It’s National Poetry Day
This time last year I was touring with The Alan Barnes Octet. We were touring A Requiem, a Jazz and Poetry collaboration which was written to commemorate and comment on a century of global conflict. Working with Alan and those superb musicians was a creative highlight of my life, a hugely enjoyable and rich experience and I look back with enormous gratitude at having had that opportunity. Two years prior we toured Fish Tales which celebrated the history, mythology and legacy of the Grimsby fishing industry. I never imagined that I would write about either war or fishing but part of the delight of creative life is to be surprised by what you can do.
Given the current context and the terrifying threat to the arts in the UK, presented by both Covid and a lack of support from the government, artists find themselves staring into an abyss and wondering what kind of a future there is for this essential part of human experience. Life without the arts can only be arid, desperate and sad. To be advised to ‘get a better job’ in the face of rising unemployment, shrinking opportunity and a UK isolated from the world is as offensive as it is unrealistic.
There is a terrible imbalance in the creative arts nationally, one that was longstanding before the current crisis. Access to the arts is increasingly limited to the middle classes, those with means and connections. The direction of travel over the past decade has been away from arts for all towards limited enclaves where not enough varied voices are heard. The education system has played a significant part in this with arts being constantly demeaned and undervalued while the STEM agenda has been relentlessly peddled, pushing children and young people in directions where they are not necessarily going to find fulfillment. It’s not enough to have arts as an afterthought or extra-curricular. A decent education should encompass and value the arts as equal to science and mathematics.
Before the pandemic, work was underway to address cultural imbalances, including leading work from the Arts Council and their publication of the Creative case for Diversity: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/diversity/creative-case-diversity
It would be a travesty to not centralise diversity as part of arts recovery in the UK post pandemic.
This year’s theme for National Poetry Day is Vision. Artists have vision, they have sight, insight and intuition in abundance. But sometimes it is hard to see, especially in times of great stress and duress. Vision is hard to find if you’re worried about losing your livelihood, feeding your family, keeping your home. However, it is important to not let go of artistic vision. Perhaps now more than at any other time in recent history we need vision and visionaries, artists who will sing, write, paint and create a future that could just be better than the past we have had to let go. I believe that each one of us is an artist and that with our creativity we can envision and create a better world with much broader and wider representation, particularly in terms of social class. I would love to be proved right.
A Requiem on CD is available here: http://www.woodvillerecords.com/Requiem.htm
The book can be purchased direct from me for £8.50 inc P&P
email msjosiemoon@gmail.com to order
Sep
25
By Josie Moon
Bloody Amazing!
Category: Josie Moon, Social Comment, The Writing Process Tags: Menopause, Menstruation, Period Poverty, Women's Lives Leave a Comment
Breaking taboos
I am pleased and proud to have been been published in a taboo-busting collection of poems written by women all over the UK. Bloody Amazing! explores the health and social issues that affect experiences of women of all ages yet are hardly ever talked about: periods and menopause.
The anthology is intended to be a conversation-starter for everyone. If you’ve never had a period, you’ll find out what it’s like not just to experience it physically, but also to function on an everyday basis while you work hard to hide your secret. And as for what happens when it all stops…
It is a book of very human experiences, full of humour, grit, anger, pain, hot flushes, mood swings and, of course, blood.
Bloody Amazing! already has celebrity support in the form of comedian Jenny Eclair, author of Older and Wider – A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause. She took very little persuading to write the foreword:
“I don’t think I’ve ever come across a collection of poetry that is so relevant and accessible about something that happens to around half of the planet at some stage of their lives. Who’d have thought that periods could inspire such a torrent of beautiful words? … I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
I was inspired to write about my experience of the onset of menopause. I am entering the third age and have to come to terms with letting go of my youth. It is painful and challenging. My hair is turning white, I have expanded around the waist and I am finding that my body often feels like a stranger to me. The unknown country of the future currently feels very disorientating.
I have been reflecting on my bleeding life, remembering the trauma and difficulty I experienced for decades. I was adept at avoiding school -especially PE lessons during periods. I lived in terror of the boys in my peer group going through my bag and finding sanitary towels and using them as a weapon of humiliation. I remember sitting my O Level English Literature exam in agony and under-performing as a consequence. I look back and shudder at the days I spent curled up around hot water bottles, lying in hot baths, battling three-day long migraines that became an unmanageable, chronic condition.
I remember one particularly horrible day at work when the pain was so bad, I slid down the wall outside my classroom and slumped on the floor wondering how the hell I was going to get up and get through the hour and forty minutes ahead of me with twenty rambunctious A Level Literature students. A colleague (female) saw me there and made a lairy comment, insinuating that I should ‘man up.’ And that’s often the problem isn’t it? Women are expected to behave as if they are not bleeding, not in pain, not struggling month after month after month – and sadly I’ve often found female colleagues unsympathetic simply because they breeze through their bleeds with no issues and can’t empathise.
The irony now, as I cease to bleed, as periods are down to one or two a year, is that when they come I welcome them like an old friend. I put this down to grief. I am grieving for the part of my life that is coming to an end and it is a complicated physical and psychological process. This is why this book is so special and so important. It brings together a flood of women’s experience. It is a bold, brave and timely collection.
Only last year, I burst into tears listening to Dawn Butler talk seriously about legislation to help women in the work place with menstruation and menopause, bringing this subject into the public domain and acknowledging its importance. Sadly we will now have to wait longer for that legislation, for social and political change that acknowledges and understands bleeding and all its attendant issues in a grown-up way. But this book supports the movement for change.
Co-editors Gill Lambert of https://www.yafflepress.co.uk/ and Rebecca Bilkau of https://beautifuldragons.net/ came up with the idea for the anthology after a conversation about how difficult it is to talk openly about menopause and menstruation.
“Women have kept quiet for centuries about ‘women’s problems’ but the taboo is beginning to crumble, especially with excellent campaigns like Bodyform’s #wombstories or initiatives such as The Vagina Museum in London. That’s why we thought it was a timely idea for the two publishing houses to combine forces with poets to create an anthology that addresses the taboos and experiences around menopause and menstruation. And they haven’t let us down.”
All proceeds from the sale of the book will go towards period poverty charities.
Bloody Amazing! is £10 + £1.50 P&P and is available on www.bloodyamazing.co.uk.
Cover art by Jane Burn. Find out more about Jane at: https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/itemlist/user/683-janeburn
https://www.facebook.com/jane.burn.5