Today, another member of that first meeting has offered to share with us the small seed of that beginning...
Gill Hands before a reading at the Poetry Cafe 2007 -at the start of Wild Women she was terrified by reading in public!
Now you can't stop her...
Gill Hands was one of the first 12 women to join Wild Women, and since then we have published a great deal of her poetry, including 2 full collections, Internet Love Slut and Rilke Tattoo. Her voice is totally original and at once, bold and sexual; delicate and tentative. I have had the pleasure of performing with Gill a number of times, including at Glastonbury Festival in 2005. Not only has she fully come out as a poet, but she has explored her creativity and being in so many ways I couldn't begin to recount them here!
In the spirit of this blog, Gill agreed to share with us the following extracts from her journal, written in the first week of Wild Women - where we see the Wild Woman she is emerging between the pages:
"sat-13 march Really enjoyed the [Wild Women] writing workshop today and felt empowered. It was exciting to meet other people who feel the same way about writing as I do. So many seemed to have had their passion for writing sucked or knocked out of them. Well now we are going to claim it back! sun 14 Something is opening up inside me, a bit muddled and hesitant. I started crying in the bath last night. Things are starting to move and I'm not sure if I want to be a wild woman. It rubs off the nice comfortable rounded corners and leaves you with raw edges. I need to know who I am and be me before I can take off and fly. mon 15 Spent ages cleaning up and messing about rather than write. Very erratic in the brain today. Part of me is very optomistic but there is a horrible foreboding of doom that is very unpleasant. I don't want to look at the reasons why just now. sat 20 Had a bad harpy moment- worrying about what poems to read for the last session of the Higham Hall writing course. They all seem crap. How can I read any of them in front of the pussy bow ladies? If I use the word minge they will die. one of my harpies must be being 'nice' and not writing anything disturbing. (well I do write it but I don't show it to anyone.) I asked Brian if I should cheat and put some in by Ted Hughes to see if anyone would notice. He said why? does he write crap poems too? so I told him to fuck off. when I rang Ruth she was very supportive and told me not to be embarrased as my poems are good and to imagine the pussy bow ladies in the nude on the toilet."
Gill has since used words much more challenging than minge, and has had her poetry once described as 'the wrong shade of lavender' by a reviewer. You can see more of her poetry on www.wildwomenpress.com, and you can follow her surreal journey by visiting her blog on http://darkblondes.blogspot.com.
For now, I leave you with the first poem from her second collection Rilke Tattoo, published October 2006 by Wild Women Press. In this wonderful and unsettling collection, the POET descends into the abyss of creativity, revealing in surreal, witty and sometimes disarmingly vulnerable vignettes the process and inspiration behind the writing of poetry and the all important, and challenging self- acceptance of one's own voice. I love Gill's work and I love sharing the journey with her.
THE POET Speaks
I will make myself
THE POET
in big black capitals.
Less painful than RILKE
inscribed on my arm,
less complicated than upside-down writing
on a T shirt
with the message to myself…
“YOU ARE A POET, THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.”
I will refer to myself in the third person;
will write THE POET did this,
or that,
or the other.
Lately, it has been the other.
(Rilke Tattoo, copyright Gill Hands, published Wild Women Press 2006)
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