“The strength of these poems lies in their clarity and desire to communicate. If you are a woman you will read — with a strong sense of recognition — poems about family, relationships, maternity, love and the end of love. By contrast, the old spikey, angry witty bit of polemic or rhythmic agitprop will make you sit up.”
Liz Lochead
Pat Amick writes movingly and skilfuly about her feelings for her father, of childhood joys and the bittersweet nature of ‘romance’. Cathy Bolton’s work deals with relationships, and the way they are constantly cut across by questions of power, the past and sexuality. Anne Paley’s poetry has a reflective and searching quality, while describing situations that affect many women. Sheila Parry uses powerful images culled from folklore, myths and fairytales to examine aspects of women’s everyday lives. Cath Staincliffe expresses her thoughts about love, memory and politics.
Just Good Friends
It’s possible
to over-estimate the
pleasures of the body;
just equating
well-controlled or
underactive
genitals with true
fidelity amounts to
poor imagination:
you and I can live
accepting separation
— but the briefest
social kiss provides
a moment of forgetting
as we leave the group,
the room — the planet
for dimensions where
the time — expanding
like a dream —allows
the slow and consummately
perfect melding of
hearts — while
everybody recognises
there is nothing
special going on between us
Pat Amick
