In Louise Mather’s short yet sublime poetry, the body is in turns a miracle immaculately conceived and mirrored before its speaker and an open wound, bloody for all to see.
Content Warning: please note these poems make reference to blood, mental health, self-harm, fertility and menstruation.
Before the Snow
I don’t remember
what my body was before.
In truth, I don’t believe its miracle,
how I looked in the mirror
and grew you bones, and skin,
and a face, and eyes –
your eyes are all I live for,
all I ever knew.
Before this, I was empty,
my body would embrace
earth’s brittle horizon,
I would shiver blood
and lose myself
each month, or sooner –
the sun would bloom,
snow would scatter far
and I would leave no prints.
Excision
Tell me how it feels to wake
and not be pulled backwards
towards the torrential stone night.
I haul my body from pain
to the next.
I do not take each day
but every minute.
I no longer dream of the sun
or a white dress
clinging to my body.
I do not want you
to cut me open.
There was time when I was young
you could have asked, or listened
to everything I said –
it was all there.
Now I am older, I know
the way shadows manifest,
how the tide decays the moon
and scars turn blunt indigo.
I have already cut myself open,
over and over –
all that’s inside me is blood
and more blood, trespassing –
if you ripped it from me now
I don’t know what would be left.
About Louise Mather
Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. A finalist in the Streetcake Poetry Prize and Nominated Best of the Net, her work is published in various print and online literary journals. Her debut pamphlet ‘The Dredging of Rituals’ is out with Alien Buddha Press, 2021. She writes about ancestry, rituals, endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Follow Louise on Twitter @lm2020uk or visit her website: www.louisematheruk.wixsite.com
These poems were commissioned for our mini-series, Our Body’s Bodies
Everything is written on the body – but what does it mean to write about our bodies in the era of Covid-19? And is it possible to write about bodily experiences in the face of such pervasive and continued violence? Using different modes of writing and art making, Lucy Writers presents a miniseries featuring creatives whose work, ideas and personal experiences explore embodiment, bodily agency, the liberties imposed on, taken with, or found in our bodies. Beginning from a position of multiplicity and intersectionality, our contributors explore their body’s bodies and the languages – visual, linguistic, aural, performance-based and otherwise – that have enabled them to express and reclaim different forms of (dis)embodiment in the last two years. Starting with the body(s), but going outwards to connect with encounters that (dis)connect us from the bodies of others – illness, accessibility, gender, race and class, work, and political and legal precedents and movements – Our Body’s Bodies seeks to shine a light on what we corporally share, as much as what we individually hold true to.
Bringing together work by artistic duo Kathryn Cutler-MacKenzie and Ben Caro, poet Emily Swettenham, writer and poet Elodie Rose Barnes, author Ayo Deforge, writer and researcher Georgia Poplett, writer and poet Rojbîn Arjen Yigit, writer and researcher Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou and many others, as well as interviews with and reviews of work by Elinor Cleghorn, Lucia Osbourne Crowley and Alice Hattrick, Lucy Writers brings together individual stories of what our bodies have endured, carried, suffered, surpassed, craved and even enjoyed, because…these bodies are my body; we are a many bodied being. Touch this one, you move them all, our bodies’ body.
We also welcome pitches and contributions from writers, artists, film-makers and researchers outside of the Lucy Writers’ community. Please inquire for book reviews too.
For submissions relating to trans and non-binary culture email dytorfrankie@gmail.com
For poetry submissions email elodierosebarnes@gmail.com
For reviews, prose submissions, artwork and general inquiries email hannah.hutchings-georgiou.16@ucl.ac.uk
Submissions are open on a rolling basis. For the full Call Out, click here.
Read the series so far here.
Feature image is a detail from a photograph by Francesca Woodman, 1980, licensed under fair use via Wiki Art.
