These Mothers of Gods

By Rachel Bower

Rachel Bower's accomplished debut collection seeks to recover the lived experiences of women who have often appeared only fleetingly in official histories. The poems push towards a more expansive concept of motherhood, including our collective responsibilities for lives, environments and natural worlds.

With heartfelt lyricism, Bower

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fly on the wall poetry
• Release date: Jul 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913211585

Rachel Bower

Rachel Bower is an award-winning writer based in Sheffield. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Leeds and runs writing workshops and events across Yorkshire and Derbyshire, including 'Wild Writes.' She is the author of Moon Milk (Valley Press) and Epistolarity and World Literature (Palgrave Macmillan). Her poetry has been published widely in journals and magazines, including Magma, The London Magazine, Frontier, New Welsh Reader and Stand. Rachel edited the Verse Matters anthology with Helen Mort and is currently editing a parenting anthology with Simon Armitage. She has a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge, and has taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Leeds, and facilitated creative workshops for a wide range of organisations including schools, the British Library, Poet in the City, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Libraries and Barnsley Museums. She is currently teaching Creative Writing at the University of Leeds. https://rachelbower.net/

Book preview

These Mothers of Gods

Rachel Bower

For my Mum

Contents

Water Birth

Immaculate

Flood

Toxic Blooms

Gypsophila Paniculata

Cannula

Stepmother

Wet Nurse

Birth Mother

Light

Little Marys

Madwoman

Mother/ Not Normal

Haibun Meltdown

Silver Seal

Newborn

Flags and Flowers

Story of Baking, Story of Birds

Drought

Vixen

In a Manger

Late Show

Christmas Day, Daughter Arriving

After the Stork

Slump

Woman in the Grain Bin

Shedding

Hive Mother

Matryoshka

Run for your life

All the Pretty Little Horses

TV Haibun

Hive Mother II

Mother ‘In Law’

Becoming

Hive Mother’s Prayer

Faith

Wordling

Fortune

Smog

Changelings

Continue on Loop

Acknowledgments

Water Birth

Mediterranean Sea

Nobody wants to be born at sea

but I’m a midwife: squeeze my hand,

that’s it, we’ve got this girl.

She squats, not time to push,

bile rising with the swell. Breathe

through the surge, keep your head.

The baby’s well positioned, head

down, curled and smooth like a sea-

sucked pebble. That’s it, keep breathing,

squeeze those ice-packs in your hand,

cool the bruises down. I push 

hair from her eyes, scrap of girl,

clothes soaked in petrol. The girls

had been shoved in a dinghy, heads

barely covered, then pushed

off from the shore in a sea-

coffin. We hauled her up, women’s hands

helped from behind. We hold our breath

now for the baby. I say, keep breathing

but English means nothing to this girl,

we need Arabic for breathe and girl and hand.

The translator’s sick as a dog, headed

up for fresh air on deck. The sea

swells, nearly time to push

but now she’s trying not to push,

juddering through breaths

of thick fog, sick pea soup and the sea-

fire is swallowing it all, burning this girl

up so she blazes. When the head

crowns she grips, scorches my hand.

I make a cave of her face with my hands,

and tell her, yes it is time to push,

it is time, I can see the head,

so push now, nearly there, breathe

through closed lips and yes girl,

push against this wave, against this sea

that would