The Other - 4.4.19 - Open Eye, Liverpool
- Eli Regan
- Apr 8, 2019
- 24 min read
The Other is a literary night that Eli Regan (me) and Mike Conley set up three years ago originating in Manchester. Eli had a conversation with a friend at the end of a reading bemoaning the fact she felt self-conscious reading her own work, and wouldn’t it be great if someone else read it and she read someone else’s? Thus, The Other was born.
We’ve had a multilingual iteration of the night a couple of months after the referendum result where we had readings in Spanish, German, Welsh, Swedish and other languages.
In 2019 we decided to tour The Other in the North West and we found ourselves in Liverpool.
To coincide with 209 Women – the exhibition of the 209 Women Members of Parliament shot entirely by female photographers – we thought it would be apt to have an all women/non-binary/female-identifying line-up.
In this post, you will read some of the pieces by the pairs that were read on the night.
Estelle Cadwallader is the photographer who took pictures of the night which show what an event of exchange, inclusion and friendship it was.
Estelle has a Photography degree and a PGCE in Education. She is currently an associate tutor with Blooming Art, a Warrington organisation dedicated to making the arts more inclusive and accessible to people experiencing financial and/or mental health difficulties. Her work is experimental and draws on techniques such as solarisation, double exposures and time lapse photography.
Along with Eli Regan and Hazel Hughes, Estelle had a two month photography exhibition held in the summer of 2018 at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery called ‘Night Edge’.
Laurie Stewart is a dopamine junkie, a storyteller and a conscious consumer.
She spent ten years working behind the scenes of retail and fashion before a series of serendipitous moments led her here, to some sort of conscious awakening. As she wandered the planet working out what to do next, she scribbled out her journey from corporate to conscious on her blog - All My Heroes Are Weirdos. Laurie can now be found back in her home city of Liverpool, working one hundred hour days to kick start her two businesses; Consciously Curated, a strategy and storytelling service for sustainable brands and Mindless Mag, a storytelling platform for conscious fashion.
Cath Holland has short stories and essays published in a range of places: Mslexia, Know Your Place - a collection of writings on working class culture and life – National Flash Fiction Day anthologies, Fictive Dream and more, plus is nominated twice for the BIFFY – Best British and Irish Flash Fiction of the Year. She also writes about books, music, feminism and pop culture.
COCK CONTEST by Laurie Stewart – read by Cath Holland.
You know it’s going to be an interesting day when your friend looks to you, makes an imaginary tick shape in the air and says “10 am Cock Contest. CHECK”.
We’d just started a climb towards the Secret Buddha garden at the top of Pom Mountain when, in the middle of a clearing in the dense palm tree jungle, we saw a crowd of local men huddled together and shouting loudly.
Curiosity got the better of us and we found ourselves shuffling over the thick blades of grass towards the kerfuffle, keeping a cautious eye out for snakes and other ankle-biting predators. We passed an abandoned car and a few stray cockerels before reaching the clamouring congregation.
There were cocks everywhere.
Some were being paraded around the place and stroked with pride, some were trying to escape their owner’s grasp and others were tucked under t-shirts waiting for the grand reveal. The men were excited and shouting loudly from behind a thin barrier of string that pressed against their hips giving them a psychological boundary they couldn’t cross.
On the other side of that piece of string were rows and rows of tall T-shaped wooden perches. Each had a bright green post-it hanging from it with a hand-written number on it in dark blue marker pen.
Our hearts started racing.
At first we thought it was a cock fight, which would have been bad enough, but as the men took their cockerels to the perches one by one, the whole thing began to feel a lot more sinister.
Before long, all perches numbered one to fifteen were balancing a cockerel on them – except from perch number two. The crowd were getting noisier, waiting impatiently for something to start and our heart rates gained even more momentum.
A large man with exceedingly broad shoulders wearing a beige short-sleeved shirt marched over confidently to the empty perch number two.
He had a big ball of flapping feathers tucked under his arm, partially` concealed by a bright purple shawl. He placed it onto the wooden stand and revealed to the crowd our soon-to-be star of the show - a cockerel named Mike.
Paranoia and curiosity were both in overdrive.
Our hearts were thumping as we stood there with bated breath, hands covering our faces with enough room between our fingers to see it all. Our nerves made us want to leave but we couldn’t peel ourselves away from this long-awaited rooster revelation. Our feet were glued down tight with intrigue.
We thought the worst. We expected somebody to pull out a machine gun and shoot down the feathered line up. We thought we were about to witnesses to some sort of sick and twisted farmyard massacre.
The crowd were still stood pressed against their string fence, becoming more and more disorderly by the minute, heckling raucously at their hens. The cockerels, on the other hand, were pretty calm and well-behaved.
Two men armed with clipboards and pens pushed through the group and stood in front of the poultry pageant. There was a man in a marine blue polo shirt and matching cap who appeared to be wearing a whistle around his neck near to the front, he seemed to be some sort of umpire.
We just simply could not wait any longer to know whether or not we were about to be witnesses to murder or just had front row seats to Thailand’s Next Top Chicken.
‘What on earth is happening?’ We asked.
‘It’s a singing contest’, the umpire replied with complete and utter nonchalance – as though we’d just asked him to tell us the time.
Of course it was. Of course, at the foot of a mountain, deep in the jungle at the centre of Koh Samui, at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning we were about to watch a cockerel singing competition.
With our heart rates slowing down to a normal pace, we watched with puzzled smirks as Mike was hailed abuse at for not hitting the high notes. It seemed that contestants one to fifteen were all doing their cock-a-doodle-doos but much to the dismay of his owner, poor old Mike was a cock-a-doodle-don’t.
We’ll Always Have Paris – winner Bristol Flashwalk 2018 by Cath Holland, read by Laurie Stewart
The world outside throws a gloss of lemon early morning light into the room, and nudges her gently from her slumber. This bedroom, his bedroom, has high sash windows and there’s a half full bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the table. Like the wine, his kisses last night were delicious, and very French. The sun inches its way up into the sky through the open window, she’s curled up against the warm of his back and in her woozy half dream she lazily paints a wild Parisian romance, cars gliding past the window, engines purring softly, neat cobbled side streets so easily, magically, navigated in heels, air sweetened by an accordion, cafés, Gauloises cigarettes and tiny cups of strong black coffee carrying a single mouthful, no more.
She blinks herself awake and gets ready and up and out of there. In the street the sun is so bright it hurts her eyes and everything’s loud, and big. A postman in a jacket of a far too cheery red hisses a tuneless song through his teeth. He holds a raft of junk mail and brown envelopes from the government in his hand. He scans her thigh high hem and sky scraper stilettos. His mouth puckers into a smirk.
She slaps him down with a tight look, and lifts up her chin. The postman’s not saying walk of shame out loud, but thinking it. In the bathroom she’d found a tube of Colgate, squeezed it onto her finger and rubbed her teeth minty, and put a fresh layer of lipstick over the one that got snogged clean. She’d combed her hair with her fingers, fluffed her fringe just right. There’s no shame in her walk. She holds her gold clutch bag high, the new morning turning the sequins into diamonds. They sparkle and shine for her. She tosses her head like a queen, ‘cos that’s exactly what she is, right? A bus across the way honks in tribute and rattles in applause. She says thank you silently, to herself, for choosing a top showing her décolletage at its finest advantage. Curving her lips into a smile, she brushes flecks of invisible dust from her skirt and, swaying her hips, sashays home with a strut.
Nina McCallig is originally Irish and is a fantastically creative young woman based in Liverpool who uses Photography and writing to express her innermost realities and thoughts in a sensitive and provocative way. A few years ago she had a break with reality after the traumatic birth of her daughter. Nina was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis – which triggered delusions, loss of memory and a deep restlessness. Photography gave Nina a routine in an otherwise chaotic time. Nina is determined and intelligent and is invested in making mental health conditions more known in order to foster inclusion and understanding. She has spoken at Writing on the Wall festival and regularly lectures at the University of Liverpool in the Psychology Department.
Alison Little combines her visual arts and creative writing practice. Rape, mental health and feminist issues are often explored through the forming of sculptural pieces and the writing of accompanying flash fiction, poetry and short narratives. Alison melds her personal experience of the subject matter, intensive fact-based research examining different philosophies and scientific predictions, the final outcome being predominantly sculpture and conceptual photography with different writing scripture - a challenging method of working creating a vast array of outcomes.
Extract from Nina McCallig’s book, read by Alison Little
When I first moved to Liverpool I joined a writing group. It was held in the upstairs room of the Ship and Mitre pub in Town. We would sit around on comfortable leather sofas for two hours, just reading our stories out loud whilst enjoying a nice cold pint from the bar downstairs.
There was one fella in his early 70’s, whose stories were SO full of sexual innuendos you wouldn’t be able to breathe from holding in the laugh. We never had the heart to tell him that he was writing a very low budget porno.
Eventually the politics took over- who was in charge and that sort of thing and the group broke up. One of the guys went rogue and set up his own in a rehabilitation centre on Mount Pleasant. I only went along a few times as there were no comfy sofas or an endless supply of alcohol. Instead we sat in a draughty room on plastic school-like chairs, reading the posters that were hanging up on the walls all encouraging a healthy lifestyle. ‘Have you shared needles? Have you been for a HIV test - act quickly and call this number’. In truth I felt uneasy in the place.
Sometimes we saw people coming in and out, and there one woman in particular who was always talking to herself. She wore odd Crocs: one pink and one blue and to be honest she scared the shit out of me. If ever I walked into the kitchen area for a cup of tea and saw her I would just turn on my heels and run. I’d think to myself ‘don’t even make eye-contact with her, she seems unstable.’ In the end I decided to quit the group and then of course years later there she is, still wearing the odd Crocs and talking to herself. Although I didn’t have the same uneasy feeling I had felt before as this time I was a bit mad myself.
I followed her outside into the smoking cage as I was curious.
‘Hello’ I said, watching her. Her face was firmly gazing at the ground like she had no confidence at all. I asked her if she knew where she was, her answer was no. I understood that feeling all too well. I told her she was in Liverpool on a psychiatric ward of a hospital. She didn’t seem shocked or surprised by this information. Maybe she had been in and out of places like this for years. ‘How long have I been here?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know, this is the first time that I’ve seen you’, but I’ve also seen you before on Mount Pleasant’ and gave her name of the building but it didn’t seem to register with her.
I felt a sudden wave of guilt, ashamed of the person that I use to be - that young girl who knew nothing who turned on her heels out of fear. How I wished I had been different. Why hadn’t I just said, ‘Hello, how’s your day?.
‘Where are you from?’, I asked her.
‘Jamaica’ she said lifting her head up for the first time to look at me.
She smiled at the very mention of the word, like all she wanted to do was go back to her country. Maybe she had come here to start a new life, maybe at one point the UK seemed promising for her but somehow things went wrong.
‘Do you want to go home to Jamaica? I asked her.
‘More than anything in this world’ is what she said. It made me think of Ireland: my home. And how I longed for it too, that maybe the minute I get out of here I’ll go.
She put her cigarette out abruptly, she no longer wanted to talk about this I could tell and she walked back inside.
I never saw her again after that so I don’t know what happened to her, if she ever got the opportunity to see her country again. I like to think that she did. I like to imagine that after our phone call she walked straight to the office to call her sister. They haven’t spoken in about 20 years. Her family had filed police reports and started a whole campaign to find her speaking to the English embassy with old photos of her smiling and looking happy, but there’s not much else than can be done to find a person who doesn’t want to be found.
Little did they know that she had got involved with the wrong sort of people, which led her down a path of self-destruction?
Maybe she had a natural talent for something as I find that most people do, perhaps she played the violin and selling it for survival was the moment she was truly lost.
I like to think of how that phone call would have sounded.
Hello sis, it’s me. The whole family would be called. We’ve found her they would cry.
They buy a one way ticket to Jamaica knowing that whatever has happened to this woman in the last 20 years, she will not want to go back to the UK, to a country that had failed her, to a system that was so fucked up nobody would ever believe it.
She lands in the airport and is met by her entire family, young and old, they have bright coloured dresses on and are so delighted to see her again, they dance and they cry but they are happy tears as she is back where she belongs.
She spends a lot of time resting and recovering from all that she has seen in this world, and then one day just before dawn breaks she picks up the violin and starts playing to the moon that is fading in the sky.
Her mother lies in bed listening with tears in her eyes, her daughter is back and music has returned to the house once again.
Sometimes a story is better than the truth, I have no idea what happened to this woman but I bet wherever she is, she is probably still wearing those odd Crocs.
A Void by Alison Little, read by Nina McCallig
In this, I have agreed to what was termed 'A life modelling process' for an artist seeking volunteers for a project he is working on. I stand before him in my dressing gown, nude underneath and wondering what he wants me to do, he tells me:
'Don't worry, I have done this lots of times before.'
From this, I am somewhat reassured, but still, air a little caution.
'I just need you to lie down so I can paint you with latex.'
In this he shows me the latex, it's white and when he paints a little of my arm it feels cold but pleasant on my form. I agree to the process and he helps me untie my dressing gown belt, although naked I feel comfortable in front of him, he has put me at ease.
I lie down under his direction and move into the position he needs me to be in. He starts painting around my neck area, slowly but surely working his way down. He is careful but professional as he covers my breasts, making sure he only touches my nipples with the horse hair bristles of the paint brush.
Working his way further down my body he comes to the groin area. I become nervous again, worrying about what he is about to do.
'Relax, I have done this many times before.'
I let my muscles fall low, then with warm air, he blows gently inside myself. From this, like magic, I open right up like a great white shark about to launch an attack.'
'That's right, good, you're doing well.'
He directs then he moves onto his back and slides his head and upper body inside my womb. From this, he begins to paint, carefully and professionally, coating the walls of my womb and ovaries in latex. When he has finished he edges out carefully and puts each hand delicately on the inside of my legs. Then without touching me with his lips he sucks air from the inside of myself. I return to my normal size, at ease with everything going on, amazed at what has been performed by this genius.
From this, he works down my legs in a similar motion. He then turns me over to work on my back and lower body. So relaxed with the brush motion I am almost asleep when he finishes:
'We just need to wait for it to dry.'
He whispers, in this, he picks up an old fashioned guitar and begins to sing folk songs.
He wakes me up to tell me that it's time to peel the latex off. I stand up for him and he begins stretching off the suited coating, carefully going over my breasts. After my ribs he stops and places a hand on each side of myself, then he kisses my forehead, gently and childlike in motion. As I smile he gets back to action, working the form off down to my lower body.
After a gentle shake, my womb falls out. Before me, I see its squashed in structure, perfect on the inner coating, but de-revelled on the outer. My ovaries flop out almost deformed and entwined, messy and forlorn. Ahead of me, I see the babies I will never give birth to and the children I will never raise. The bedtime stories I will never read, the play parks I will never go to, the football matches I will never go to and the school plays I will never attend. In this he finishes the removal process, then he shakes out the body-like creation. He clips it onto a line, in this, it stands tall and strong, an independent being, strong, singular, but of great value.
Maria Gornell is a poet from Liverpool and she has been published widely. Maria has poems included in anthologies such as Clinical, Brutal: An Anthology of Writing With Guts (2011), Soul Feathers: an anthology for Macmillan Cancer published by Indigo Dreams (2011), Emergency Verse: Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State from The Recusant/ Caparison (2011), and Binders Full of Women (2012) and Militant Thistles (2018). In 2012 her pamphlet ‘In the Absence of Wing’ was published by Erbacce Press. Maria is a trained sound therapist and uses some of her poetry in therapeutic settings. She is also working on a new poetry collection.
Eli Regan is the author of Mere Mortal - a blog on Photography. She currently writes a series of interviews on Women in Photography including Open Eye's Director of Development and Partnerships Tracy Marshall, Lens Think Yorkshire's Joanne Coates, Ella Murtha - daughter of the late & newly celebrated documentary photographer, Tish Murtha and Nina McCallig who is also one of our readers tonight. Another part of the blog involves receiving a single image from a working class photographer & writing a piece on it - One Image/One Text. Eli is applying for funding for Mere Mortal & works in Community Development Monday to Thursday. With Mike Conley she is co-founder of The Other.
Sorrow or the song by Maria Gornell, read by Eli Regan
It’s the way you dream the light
that shines through;
in the transcendence from all
those charcoal skies you’ve
inhaled since birth.
I watch the shadows gravitate
towards your blink past motion
healing hands now calloused
Your head is mercury on a good
morning the rest left so obtuse
At night time you are the owl
with eyes of wisdom sending
messages to the fallen.
You mimic distorted words of
love followed by hate,
unaware – these cycles are
here to fan flames back
into pit of belly.
I haven’t known you long
but I hear the rhythms
in your heart move between
sorrow and song.
I ask you
why do you carry a compass
or wear a woolly hat in this heat,
to which you answer
That the earth rotates its cold
winds upon you
you have entered incubation
period, you see no soul...
You laugh at intelligence,
tell the men to gather their tools
and build a culture made of
stone.
Because the last time you
allowed your heart to thaw
you split the salt between
your knees
and love – you say
is only for the young
as you take your battered
healing hands to wash away
the residue of his hammer
the one that nailed you
to this wood.
A boy dressed in a stripy t-shirt and tiny shorts pummels his opponent at the right end of a park bench.
His enemy’s legs are lolling in the air almost comically and his body is dangled in the negative space of the bench with his head lying roughly on the floor and his arm outstretched in protest of his treatment.
The boys wear the same clothes as each other suggestive of sibling rivalry. Every child tends to be necessarily rougher with their siblings than other children – both physically and verbally.
The legs of the bench are worth noting – resembling gnarled branches and one of them in turn carefully echoing the energetic bully’s leg bent, seemingly almost sprouting out of the boy himself and not the bench.
The magic in this photograph comes from the elderly lady sat at the other end, the far left of the bench, impervious to the violent proceedings on the right.
Clad in an immaculate coat and wearing a fetching hat, pearls, blouse with brooch and skirt, she elegantly places her glove on the pew laying claim to her corner of the bench.
The apparent discord in the picture serves to make it a perfectly harmonious documentary photograph.
Shirley Baker, the woman behind this picture, spent her life documenting areas like Hulme in Manchester and her native Salford.
Disappointed by The Guardian’s refusal to take her on as a staff photographer, she determined to make her own photographic oeuvre, documenting the working class communities and particularly women and children.
She also documented the slum clearances which would start to divide the communities making way to high rise flats. Baker spoke of the clearances to The Guardian in 2012:
“There was so much destruction: a street would be half pulled down and the remnants set on fire while people were still living in the area. As soon as any houses were cleared, children would move in and break all the windows, starting the demolition process themselves. There was no health and safety in those days; they could do as they liked. I never posed my pictures. I shot scenes as I found them.”
It is this dynamism that curses through Baker’s pictures. Pulsating with energy the children play amid the ruins enthusiastically and grin toothlessly at Baker’s camera while the darker reality of the clearances takes hold.
The present punitive effects of the Bedroom Tax, Housing Benefit cap & Universal Credit deliberate fiasco could be said to be reflective of this earlier division of working class communities.
Laura Robertson is a writer and critic based in Liverpool and London. Her work has been published in international magazines including Frieze, Elephant, Hyperallergic, Art Monthly, Art Review and a-n amongst others. She is the co-founder and current contributing editor at The Double Negative online art magazine; critical writer-in-residence at Open Eye Gallery and a MA Writing student at the Royal College of Art.
Janaya Pickett is a writer, historian and poet from Liverpool. She has published articles and poems for local and international blogs and zines. Janaya also works with literary organisation Writing on the Wall, most notably on their Great War to Race Riots archive project and ran the subsequent history walking tours. As part of the Race Riots project she also took part in BBC historian David Olusoga's Black and British TV series and narrated a short documentary for Writing on the Wall which is available in YouTube.
Essay on the 209 Women exhibition originally published in Tilt, an Open Eye publication by Laura Robertson, read by Janaya Pickett.
I’m scrolling through the portraits featured on Parliament.uk, the official site of the Parliamentary Art Collection. Perusing men wigged, powdered, suited and booted, eternally pensive-looking and softly-lit. As if to demonstrate how little time they have to formulate policy, these men grip quills in mid-air and consult pocket watches. Some do that ‘see how at ease I am’ pose that powerful people often adopt for formal pictures, which invariably comes across as awkward.
I don’t usually get my kicks from court dress, but here we are; after seeing the 209 Women exhibition, I felt compelled to seek out other political portraits. Having a sneaking suspicion that Westminster wouldn't be filled with paintings or photographs of female MPs, I took to the web, wanting to prove myself wrong. Surely there must be some, I hoped, since there’s a couple of hundred of us working there right now. Thankfully, Art in Parliament has been digitised for the everyday voter like me, whose restricted access to the Parliamentary Estate – where the collection’s usually hung – means I’m unlikely to ever see the real deal without a guided tour.
Unfortunately, I’m proved right: Parliamentary portraits reek of testosterone. I count 70 MPs, all male, and then another 37 male Prime Ministers and Speakers of the House. So I keep scrolling, and it doesn’t take too much time to spot Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first and only female PM, and Betty Boothroyd, our first and only female Speaker (in 700 years). Both women are coiffed, sitting up straight, and staring directly at me; I fancy that they’re mulling over the significance of the occasion.
It’s crucial that women are reminded of such milestones. Is that what portraits do – mark milestones? In a world of 24-hour media updates and selfies, the formal portrait seems to be a celebratory, privileged affair. They certainly tell a story about power. From the Old French portraire, portraits portray people; their likeness, yes, but also their personality, values or morals. Portraits outlive the sitter and artist both. They get dusty on mantelpieces and in coffee table books. Political portraits do a bit more, of course; depicting for posterity an elected representative in a new or favourable light. In this sense, Parliament’s collection of paintings and photos mark the milestones of the tenacious, powerful men who’ve shaped British politics, and them alone. 100 years since ’deeds not words’, it’s a cruel and inaccurate portrayal.
To date, Art in Parliament gives special attention to 22 portraits of women, yet 491 female Parliamentarians have been sworn in since 1918. That’s 22 in 100 years. Thatcher, Boothroyd and Baroness Ann Taylor of Bolton have two portraits each, so that takes the number down to 19. There are two – only two! – black women, Baroness Valerie Ann Amos and Diane Abbott. The first female Lord Chancellor, Liz Truss, isn’t featured at all. Amid the stress and movement of politics between 1918 and 2019, a deep crack has fractured Westminster, and all the images of powerful women – the 472 not depicted – seem to have plummeted down into it.
That’s probably why the 209 Women photographs are so startling. It’s as if the project has flung a rope ladder down into said crevasse, permitting current MPs to climb up into the light. The women stand beside busts of their male peers – and on office desks and piers, and in fields and community centres and restaurants, visibly part of the world around us. They are acknowledged. There is an abruptness in seeing over 200 women from the full political spectrum, left to right, in one space at one time. It’s startling to consider what it might mean in terms of political dialogue.
What did Susan Sontag say about taking a photograph? It means putting yourself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge – and, therefore, like power. Photographs don’t seem to be statements about the world, she said, so much as pieces of it. In that sense, 209 Women does something: the project disrupts a perception of UK politics as chiefly cis male, and calls attention to a predominantly white, able-bodied and middle class leadership that still desperately needs to be disrupted. There’s a reason why most of these women don’t look like the general public. That’s because they’re not – politics remains, predominantly, a playing ground for the rich and connected. Yet, there is something very relatable in these contemporary pictures, especially when we look at MPs located in small, poor or marginalised communities. The project allows us to think further about power and parity now. 209 Women speaks to a tired, divided electorate, asking: what happens when both sides get together in one room?
The collaborators found that 209 Women became a real and palpable opportunity for dialogue. When photographer Rhiannon Adams met MP Priti Patel, she shared a space with someone that she disagreed with on ‘so many issues’, and in doing so, realised how much common ground they had. They talked, maybe first about the technical aspects of the shoot, the location, light and composition, but then about the aims of the project, why they were involved; who and what they cared about and what they disagreed on. Perhaps Adams and Patel discussed the challenges they’d faced in their respective – male dominated – fields, and how rare it was to see women foregrounded in this way. Two ideologically opposed people creating a non-confrontational space, outside of feedback loops and antagonism and a dialogue of disgust. Listening, and working towards a common goal.
I don’t know whether any of these 209 portraits will make their way into Parliament for permanent display. They certainly should. The project is, at the very least, a 1100% increase in visibility. There are 209 more portraits of female leaders in existence, and its contributors give me hope that true parity could be witnessed in my lifetime. We’ve got a long way to go.
I keep scrolling, and wonder: wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a visual reminder of what ‘deeds not words’ means, hanging throughout those same, venerated halls? Imagine thousands of portraits of voters, rather than MPs, representing a broad range of us from all over the country – including you and me. If anyone asks, I’m available for a sitting.
Louise by Janaya Pickett, read by Laura Robertson
Picture this -
August of 1996
on a new estate,
on a newly built street
where the tarmac was aromatic,
malleable,
under little fingers and feet.
And there I was
in summer holiday heaven
aged about 11
sat on new ground
cross legged, meditatively
studying the world
the way that young girls do
at that age.
My text at the time was a copy of Smash Hits
and via this magazine that I, like, loved to bits
I’d come to understand image
and what it would soon mean to me. Then
I collared neighbourhood boys
Nabil and Ben
to take part in an experiment
more to confirm for me
what a fit girl was
and what she should and shouldn’t be.
Offering up the sacred pages
from the floor I commenced
‘Which one du fancy’? I said.
‘That one’ Nabil pointed,
‘yeah’ Ben agreed
‘Why’? - they couldn’t explain
but they didn’t really need to
I got it all the same.
On the boys continued with their street game
and as the fly way ball
pinged back and forth
across the close I thought in my head
“What a fitting sound
to go with this new knowledge
and the dread
of more disadvantage”.
It made me feel quite ill,
the fact that Louise from girl group Eternal
unwittingly exposed a truth
I’ve seldom forgot
which was that of the four band members,
three brown and one not,
all the boys, no matter their shade
preferred Louise because she's white.
FIRSTLY a brief BIOGRAPHY of the writer of the following POETRY who is called RUTHIE and whose stage name includes the word “WONKY” because it was not her FATE to be STRAIGHT so she is HOMOSEXUAL and ASYMMETRICAL. She is a cisgender female who has been PUBLICLY performing POETRY for years which number THREE but in this GALLERY for the first time she will do so by PROXY via ME.
Pauline Rowe is Poet-in-Residence at Open Eye Gallery. She is working on her third poetry collection ‘Insane Places.’ She has just successfully completed her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool. She founded the charity North End Writers in 2006 and was Poet-in-Residence with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust 2013 – 2019. She has been with her husband, John for 24 years and they have six children.
My Magical Metaphorical Mould – A poem on the theme of female empowerment by Wonky Wordsmith, read by Pauline Rowe
The story which is about to UNFOLD is of a shape-shifting, magical, metaphorical MOULD and with each feminine FOLD
FEMININITY ORIGAMI saved ME from being BARMY because it made ME MENTALLY improve a MILLIONFOLD.
209 photographed females are in this exhibition SPACE but of them only 1 FACE did I CHOOSE as this poem's MUSE and to ME CONSPICUOUSLY it stands out for the wrong REASON i.e. TREASON against HUMANITY because SADLY FEMININITY is not a GUARANTEE of PARLIAMENTARY INTEGRITY and that PHOTOGRAPHY of a wicked woman in her IVORY TOWER made me GLOWER.
The photograph's subject who causes me DISMAY is Theresa MAY who in it is from the camera is looking AWAY which echoes that this TOFF about who I SCOFF avoids turning to face and SEE the INEVITABILITY of ADVERSITY if European UNITY ceases to BE and SHE has a far from MOTHERLY MENTALITY because SHE is a MATRIARCH whose heart is DARK, she favours being ALOOF over facing the TRUTH and although it is said the camera never LIES I see through the DISGUISE of her photographed face's seemingly kind EYES thus despite her GENDER I don't doubt she is a female far from TENDER.
The image also FEATURES that cruel CREATURE'S JEWELLERY which is made of pearls and CONSEQUENTLY SYMBOLICALLY speaks to ME of any pearls of wisdom given to her about her replacing her IMMORALITY with behaving ETHICALLY is a waste of the giver's TIME because they are pearls cast before SWINE
However her being a lesson to ME in how not to BE means, like THATCHER before HER, INADVERTENTLY she EMPOWERINGLY is a female role model of MINE and now we will go briefly back in TIME.
TRAGICALLY being birthed by my MENTALLY misshapen Mother meant ME being in bad shape so from my harmful HISTORY I longed to be set FREE not by a role MODEL molly CODDLE but in ways which would make being strong a DODDLE for ME.
I needed OTHERS to be my MOTHERS to foster POSITIVITY in ME by METAPHORICALLY moulding ME into a better SHAPE and so ESCAPE a DETRTIMENTAL and far from GENTLE genetic GEOMETRY.
Back in the present in addition to our SINISTER Prime MINISTER my mould Mothers also INCLUDE other faulty females whose RUDE bad BEHAVIOUR is my SAVIOUR which INSPIRES my DESIRES to be better than THEM and to that in a secular WAY I SAY “AMEN!”
Females who cause me HURT mould me because they are DIRT which I RECOGNISE as a blessing in DISGUISE which will FERTILISE this girl's growth and for every female FOE who helps me to GROW I am worth TEN!
I have too many mould Mothers to give them all a MENTION but it is my poem's INTENTION to thank them for moulding me with their regular REINVENTION of ME.
It would be really RUDE if I didn't express my GRATITUDE for the bad ATTITUDE of all my female foes who by bad EXAMPLE ENABLE MALLEABLE ME to learn how not to BE and IMPROVINGLY BE an extremely empowered, REPEATEDLY reshaped RUTHIE!
In Praise of Nasty Women by Pauline Rowe, read by Ruthie Adamson
Victoria Wood, Emily Bronte, Bernadette Devlin – we praise you
Emmeline Pankhurst, Marlene Dietrich, Andrea Dworkin – we praise you
Margaret Clitheroe, Mary Peters, Rosalind Franklin – we praise you
Jodie Foster, Margaret Rutherford, Dorothy Hodgkin – we praise you
Valerie Singleton, Simone de Beauvoir, Clara Schumann – we praise you
Stevie Smith, Patti Smith, Ethel Smyth, Margox – we praise you
Bessy Braddock, Beryl Bainbridge, Hildegard von Bingham, we praise you
Mary Seacole, Shirley Williams, Joan of Arc, – we praise you
Pauline Collins, Jayne Casey, Eleanor Rathbone – we praise you
Lita, Cilla, Sonia, Natasha, Jackie & Bridie – we praise you
Frida Kahlo, Joni Mitchell, Gwen John, Fanny Mendelssohn – we praise you
Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Wordsworth, Catherine Dickens – we praise you
Annie Kenny, Lee Miller, Anna Freud, Nan Goldin – we praise you
Clara Bow, Rosa Luxembourg, Nell Gwyn, Jane Campion – we praise you
Nellie Bly, Anne Frank, Malala Yousafzai, Jo Cox – we praise you
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Maya Angelou and Julia Margaret Cameron – we praise you
Angela Davies, Angela Carter, Angela Merkel – we praise you
Emma Holt, Anne Williams, Margaret Aspinall, Gee Walker – we praise you
Denise Fergus, Josephine Butler, Margaret Simey, Elaine Feinstein – we praise you
Djuna, Sylvia, Ella and Nina – we praise you
Gloria, Shulamith, Betty, Germaine – we praise you
May, Dorothy, Ada, and Joan – we praise you
Monica, Philippa, Rita and Flo – we praise you
Our mothers and sisters, daughters and friends – we praise you
in loss and grief, and to make amends – we praise you
in our seeking for truth and our patience with men – we praise you
for astonishing women give thanks, give thanks - let us say it again – we praise you
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