These Mothers of Gods
By Rachel Bower
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About this ebook
With heartfelt lyricism, Bower weaves stories of labour and love. In moments of fear and determination for survival, this collection is a hymn to the people and places which shape us.
"In Rachel Bower's powerful new collection, you will find mothers displaced, mothers deceived, mothers labouring to stay sane and alive. But woven amongst any vulnerability is a fierce celebration of the mother-body, opened up to prove the unique and complex
stories each one holds. I am grateful to Bower for finding these women - historical, biblical, autobiographical - and offering me such inventive, arresting poems, brim-full with blistering truths."
- Rebecca Goss, Poet
"Powerful, compelling and exquisitely crafted, These Mothers of Gods is a tour-de-force of female-focussed storytelling."
- Teika Marija Smits, Writer and Editor
"Rachel Bower's poems show us mothering as we've never seen it before, through time, history, and mythology. The collection centres the voice of the other, while conveying poignant experiences of joy, elation, triumph and hardness. These image-rich verses are poems of intense curiosity and beauty."
- Jason Allen-Paisant
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/
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Book preview
These Mothers of Gods - Rachel Bower
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