Women Poets (in Order of Preference)
Mrs Dedication
Would you just look at her –
neat hair parted centre, pious smile;
a real doll.
She took care of him –
collected and copied out his works in fairest hand;
later penned a few love lyrics of her own.
Eccentric spinster
Oh, something happened to her
way back in school –
a fellow in the bushes doing what he shouldn’t.
She’s a clerk now –
types her poems winter evenings
with a beaker of tonic for company.
Some of them are even funny.
Mad girl
You could tell from the get-go she was one
to steer clear of – not a beauty
exactly, but the way she kept on looking
made it tough to look away.
Latchkey for a necklace. Lightning
moods – would trash anything sooner than give it up.
Walked herself onto the stake.
Still burns.
Note: This poem riffs on ‘the three basic stereotypes of the woman poet’ discussed by Jeni
Couzyn in her introduction to The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets (1985).
‘Disposing of dead rodents is a man’s job’ (Mumsnet forum)
*
My friend’s daughter in a sweet floral dress
poking at a rat the size of her head
as it lay stiff on the drain cover, its sneer
chronicling the horrible ecstasy of the poisoned.
*
My friend, her mother, donning marigolds,
doubling black sacks and trowelling the corpse inside
while speculating about its time of death
with the nonchalance of a TV pathologist.
______________
Rebecca Watts is the author of two poetry collections, The Met Office Advises Caution (2016) and Red Gloves (2020), and editor of Elizabeth Jennings: New Selected Poems (2019), all published by Carcanet.