Woman, Mapped - Edited by Jennifer Wong

 This impactful collection traces the journey of becoming a woman—highlighting its highs and lows. From childhood to old age, a dozen writers share frank reflections on what it means to express ourselves as women. 'Woman, Mapped' showcases a wide range of relevant experiences across different identities, cultures, and generations.

 

Poetry comprises the majority of the collection with some quite extraordinary pieces that keep you reflecting and thinking. I particularly enjoyed the work of Aoife Lyall. As ever for me, I have to read poetry aloud to really feel and try to get to the heart of what the poet is trying to express. I loved Equal Temperament, I’d like to quote it all, but I will confine myself to these lines. –

 

‘I want the out-of-tune piano

 

to hear the notes     stretch

 

in the rhythms of their shadows

 

     I want to feel        the felt

 

and know the strings are       trying’

 

I was also much absorbed by Janette Ayache’s A Poem in Which Female Writers Who Committed Suicide Visited Me. She seems to capture the essence of those writers  -

 

‘Sylvia Plath comes to me in the shower.

& she’s always too sad to speak.

her gaze, her oven gas, her bruised love,….’

 

And Sylvia Plath makes another appearance Ilse Pedler’s It was mountains i thought of where her poem Crossing the Water is referenced – 

 

‘it was mountains I thought of

In the silence that followed’

 

It seems to embody the spirit of Plath.

 

There are three essays in the collection, two. All of them fascinating. I’m not in general an essay reader. I’m more attracted by the poetry, but I have to say I found these essays very thought provoking. I loved Jesse Williams opening essay, Sisterhood. I loved the joyous affirmation of females together even though they have been to hell and back, the solidarity and the joy they managed to encompass was uplifting.

 

I loved Teddy Webb’s description of herself as an ‘angry feminist’ because that is the feeling I got from reading her erudite and impassioned words regarding her sexuality. 

 

The final essay in the collection, by Claire Harnett-Mann is a fitting conclusion to the anthology as it fuses the art of the essayist with the whimsy of the poet in a dissemination of class and identity - Women Poet Demolition Land.

 

It's a collection to ponder, to dip in and out of and to return to from time to time. 

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon and Fly on the Wall Press for my proof copy.