Frida Kahlo by my daughter, Estelle Hight
125 years ago today many but not all New Zealand women got the vote.
I have waited until today to let this sink in and react
I am sitting here at my kitchen table with the grey clouds and a bite
in the air thinking of our early women poets who held hands with
the English suffragettes and risked their words to shape a better
future for all women by writing and speaking out and imagining
an equal life for women without violence and without poverty
and without being spoken over or patronised or ignored
on the grounds women were not men’s equal. I am thinking
this and the way I have a support crew of women who have held
my hand over the past year through difficulty and celebration
and I am wondering how we are risking words to shape
a better future for all women by writing and speaking out
and imagining lives without violence or poverty or denigration
or erasure or inequity and I am thinking of Selina Tusitala Marsh
and Tusiata Avia who have held my hand in this tough year
and who stand tall and proud for all women but especially
Pasifika women and speak out about abuse be it physical
or emotional and who then stand even taller and show
how words can sing and who get young Pasifika
women singing and I can feel the chain of hands stretching
back through a line of women writing to Blanche Baughan
and Jessie Mackay and I can feel the hand of Airini Beautrais
who is brave in her writing and Dinah Hawken who showed
me the tug of war between men and women and the way they
let the rope go and the way Fiona Farrell gave voice to her
broken city and we could hear the small stories of living
and here I am taking stock and giving thanks to the women
who came before me and giving thanks for my vote
and my freedom to choose education and motherhood
but thinking then of my notfreedom within medical systems
that know best and education systems that let children down
and clamp the Arts and the way even now our voices might
be trampled upon when we don’t sing in harmony. I am thinking
we bake bread and we buy bread and we get married and we don’t get married
and we live with women and we live with men and we hang out washing
and soothe the troubled child and we change gender and we go to work
and fold the clothes and get bruised and make the money stretch and make dreams
and try to keep warm and run away and chop the wood and get degrees
and we hold hands and we keep holding hands because there is strength in difference.
This year has almost wiped me out or so it feels but to sit here at the kitchen table and
reflect back on those brave early women who never gave up and who embraced shrill
and loud and forceful puts me back with the wind blowing through the manuka
back to that moment when I wrote a poem for Neve and her parents
and the world felt full of hope because kindness is just as important as strength.
Written in one breath by Paula Green, 19th September 2018, Bethells Valley, Waitakere
I’m reading and re-reading this important poem and feeling the kick in the gut and adding my hand to the circle. Please take care.
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