For an audio version of this poem, please click here.
Women of Steel
We are sisters who clank through the streets
on rustless feet and chain-linked arms
the deep pull of ore in our loins –
calls of ancestors deep in the rocks
of yolk and plum and rust.
I polish her toes ‘til they shine –
she deserves this at least
and I know that she’d polish mine.
.
We are women of steel
women who do what we feel
women who do what we can
women who cry, women who rise
women at the heart of this town.
.
My nipples leak steel milk
and she keeps holding me up.
.
We are women who labour and birth
women who work, women who juggle
dark peaks and light, women who do what we can,
when Cleethorpes’s too dear there’s the beach in town
the patch of sand that scratches our palms
sisters of steel squatting down.
.
I wipe orange streams from her cheeks
and keep holding her up.
.
We are women of steel
of hijabs and braids, of curly and straight
of blonde hair and white
women who run, women who ride
women who lathe and grind without gloves
we are women of three kids and twins on the way
and just a bit of peace.
Just a bit of peace please
.
She wipes crystal dust from my nails
and keeps holding me up.
.
We are women of hills
of limestone and grit
of ups and downs
of you can do it duck
we’ll get through it
we are women who nobody knows
guilt plated girls with lacquered legs
women of glad rags
of red crags, of sneaking bags back
from the foodbank
we are women of steel
.
I grip her shoulder
and keep holding her up.
.
women who do what we feel
women who do what we can
women who cry, women who rise
women at the heart of this town.
Rachel Bower is a poet and Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her debut pamphlet, Moon Milk, will be published by Valley Press in May 2018. Rachel She co-edited the anthology, Verse Matters, with Helen Mort (Valley Press, Dec 2017). Rachel’s academic book, Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010 was published by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2017.
Rachel’s poems have been published by Stand Magazine, Interpreter’s House, Strix, BBC Radio, Now Then, Peacock Journal, Pankhearst and many others, and she has had winning or shortlisted poems in several prizes, including the 2018 York Literature Festival Poetry Prize, the 2017 Flambard Prize and The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2016. Rachel is also the founder of Verse Matters, a feminist arts collective in Sheffield.
This poem was originally commissioned by the BBC for National Poetry Day 2016, and was republished in Now Then 2017.
Celebrating Change 