Από την απελευθερωτική δημιουργικότητα των χιλιανών Las Tesis και του φεμινιστικού ύμνου “El violador eres tú”, μέχρι το μεξικάνικο “Canción sin miedo” και την εγχώρια διασκευή του από την Ανοιχτή Ορχήστρα, «Τραγουδάμε δίχως φόβο», η Τέχνη βρίσκει πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο στα μεταμορφωτικά φεμινιστικά κινήματα. Υπάρχει κάτι που κάνει τον στίχο -γραπτό και προφορικό- ένα μοναδικά ισχυρό τρόπο έκφρασης των πολύπλευρων εμπειριών του φεμινισμού. Για αυτό, για την Παγκόσμια Ημέρα Ποίησης, δημιουργήσαμε αυτή τη συλλογή με δεκαέξι φεμινιστικά ποιήματα, ελπίζοντας να δώσουμε μια χαραμάδα φωτός στην καθημερινότητα όλων.
Γιατί «η Ποίηση δεν είναι πολυτέλεια», όπως έχει τονίσει η Audre Lorde στο ομώνυμο δοκίμιό της. Υπάρχει μια φωνή για κάθε οπτική γωνία των φεμινισμών παρακάτω. Από φεμινιστικά ερωτικά ποιήματα μέχρι ποιήματα για τα δικαιώματα των γυναικών, μπορείτε να διαβάσετε, να παρακολουθήσετε τις απαγγελίες τους και να εμπνευστείτε από μερικές από τις μεγαλύτερες φεμινίστριες ποιήτριες που διαχρονικά μας έχουν προσφέρει ένα σωσίβιο να πιαστούμε. Μια ανάσα.
“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and
change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”
– Audre Lorde
[απόσπασμα]
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon’s new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.
There is only a death, indefinitely postponed. This is
not fantasy, it is history.
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
It is we sinful women
who are not awed by the grandeur of those who wear gowns
who don’t sell our lives
who don’t bow our heads
who don’t fold our hands together.
Two
“your hips will try to burst through your skin.
your thighs will try to grow together like a mermaid’s tail.
a soft garden will try to sprout on your legs.
(& between your legs, on your upper lip, on your armpits, etc.)
no, you are not just here to be sexy for him.
the world begins & ends when you say so.
– what they don’t want you to know”
Three
We
finally refused
to be seen
as only
bodies crafted for
the men’s
use& consumption,
so we set the
clouds ablaze to sway them
to show them how
wonderfully we could
co-exist
but
they chose to take it
as a threat
& they
have never fully
forgiven us
for claiming
the portion of the sky
that was always rightfully
Ours.
– when the glass sky is the limit.
[απόσπασμα]
Because her body is winter inside a cave
because someone built
fire there and forgot to put it out
because bedtime is a castle
she’s building inside herself
with a moat
and portcullis
and buckets full of mist
[απόσπασμα]
Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
[…]
I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon’s new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.
The only other girl at the party
is ranting about feminism. The audience:
a sea of rape jokes and snapbacks
and styrofoam cups and me. They gawk
at her mouth like it is a drain
clogged with too many opinions.
I shoot her an empathetic glance
and say nothing. This house is for
wallpaper women. What good
is wallpaper that speaks?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
whose coffee table silence
will these boys rest their feet on?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
what if someone takes my spot?
I want to stand up, but if I do,
what if everyone notices I’ve been
sitting this whole time? I am guilty
of keeping my feminism in my pocket
until it is convenient not to, like at poetry
slams or my women’s studies class.
There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex
and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.
What’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn?
That since day one, she’s already had everything
she needs within herself. it’s the world that
convinced her she did not.