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Trace Peterson @tracepeterson.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

It is that time again for the yearly repost of my trans Valentine's Day poem: poets.org/poem/exclusi...

poets.org

Exclusively on Venus

Roses are red / violets are transsexual / welcome to womanhood / now get to work honey

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Reposted by That Woman

womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

New York City, 1959 by US photographer Vivian Maier #womensart

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

On the road right now to Birmingham for @vervepoetryfest.bsky.social and super super excited!!

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

The most gorgeous of love poems, the absolute number one in my #Valentine’s countdown, mid-air from The Air Year by @carolinebirduk.bsky.social #poem #poetry #lgbtq

Mid-air
There is a corner of the city where the air is soft resin. Step in and it hardens around you. Suspended in amber. We made
the mistake of kissing there. I mean, here.
Our mouths midway across the same
inhalation like robbers mid-leap between rooftops. If kisses were scored by composers they'd place the breath on the upbeat. Oh God. Music preceded by mid-air,
when the baton lifts, the orchestra tightens: 'And' before the 'one two three.' And the sunlight is meticulous. And the river holds its tongue. And your silver earring steels like an aerialist's hoop, caught mid-spin. A note almost sung. Locked in the amber of the and.
We just want to land or be landed on.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

No. 7 in my unconventional love poems countdown is this gentle and hopeful passage; from Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan @faberbooks.bsky.social

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Home, my therapist suggests, is where
you don't have to explain yourself.
Where is that place? Perhaps
here is home, in the long poem
of our lives. Where she offers
me a cup of freshly brewed
oolong tea, and I am moved
by the scent of something
bittersweet. Where our thoughts
spill over as I adore the warmth
in your voice. Where the afternoon
light is so kind, and the corgi lies
fast asleep at our feet. Where I begin
to speak, and you hear me, unequivocally.

Cover of Bright Fear. Plain yellow with blue and orange lettering.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

No. 8 in my #Valentine’s poetry countdown. I was looking mainly for unconventional poems/poets, but this one reminded me of when I first came across Philippe Jaccottet, late at night in a the uni library, when I was homesick and supposed to be writing science essays… Distances, transl. Derek Mahon.

Distances

Swifts turn in the heights of the air;
higher still turn the invisible stars.
When day withdraws to the ends of the earth their fires shine on a dark expanse of sand.

We live in a world of motion and distance.
The heart flies from tree to bird,
from bird to distant star,
from star to love; and love grows
in the quiet house, turning and working,
servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand.

PHILIPPE JACCOTTET
translated from the French by Derek Mahon

Tournent les martinets dans les hauteurs de l'air :
plus haut encore tournent les astres invisibles.
Que le jour se retire aux extrémités de la terre, apparaîtront ces feux sur l'étendue de sombre sable...

Ainsi nous habitons un domaine de mouvements
et de distances; ainsi le cœur
va de l'arbre à l'oiseau, de l'oiseau aux astres lointains,
de l'astre à son amour. Ainsi l'amour
dans la maison fermée s'accroît, tourne et travaille,
serviteur des soucieux portant une lampe à la main.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Very behind on my Valentine’s poetry countdown but here is no. 9 in my unconventional love poems search: One Life is Brief, from Singular Bodies (Anhinga Press) by Ruth L. Schwartz #poem #LGBTQ #Valentine’s

One Life is Brief
for Alison

Because there is always rain, the flooding
which kills certain things, transforming others,

the dying woman wants chocolate halvah
held to her mouth so she can lick the crumbs,

you want to be a belly dancer
and the mother of ten children,

the body wants what it always wants,
to burn like fire in the wet woods.

Even its infidelities are a form of faith,
a naked, thirsty flame.

The rain is falling, the rain is falling
and still what we want

could eat up the forest,
guzzling, roaring with love.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Unconventional love poems, Valentine’s countdown no. 10. Yes, by Tess Gallagher.

Yes

Now we are like that flat cone of sand
in the garden of the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto designed to appear only in moonlight.

Do you want me to mourn?
Do you want me to wear black?

Or like moonlight on whitest sand
to use your dark, to gleam, to shimmer?

I gleam. I mourn.

TESS GALLAGHER

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Unconventional love poems, #Valentine’s countdown no. 11: Assurance, by the trailblazing Emma Lazarus. Did you know the Statue of Liberty poem, the ultimate American zeitgeist poem “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses…” was by a queer female Jewish activist 💪? I didn’t… #poem #LGBTQ

Assurance
Emma Lazarus

Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss
Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed Together in my dream, through some dim glade, Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss.
The air was dank with dew, between the trees, The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent.
Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the hot night-breeze
Mingled our hair, our breath, and came and went, As sporting with our passion. Low and deep
Spake in mine ear her voice: 'And didst thou dream,
This could be buried? This could be sleep?
And love be thrall to death! Nay, whatso seem, Have faith, dear heart; this is the thing that is!' Thereon I woke, and on my lips her kiss.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Unconventional love poems Valentine countdown- I’m having a jaded cynical day today so here’s ‘Casanever’ at no. 12, by @nicaubury.bsky.social #poetry #Valentine

To most men, the notion
Of 'romance and mystery'
Means clearing the porn from
Their Internet history.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Nights draw in. I think of you, Planting one thousand crocus bulbs In a rented garden. #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social #poem #love #spring

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Unconventional love poems Valentine countdown: No. 13, the luminous Story of a Hotel Room. More about the poet, Rosemary Tonks, here: www.theguardian.com/books/2014/m...

Story of a Hotel Room
Rosemary Tonks
Thinking we were safe - insanity!
We went in to make love. All the same
Idiots to trust the little hotel bedroom
Then in the gloom...
... And who does not know that pair of shutters
With the awkward hook on them
All screeching whispers? Very well then, in the gloom We set about acquiring one another Urgently! But on a temporary basis
Only as guests - just guests of one another's senses.

But idiots to feel so safe you hold back nothing
Because the bed of cold, electric linen
Happens to be illicit ...
To make love as well as that is ruinous.
Londoner, Parisian, someone should have warned us
That without permanent intentions
You have absolutely no protection -
If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous,
The concurring deep love of the heart
Follows the naked work, profoundly moved by it.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Unconventional love poems Valentine countdown no.14, coming in hot- look away now if you’re squeamish for this is ‘Poem while Reading Miroslav Holub in the Genito-urinary Clinic Waiting Room’ by Rich Goodson… #poem #valentine #LGBTQ+

Poem while Reading Miroslav Holub in the Genito-urinary Clinic Waiting Room

Rich Goodson

Live, alive-ho! These bugs! These bugs! Alive!
They've leapt between us since we flapped in slime,
jump ship, like pirates, to the brink of Time.
We're hit. We take in water. They survive.

& here we wait for test results, pretend
to read. You: What Car? Me: Holub's Selected
which permeates my bones till I'm infected.

Does every rhyme of loins sound out the end?

If you weren't such a bloke I'd hold your hand uncurl it, break it open like a tight
wet waterlily bulb, there to find - stowed -
the toxic larvae of angels. I'd wind the clocks back to that hot, barbaric night.
I'd burn them off your palm, watch them explode.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Just to let you all know, henceforth I shall be ending all conversations with a gnomic look and the utterance ‘I think you are now covered by snow’.

SNOW PIECE
Think that snow is falling.
Think that snow is falling everywhere
all the time.
When you talk with a person, think
that snow is falling between you and
on the person.
Stop conversing when you think the
person is covered by snow.
yoko ono
1963 summer

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

I’m on the hunt for the perfect poem for the wedding of two unconventional, strong and beautiful women. All thoughts appreciated! If only this brilliant looking anthology was out already… www.foyles.co.uk/book/somethi... @picadorbooks.bsky.social #poetry #poem #queer #wedding

foyles.co.uk

Something New by Caroline Bird, Rachel Long | Foyles

Buy Something New by Caroline Bird, Rachel Long from Foyles today! Click and Collect from your local Foyles.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

It’s the eleventy billionth of January today. FML.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

A lot of things happened in the world today, not all of them obviously good. This evening, let someone else look after our dreams for a moment.

THE DREAM KEEPER
by LANGSTON HUGHES

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Are you a White-liver'd Son of a Fleet-street Bumsitter, begot upon a sedan Chair at Noonday?, or did you just walk past the wrong lady with the wrong face on you? How to swear like an actual 18th century Billingsgate fishwife, from Sounds & Furies by Jonathon Green (@littlebrown.bsky.social) 🤩❤️

Ward's companion pullshim away: ‘Let's seek another Apartment: These saucy Tongud old Whores will tease us to Death.’ Bad move. "Which unhappy words one of them over-heard; and starting up like a Fury, thus gave her Lungs a Breathing.”
“You White-liver'd Son of a Fleet-street Bumsitter [prostitute], begot upon a [sedan] Chair at Noonday, between Ludgate and Temple-Bar. You Puppily off-Spring of a Mangy Nightwalker, who was fore'd to Play the Whore an Hour before she cryd out [i.e. in childbirth], to pay the Bawd her Midwife, for bringing you, you Bastard, into the World. Who is it that you call Whore?”

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Sharing a bad night’s sleep and a new morning with Anna Akhmatova, translated from the Russian by DM Thomas. From Evening, written in 1909.

from Evening

The pillow hot
On both sides,
The second candle
Dying, the ravens
Crying. Haven't
Slept all night, too late
To dream of sleep …
How unbearably white
The blind on the white window.
Good morning, morning!

Cover of Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova, Vintage.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

For some reason, this is the poem that speaks to me today, in the dark, wintry weather we’re having. Tracks, by Tomas Tranströmer, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

Tracks
TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

2 am: moonlight. The train has stopped
out in the middle of the plain. Far away, points of light in
a town,
flickering coldly at the horizon.
As when a man has gone into a dream so deep he'll never remember having been there when he comes back to his room.
As when someone has gone into an illness so deep everything his days were becomes a few flickering points,
a swarm,
cold and tiny at the horizon.
The train is standing quite still.
2 am: bright moonlight, few stars.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Heeelp! I’ve been ask to read a poem at the partnership ceremony of two amazing, beautiful, strong, spiritual but non-religious women. I am so excited and I love both them so much that my mind has gone utterly blank! Please send me ideas!!

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Wrestling with taxes, but deciding to go high…

Cover image of Let the light pour in by Lemn Sissay

If you don't do it today There will be no end
Decompress the stress And then press send

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

In January 1947, the editor of The Poetry Review from @poetrysociety.bsky.social, one Hugh Wilgus Ramsaur, was in a splendid grump, accusing the older authors submitting to their competition of ‘experimenting’… Of all the things to do with a poem!

The Premium Editor's Report
F I were asked for my most outstanding impression of this Premium Competition I should say that is was a feeling of surprise, mingled with regret; at the poor showing of many of our older competitors whose poems seemed at times to be either perfunctory or to wear a tentative aspect, as though their authors had either lost their old touch or were experimenting. Human beings are much too often aflicted with a desire for change and this I suppose is natural to the spirit of man, but it remains true that change for its own sake is seldom good and one can go farther and fare much worse with nothing but regret to repay the effort. There are therefore many new names in our Honours List and many of the poems so distinguished have a character, no doubt natural to their writers, which is novel to this contest and I do not think that my preference for them is due to any change in myself. What has attracted me has been that very air of serenity or sureness which always attends things written in a manner normal to the writer.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Fresh, powerful words to start the year with: ‘With my back to the world, 1997’ by @victoriachang.bsky.social ‘The best thing about emptiness is if you close your eyes in a field, you'll open your eyes in a field.’

With My Back to the World, 1997
This year I turned my back to the world. I let language face
the front. The parting felt like a death. The first person ran away like a horse. When the first person left, there was no
second or third person as I had originally thought. All that remained was repetition. And blue things. This year I stopped shaking the rain off of umbrellas and nothing bad happened.
The terror of this year was emptiness. But I learned that it's
possible for a sentence to have no words. That the meaning of a word can exist without the word. That life can still occur
without a mind. That emptiness still swarms without the world. That it can be disconnected from the wall and still
light up. The best thing about emptiness is if you close your eyes in a field, you'll open your eyes in a field.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Something soothing, for the heart and mind frayed and frazzled by being home with all relatives in situ… ‘Nothing Is Too Small Not to Be Wondered About’, by Mary Oliver, from Felicity (pub. Corsair Poetry)

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

All time best Christmas Day poem? ‘King John was not a good man -- He had his little ways. And sometimes no one spoke to him For days and days and days...’ If I can persuade someone to read this aloud to me on the day, I don’t need any presents www.thereader.org.uk/featured-poe...

thereader.org.uk

Featured Poem: King John's Christmas by A. A. Milne - The Reader

Chosen by Katie Peters, Project Worker, Get Into Reading It's a bit of fun that takes me back my childhood,…

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Famous Seamus: a beautiful one for thinking towards the New Year. Anything Can Happen, from District and Circle.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Educating myself in someone else’s library today. Crow Frowns, from Crow by Ted Hughes. ‘His footprints assail infinity With signatures: We are here, we are here.’

Crow Frowns
Is he his own strength?
What is its signature?
Or is he a key, cold-feeling To the fingers of prayer?
He is a prayer-wheel, his heart hums.
His eating is the wind—
Its patient power of appeal.
His footprints assail infinity
With signatures: We are here, we are here.
He is the long waiting for something To use him for some everything Having so carefully made him
Of nothing.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Are you ready yet for a glorious happy chubby Christmas poem? Yes you ARE! ‘Summon the spirits of bumpo and hot buttered rum’ and ‘a bishop bearing the orb of a clove-spiked orange’… every good Xmas party needs a drunken bishop… @mfrancispoet.bsky.social from Wing, pub. @faberbooks.bsky.social

Wassail
Shut the door against the dark, the chilblain prickle of stars.
Heat a poker in the coals till it's red as a sore finger, plunge it in the tankard till the ale snorts and gargles,
summon the spirits of bumpo and hot buttered rum, brown Betty with toast in her hair, and an aura of nutmeg and ginger,
the blue blazer, an ectoplasm of flaming brandy,
the jubilance of a cardinal crimson with claret, a bishop bearing the orb of a clove-spiked orange, a pope golden and ebullient with champagne,
rumfustian and eggnog, thick custards softer than bedclothes, caudle and ale berry, starchy as a well-warmed nightshirt, spinster's blush with the heat of port surging through it;
stand on the kitchen table to froth the ale from a height, juggle the Scottish hot pint from one jug to the other, stir with a twig of sweet briar, a wand of cinnamon.
Wassail will be our weather, a heat haze of grog and toddy.
We'll fill the night with the scent of ypocras, the glow of the puckered moons of roast apples in a bowl of lambswool.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

“thank you for sending this piece in - sorry not to be able to select it - but I found a number of the thoughts in it quite startling.”… This rejection at least made me laugh out loud!

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Submitting a poem for other people to see for the first time

Image of baby penguin diving off a high ice cliff

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Today my spirit animal is heron-going-Christmas-shopping, inspired by Paul Farley…

The Heron
PAUL FARLEY
One of the most begrudging avian take-offs is the heron's fucking hell, all right, all right, I'll go to the garage for your flaming fags cranky departure, though once they're up their flight can be extravagant. I watched one big spender climb the thermal staircase, a calorific waterspout of frogs and sticklebacks, the undercarriage down and trailing. Seen from antiquity
you gain the Icarus thing; seen from my childhood that cursing man sets out for Superkings, though the heron cares for neither as it struggles into its wings then soars sunwards and throws its huge overcoat across the earth.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

A soothing, introspective, surfing-the-aftermath morning to you. Wonder, by Tuvia Ruebner, translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back #poem #poetry

Wonder
TUVIA RUEBNER
translated from the Hebrew by RACHEL TZVIA BACK
If after everything that has happened you can still hear the blackbird,
the tufted lark at dawn, the bulbul and the honey-bird - don't be surprised that happiness is watching the clouds being wind-carried away,
is drinking morning coffee, being able to execute all the
body's needs
is walking along the paths without a cane and seeing the burning colours of sunset.
A human being can bear almost everything and no one knows when and where happiness will overcome him.

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Rachel Mann @revrachelmann.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Utterly depressing news … please do write to Wes Streeting & your local MP. Things are becoming ever more challenging for the trans community, despite the government’s ‘aim’ to make trans lives easier …I feel like the marginalisation of my kind is something few care about apple.news/A_L5vwVZsR06...

apple.news

GPs halting transgender patients’ hormone treatment or refusing prescriptions, investigation reveals — The Independent

Investigation: GPs cite lack of expertise or funding as key factors in withdrawals of trans patients’ prescriptions. Billie Gay Jackson and Holly Bancroft report

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Happy Friday- here’s an accidentally beautiful article on aging and shared cultural heritage within the natural world. The whole thing reads like a poetry prompt to me: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.com

Saving ‘old and wise’ animals vital for species’ survival, say scientists

Hunting bigger, more experienced animals eradicates memories and knowledge crucial to group survival, research suggests

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

The first recorded lines of poetry in Dutch, in an 11th century manuscript: ‘Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hic enda thu wat unbidan we nu?.’ ‘Do all of the birds have nests, but for you and me; well, what are we waiting for?’ From @pcevans.bsky.social Grand Larcenies @carcanet.bsky.social

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𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕜 𝔸𝕟𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕪 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟 @markantonyowen.com · 03/12/2024

Today, the happiest of accidents: my introduction to poet Lisel Mueller (via someone I don't think is over here yet). As I wrote when sharing this on Twitter, this poem is a 'breath-catching stunner' – a lyric poem to shock and awe in the best ways.

SNOW

Telephone poles relax their spines;
sidewalks go under. The nightly groans
of aging porches are put to sleep.
Mercy sponges the lips of stairs.

While we talk in the old concept
— time that was, and things that are
— snow has leveled the stumps of the past
and the earth has a new language.

It is like the scene in which the girl
moves toward the hero
who has not yet said, “Come here.”

Come here, then. Every ditch
has been exalted. We are covered with stars.
Feel how light they are, our lives.

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

It’s gone and done a Monday again, all over again, and I need daydreams to deal with this. So, ‘Midsummer, Tobago’ by Derek Walcott… ‘Broad sun-stoned beaches…’

Text of poem ‘Midsummer, Tobago’ by Derek Walcott’

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Rate my bedside book pile! Wobbliness 11/10, time to build shelves…

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Anyone out there got good recommendations for books ABOUT poetry? Got @ruthpadel.bsky.social’s 52 ways of looking at a poem and it’s brilliant, I want more!

Cover image of book 52 ways of looking at a poem

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Happy hump day, let’s smile magnificently and do a nope on absolutely everything… Trolley Man, by @julianstannardpoet.bsky.social

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Good morning to this beautiful work, Loop, by Maria Taylor in the Forward Anthology 2011-2020. ‘Light returns from exploded stars.’

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That Woman @angryfemalepoet.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Ten minutes till Monday is over and I can go back to being a pyjama’d sofa gremlin!

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