Let me kneel
before the sky and let me be humble, untidy,
let me be decorated.
Here are women's bodies. Hungry adolescent bodies, fluctuating pregnant bodies, ailing aging bodies. Here are bodies as products to be digitized and consumed. Here is the body in nature, changing and growing stronger. Here are tattooed women through history, ink unfurling across their skin.
The Illustrated Woman is a tender and incisive collection about what it means to live in a female body - from the joys and struggles of new motherhood to the trauma of deep fakes. Amidst the landscapes of the Peak District and the glaciers of Greenland, Helen Mort's remarkable poems transfix the reader in a celebration of beauty and resilience.
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... because of the virginity you tookand never knew, the meals you cookedwith aubergine and parmesan that made me feelI could be your age. Because you let me Undo my own buttons...- FIRST
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(@vintagebooks, 7 July 2022, e-book, 96 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib)
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I'm a fan of the poet and wanted to read The Illustrated Woman when I saw the cover. I liked this collection a lot. The poems are about bodies, women's bodies in all their array and beauty and how they can be treated or often mistreated, worshipped, and feared. The poems are powerful, unforgettable. I didn't want to stop reading.