of folk
rag-rugging their way to her, heads bowed
against the bitter weather, though now the sun
is blazing, blazing on top of this blessed
hill village in Yorkshire.

Did I really think that it would be grim and dark?
That we would be given nothing here?
We were met by strength, connection
and a culmination. For us, this was pilgrimage.

***

There are tributes and examinations of other heroines of mine too – Sophie Scholl, who was shot at the tender age of 19 by the Nazis for disseminating anti-nazi information, and Colette, that redoubtable and sensual writer with a wicked smile and a gimlet eye. There’s also a poem about my favourite statue, which just happens to be of another strong woman, and one from the myths of ancient China. They have all opened doors for me, all helping to articulate my own escape and transformations.

Here’s the poem about Sophie Scholl. I think of her whenever someone gives all the reasons why they can’t stand up for what’s right.


The White Rose

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?

– the last words of Sophie Scholl, member of The White Rose resistance group, before the Nazis executed her.

You didn’t say, one person can’t make a difference.
You didn’t say, there’s no point in trying.
You didn’t say, well, what can you do?
You didn’t say that the Nazis were too powerful,
and that it was too risky.
Instead you printed your leaflets, distributed them,
and talked, and called to action;
and so they killed you.
But you had lit fires of resistance
that a cold bullet couldn’t quench;
planted seeds for all of us
to follow, every new rose,
and the fires still burn
and the flowers still bloom
because you didn’t do the maths
(you were just nineteen, so young)
and play the odds but instead
taught us – me – how to make a difference;
how to live and how to die,
how to light flames and grow flowers.

***

Look At All The Women is now available to buy from The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) – we can ship books around the world!

and as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk.

It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.

If you’d like to know more about Mother’s Milk Books — our submission guidelines, who we are and what we do — please find more details on the submissions page.

Please take the time to read and comment on the following fab posts submitted by some wonderful women:

‘Heroines and Inspirations’— Cathy Bryant, guest posting at Mother’s Milk Books, shares two powerful, inspiring poems, and how they came into being.

‘Sensitivity’ — Marija Smits shares a poem, with an accompanying image, that gives a glimpse into the inner workings of a highly sensitive person.

Georgie St Clair shares her creative female heroines in her post ‘Creative Others: Mothers Who Have It All’

‘The Eclectic Others – Or What Would I Have Been Without You?’ — Kimberly Jamison posts to her blog The Book Word a thank you to the women of literature and history who have been in her life, shaped her life, saved her life and gave her a future.

‘Barbie speaks out’ — Ana Salote at Colouring Outside the Lines shares a platform with feminist icon, Barbie.

‘Her Village’ — An older (much older than most) first time mother, Ellie Stoneley from Mush Brained Ramblings firmly believes in the old African adage that it takes a village to raise a child. To that end she has surrounded her daughter with the love, mischief and inspiration of an extremely eclectic bunch of villagers.

Survivor writes about the inspiring life of La Malinche and her place in Mexican history at Surviving Mexico: Adventures and Disasters.

Sophelia writes about the importance of her community as a family at Sophelia’s Adventures in Japan.