You can now read my poetry in Spanish in this collection.
Ahora, puedes leer mi poema ‘Barras para monos’ en Espanol aqui
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Tag: carmina masoliver
10 Hour Poetry Challenge
Fellow member of Kid Glove, Maeve Scullion, has been organising a charity fundraising event for Child.org whereby poets write and perform poems for 10 hours straight. Wanting to take part, but being in Spain, I decided to participate online.
I rarely share my poetry online, and although I have been wanting to record more poems, sharing first draft poems, fresh off the page is something else! I managed to complete the challenge, and I really enjoyed doing it… I had to teach from 5-9pm afterwards, including a group of 9-10 year-olds, so I am exhausted!
Poems can be viewed on Instagram. Please make it worth my time and donate via my sponsorship page. The target between myself and Michelle Madsen is £300, so we have a long way to go!
Feminist Poetry
One funny (aka annoying) thing about identifying as a Feminist and being relatively vocal about it as a poet (like putting on an event with women-only features) is that you get put in a particular box.
The thing is, the whole point of Feminism is to not be put in a box; it’s about dismantling binaries of gender, and dichotomies such as the infamous virgin/whore one. I guess that’s why lots of people have been sharing comment from Maisie Williams about the label “Feminist” – reducing it to the simple catchy phrase that anyone who isn’t Feminist should be labelled “sexist”. I don’t want to go too far into this part, because the statement that is being shared is reductive and denies the nuances of sexism and misogyny, but it also denies the complexity of what Williams was trying to express, which was actually about trolling and shame, rather than Feminism (in fact the idea that women can be just as nasty as men is Feminist). Her words have been taken way too far out of context,now having read the original interview. One critic I have is that by labelling people “sexist”, you’re actually perpetuating the culture of shame (I haven’t read this yet, but I think it will be really eye-opening when I do).
I’m categorically not interested in arguing about whether we need the label “Feminism” needs to go, or whether it needs a rebrand. It is a type of activism related to gender, acknowledging the systematic oppression of women throughout history. And personally, Feminism needs to strive to be intersectional – how can you care about women if it’s only one type of woman? This means that you listen to people from other oppressed groups and take on board what they say, taking into account some of your own privilege. I strongly believe that patriarchy damages men and boys, and this is something that is very much a part of my Feminism, yet within this an understanding that men and boys have also tended to benefit from the system. If people want to know what Feminism is today, my recommendations are:
bell hooks – everything
Laura Bates – Everyday Sexism
Michael Kimmel – his books, but also him speaking
But anyway, I’ve got carried away. What I really wanted to say (moan about) is about the conflict I have between my Feminism being an important part of my identity and yet people sometimes have the trouble to see that this means that I am a person, a human being, and not an object or a number to get a certain quota. It’s important to me to write poetry on Feminism and it’s something I’ve been doing for around 9 years, since I started to take my poetry to the microphone. When I was younger I wrote about being a Feminist who waxes (and a guy in the audience asked me if I was really a Feminist – shock, horror!) and about the beauty industry. Recently, I still write about these kinds of topics, but also about female genital cutting, rape as a weapon of war, and dismantling damaging notions of masculinity. However, when I started writing poetry, it was sickeningly and overwhelmingly about boys. I look back now and I laugh (cringe) because I can’t even remember who the hell I’ve written about so emotively. I mean, I once wrote a poem about a guy I fancied at a club who had a broken arm. I won “Best Loss Poem” at Glam Slam in 2011 with a tale of heart-break, after a string of unrequited love/lust/infatuation. Things aren’t always easy just because you’re in a relationship, so I still have a few sombre poems, but also a whole host of lovey-dovey poems, which are really hard to write well!
The point is that about 5% of my material is overtly Feminist, but Feminist lines and themes will slip in because it is such a big part of my being. And let’s not get me started on the comment (insult) that one guy made about my work being “very feminine”. It was the only comment he said, and he spoke with a sneer, out of his judgemental, condescending nose. However, there is also very little I don’t write about as I play with different forms and get inspired by different things. I guess it’s difficult because when you become a brand to market – as sadly you do when you put yourself out there in the creative industries – people want something like “Feminist poet” to cling to. Perhaps what concerns me is how others perceive me, and I worry that there may be any negativity surrounding this. But is this real or imagined? A certain poet has seemed to change their mind about sexism being morally wrong, but it seems to be going well for them. Like, my hashtag below was a joke, yet the “joke” responses that followed weren’t at all funny in my opinion… but then, Feminists have no sense of humour, so… I didn’t know how to respond to someone who is meant to be a peer, and who I expect to be respectful, so a simple sarcastic “lolz” was all I could muster.
Anyway, I guess I need to remember what Benjamin Zephaniah once told me – that if you are a black woman who is a lesbian and in a wheelchair, you have to write some poems about other things than those aspects of your identity. So, there’s only so many poems I can share about Feminism before people will think that’s all I do! So I guess I need to be aware of what I put out there, and share every part of my writing more widely, not just the more political pieces. Maybe it will make up for all my Feminist ranting. But one thing’s for sure – I will never give up on Feminism or on myself! I’ve been through a tough time recently, but Destiny’s Child and Christina Aguilera and Nirvana have helped me through it! And now I have been writing for so long, but I feel good getting it out! 💪
Wellbeing: World Bipolar Day
I’ve never been properly diagnosed, because I’m sure it would be more official, but a doctor once told me I have cyclothymia. It’s a mild form of bipolar disorder, and means that my functioning isn’t as impaired as those who have bipolar type I or II because it consists of mild depression and hypomania. Interestingly, I have had a diagnosis of GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder), and below it states that 62.9& of those on the bipolar spectrum also have an anxiety disorder. I feel like a lot of the time my mood is an internal thing that fluctuates, just as anyone’s does, but it means the extremities aren’t always visible. It can then get to a stage where, not necessarily feeling like I bottle things up, but, it can feel like things have built up to boiling point.
The last couple of days I’ve gone from mild depression to hypomania. I would say that today has been close to “normal”, but it can be hard to define what that is, and I’m currently writing this past 11pm, knowing that this will mean a late night, but also feeling anxious about how it will impact on my day tomorrow. I want to exercise in the morning and have time to fit in washing my hair in time for me to be able to go out later with dry hair. I have a CBT appointment and I have no idea whether I’ve been doing what I was meant to be doing.
So, yesterday my mood was sent spiralling after feeling upset about a conversation and that relationship, and had a stressful time after I booked a train ticket to arrive at home when I’ll already be in another city. I had expected to do a whole load of things that afternoon and ended up only just getting through my emails. I was meant to cook for my mum, but after falling into a deep sadness, combined with incredible rage and sense of hopelessness, I had lost my appetite. Anyone who knows me will know that I very rarely lose my appetite. I felt guilty about what little I’d done, and the hassle with trainline.com had me feeling pessimistic about recovering any positive feelings that night. So, what helped? The cooking I eventually did helped, talking to my mum helped, and so did accepting things the way they were. I had a bath, ate chocolate, watched a film and a reasonably good night’s sleep, though disrupted by waking early. I did also write some poetry for pleasure before I went to sleep, and it was a really important, cathartic experience.
Today I was lucky to have a main focus for my attention, which was a poetry commission I’m working on. I had a doctor’s appointment, and I have to walked through a field of horses to get there, which always seems bizarre to me. I felt really irritable throughout the walk – towards dogs, towards children, towards everyone – but I also felt empowered by taking ownership of the day, and I think the walking helped. The sun was shining, I had shades on, and I was listening to Destiny’s Child. I returned to my poems when I was home and combined research and writing. I didn’t finish, and I didn’t get to write any of the novel, but I was glad at my focus and what I had achieved. I was also able to fit in a couple hundred words of that novel in between getting injections and getting some soup at EAT before attending a poetry workshop. My focus on these creative pursuits enabled me to move on from how I was feeling the day before, and also to take the focus away from the relationship, personalising the conversation I’d had, so that when I talked to that person again, the conversation was good for both of us.
So, other than the parts highlighted in bold in both of these passages, I thought I’d write a list of things that have helped me in my own wellbeing. I thought it was interesting to describe about it in terms of these two days, but it’s also worth noting that it can be outwardly more extreme from cartwheeling in public spaces to crying lots and self-harming (although anxiety might have a bit to do with this too). So, some things:
-Meditation
-Relaxing baths
-Massages
-Playing sad songs/watching sad films (or uplifting ones)
-Singing
-Exercise
-Good support system – talking to friends and family, or online forums
-Being creative in a cathartic way (as opposed to professional/work stuff)
-Cooking (cleaning and gardening may be similar for others)
-Reminding yourself of positive qualities and who you are
-Making fun plans to look forward to
-Chocolate/treating yourself
Things to avoid:
-Long internet sessions without purpose, especially when comparing self with others
-Not doing anything or wanting to do too much – focus on one goal at a time
-Pushing away loved ones
-Drinking alcohol excessively
So, these things are just touching the surface, but for me it was important to make a list, to remind myself that all these things are as worthwhile as ticking things off my to-do list. It’s really hard to listen to what you need in the moment, and I don’t really know what my own patterns are in terms of cyclothymia, but that’ll be something I figure out. With or without such labels, these things are important for everyone to remember.
Oh, and for poetry, play the video on here – Emily Harrison, open about her own bipolar disorder, and also an excellent poet.She also has a book out.
World Poetry Day: Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday
For my friends and loved ones, the Year 11 girl whose grandma passed away this weekend, and for anyone else this may comfort.
Here, have these blessed things,
carry them with you as you journey home.
This knowledge will make you feel safe,
though you don’t really have that kind of faith.
It is spring now, and though you are alone,
soon you’ll be a pair of birds spreading wings.
Sometimes life leaves you standing in the wings,
and you can’t think of your lines, amongst the many things
going on around you – so many people, yet so alone,
and you’re sure what to call “home”
and all these months you’ve had faith,
but they were the one who made you feel safe
and you’re old as slang saying good is “safe”,
ending nights out with chips, fried chicken wings,
garlic bread, the echo of dance tracks from Faith-
less, swimming through the airwaves, thinking things
would always be this way, that home
would always be there, with family, not alone.
Never has the word held more weight: alone
like scissors to the nets that kept you safe
and in the truest sense of the word, you’re not home-
less, but it’s like being forced to fly with clipped wings.
Trying to remember how you dreamt of so many things
and you know you have to embrace fear, have faith
that this life is possible with enough self-belief and faith,
that you will have to build walls of arms, so you’re not alone
and force yourself to remember all the things
that seem so painful now, that you will be safe
because there are angels spreading wings
to guide you, and where you land will be your home.
Follow your heart home, and you won’t be alone.
Papier-mâché your faith, and you will be safe
as you spread your wings, you’ll see so many things.
Acts of Kindness
After writing this post, I redrafted a poem from a couple of years ago (something I’m meaning to do with a lot of poems). The act of kindness described in this post made me think of a workshop with Deanna Rodger, where the prompt “what’s the kindest thing you’ve done?” inspired an earlier draft of the poem below. Let me know what you think.
The last kind thing I did was spending
money on something I had no interest in.
I did that for someone else.
Thinking about kindness now,
it’s tied up to money somehow:
an exchange. A smart black suit,
food and bills. After a month
I wanted to raise money for charity,
wanted to run further than I’d been before.
Lately, I’ve felt tension in my back;
weekends and 9-5s do not line up.
Because we all need money, don’t we?
And so it seems, I want my own
gratification more than I want
to help move things forward from this pain.
What would you do if this happened to you?
Today has been a good day. I reflected on how I’d appreciate my job more if I wasn’t so focused on things outside it (making it in the poetry biz). In this moment, I realised that I can enjoy my job a lot more by adjusting how I’m looking at it. Sometimes I see it as something preventing me from doing things I want to do. I’m sure we all do from time to time. Actually, there’s room to be quite creative in my role as an Academic Mentor for English, and it’s given me a lot of experience that is sure to benefit me in my future career.
Today I also took the opportunity to read some of my poetry on the theme of adventure to some visiting primary school students as part of World Book Day/Week. They were in Year 6 and were adorable, and so hardworking and talented. It was a real pleasure to work with them to produce their own adventure poems! I saw only a handful, but I was really impressed by the imagination and creativity of their work, and how enthusiastically they scribbled away.
I left work having read an Irish myth with some Year 11s, and having written some sonnets with my Creative Writing Club. I was feeling pretty chuffed, and looking forward to writing a different blog post and hoping to revive the novel I started a couple of years ago now. I then passed a man who, mid-crossover, held out his hand to me. There was a wad of cash and a piece of paper, and he was gesturing to me to take it. He told me, “you’ve had a good day, you deserve it.”
I was really taken aback, and for some reason, I said “that’s alright” and refused the money. It was about £20-60. I didn’t look at it long, and soon enough the moment was over. But it got me thinking. I was so curious as to why someone would do that. And why me? Pure chance, luck of the draw? It also made me think about my reaction – why did I reject it?
Well, my first thought after rejecting it was that I could have given it to someone who needed it more than me; if this was a random act of kindness, I could have accepted it and passed it on. Remember the film, Pay it Forward? I thought of the woman who is regularly on the streets outside Bethnal Green tube station, about the poets coming to perform at my place of work for very little money, and the friends and loved ones who are struggling to earn who I could treat with it.
If my first reaction was that I’m not deserving of it, why was this? I’m on relatively low pay for the job I’m in, for my qualifications, and still live with my parents due to this. Plus, with my artistic ambitions, saving every penny should be important. Maybe because it was near payday, and maybe because I had been reflecting on how lucky I was already that day, I felt like I should reject it, that I didn’t deserve it.
This idea of what one deserves is interesting, especially as I tend to make a lot of assumptions about what I deserve. However, as I’m writing now I realise that these assumptions are bound up in exchanges. Perhaps it felt bad for me to accept the money because I’d feel guilty: no exchange took place. However, by rejecting it, I may be denying him the good feeling of this random act of kindness, if that was his intention. There are two strands of thought to which this is then tied. Firstly, this idea of exchange, I’m guessing, must stem from living in a capitalist society. I hadn’t done anything to earn that money, so why should I have it?
Secondly, my mind jumped from thinking about what I could have possibly done to earn the money. That maybe I didn’t do anything, maybe I just was. I began to wonder of the intention in a way that may not make sense, but I wondered about the gendered aspect of this situation. Would he have offered the money to a man? I questioned this, and when I told my dad, he not only said that he would have taken the money, but that he imagined if he was a woman he would be wondering about the intention of this.
I’m not saying there is anything gendered in terms of taking the money or not (yet) as my mum also said she would take it. But I have to admit that these years of walking as a woman have made me defensive when it comes to men talking to me in the street due to the amount of negative, intimidating situations I’ve encountered. A random act of kindness did provoke some suspicion. I felt the same way when a man offered me a seat on the train once: do I look pregnant? I panicked.
I wondered what was written on the note, probably a nice message about having a nice day and doing something nice with the money. The guy that approached me was just a normal guy, nothing stood out to me as unusual. And he did seem genuine and nice. Perhaps it links back to experiences as a teenager with what strangers were to me. They threw water balloons at you. They slapped you in parks. They called you to their van to ask directions. They kissed you at drunken parties. They called you and threatened to “shank” you. What is sad is that I’ve internalised these experiences, so that when a stranger does something we can probably safely assume was kind, I question these motives – and my deservingness – so automatically that it is simply a reflex to reject the money.
I’m really interested to know what others would do, so please comment below to let me know how you think you might react to this situation. I’m also really curious to find out why this man offered me this money, so if he ends up reading this, please let me know! I wish I had stopped to ask why. For now, I’ll override my initial concerns and put it down to a random act of kindness. And maybe next time I’ll be more aware of it happening.
The Norwich Radical: My One Year Anniversary
The other week I wanted to show Bande de Filles aka Girlhood, to 6th Form students in order to get them to come along to the Feminist Club. They had been keen after having Feminista UK coming in to run a workshop with them. Sadly, my efforts at putting colour-posters up, guying popcorn and even buying the DVD specifically to show the film were wasted at this time. It was rather depressing to hear the music at the start repeat in an empty classroom. I guess they’re overworked. And as an English Mentor, I keep giving them extra reading to do as it is!
I’ve been writing for The Norwich Radical for a year now, where I look at the arts through a feminist lens. Girlhood was a film I highlighted for its Feminist credentials. So, I thought this would be an opportune time to highlight the articles I’ve written thus far. You can get a whole list by clicking here.
In order of appearance:
Soho Comedy: Women, ‘It’s Like They’re Real People’
Women of the World Festival 2015: Part 1 and Part 2
Women Fashion Power: Not a Multiple Choice Question
The Place for Poetry: Fragment and Process, Visual Culture and Performance
Soon Every House Will Have One
To Kill a Mockingbird – Is it Just Me?
In Defence of Telling Girls They Can
Let’s Talk About Sex: The Institute of Sexology and Sex in the Afternoon
Feminist Picks: Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Homework: Molly Naylor and Katie Bonna
Arts Funding: Young People, Women and Intersectionality
Suffragette: The Fight is Not Over
Richard Yates: An Accidental Feminist?
The Burning House
A burning house made from sound. Five voices salvage all they can from the wreckage. A navigation of all that we lose, find and construct in times when facing the loss of what we consider home and our heritage.
Over the past few months, I have been working on poetry for an Apples & Snakes’ Home Cooking podcast, produced by Post-Everything, and featuring myself and other Burn After Reading poets. It features tracks from Rachel Long, Will Tyas (read by Antosh Wojcik), Sophie Fenella, Carmina Masoliver, Antosh Wojcik. The production is beautiful, with a great balance between the sound of each poet’s voice, and the musical tones throughout it.
It also marks about a year since my own production of a Home Cooking podcast for She Grrrowls.
Published on Love You Madly
After writing about the film Amy, I thought I would share my publication on some poetry I wrote inspired by another iconic jazz musician: Nina Simone.
The poems were curated by Lisa Alvarado and also include a contribution from Toni Stuart, who I had the pleasure of meeting last year and who has since performed at She Grrrowls.
You can read the poems on the Love You Madly website.
Poet on page and stage. Creator of She Grrrowls. Facilitator. Writer. 