Spoke to my beautiful friend last night - a lung doctor in the nhs. She said, while its a lovely gesture, instead of just clapping please could you just never ever vote conservative again.
Dear every parent in every cafe I am sitting in to work. Please stop apologising for your baby learning to talk. If I wanted silence whilst typing on my laptop I should stay at fucking home. You are allowed in these spaces as much as me. It's not my office.
just got called mean for saying the day my daughter was born was not the best day of my life. for comparison, today my daughter woke, said ‘love you’ then watched tv for 2 hours. my vagina isn’t bleeding & i’m not scared of imminent death. yes, today is a better day for me.
The shorts that adults design for my 12 year old daughter are about seven inches shorter and tighter than the shorts anyone designs for your 12 year old son. We are the problem, not the 12 year old girls wearing the clinging hotpants us adults design and put in shops for them
As a straight woman, as you get older, men who only fancy girls under twenty-five stop fancying you. That is literally the only thing you lose. And that is what the entire anti-ageing obsession is based on. On those guys.
Sitting opposite a mum on the train trying so so hard to stop her baby nattering away. Parenting is so hard in public spaces sometimes, you feel so in the way but please remember these spaces are YOURS ASWELL. Babies are learning to talk. You have just as much right to be there
Oh no, the emails have started again. 'Well, maybe we could meet for a coffee when you're next in London'. People who don't live in London don't just pop to London for the crack. From now on I am going to get in first with a 'give me a call next time you're in my garden'
Dear
@LNER
@nationalrailenq
@AvantiWestCoast
I love you but look at Finland’s trains. All parents who’ve sat on the floor with buggy’s you can’t fit in, LOOK AT THIS TRAIN. Just normal in Finland.
New motherhood is being asked to do a job you’ve never done before on less sleep than you’ve ever had before in a bleeding body recovering from a nine month marathon whilst everybody informs you how you must enjoy every single minute of these happiest days of your life
IN THE HEAD’S OFFICE
he said my skirt
was distracting
the lads
roll it down
legal length
below knees
like a nun
I said some
of the boys
have their
trousers
so tight
I can see
the outline
of their
dick, sir
I still manage
to get on
with my work
(hollie mcnish)
As a middle class self-employed person, I’ve been handed £1000’s help during this crisis, no questions asked, yet because someone is much poorer, the govt won’t trust them with £30. Really? Are we still having the how dare poor folk might smoke or watch tv as well as eat debate?
Have a few school visits next year and am trying to compile a list of writers / poets who went to state school and have no family contacts in the arts / publishing. Any names below are welcome x
Telling your daughter her vulva is her vagina is like telling your son he has testicles and no penis and then just calling his penis his testicles cos you think saying penis as well is too much. It’s just a word. Vulva. Hard for me to say too, but that’s cos of history. Say it x
For any expectant parents already feeling like failures because of yet another article about celeb nurseries or top ten nursery bookshelf design or 22 creative ideas for children's bedrooms, please remember that your baby does not give a shit about any of it.
you’re only five
but your teddies
are already men
unless eyelashes
autocorrect
god is already
a he unless you
rewrite the songs
in assembly
the best you can be
in the school play
is an unpleasured
pregnancy
i’m not surprised
you’re a little unsure
how to hold
yourself up
Desr
@Channel4
. I love you but can you please please tell the presenter of Naked Attraction to use the word vulva not vagina when referring to the vulva if you record more. It’s a huge issue in women’s health and sex ed and we need to get this right on tv please! ❤️
when you see me
having fun
you tell me i am acting
like a teenager again
i am not. i am acting
like a thirty six year old
being a teenager was never
as comfortable as this
Each time a friend says ‘I can’t come out, their dad just can’t get them to sleep / have both kids together / etc…I think of that time I was left alone two weeks after birth every day with a baby I had no idea how to hold as I bled and cried. Dads learn the same way. Let them.
My 93 year old grandma said she will vote for whoever her 9 year old great granddaughter thinks, because she herself will soon be dead and it’s not her future. I’m not saying everyone this age should do this, just that my gran is the best
a reply to the spam emails telling me they have videoed me masturbating ‘wildly’
WARNING!
there’s nothing
wild about me wanking
I hardly even move
my face looks
like a concentrating fish
my friends don’t give a fuck
and my mum has more
to do than watch
her daughter
jacking off
How about we start getting more offended by big companies selling water in plastic bottles and less offended by kids sucking milk out of zero carbon environmentally friendly mothers’ tits? Just an idea
someone said
'mums are the rocks
that never crumble'.
I don't think that's true.
Cos I do.
I cry hidden in loos
I scream alone in my car
and every parent i know
says those moments
are never so far
i’m too tired to talk today
I’ve nothing interesting to say
you can still come round for tea
i’d love to have some company
if you’re happy just to sit
we could read our books together
i might take a nap
i would love to see your face
i just can’t be arsed to chat
Just a small thing but words make a difference with kids so I have replaced ‘lockdown’ and ‘isolation’ with the word ‘hibernation’ in my house cos my daughter is less stressed mimicking hedgehogs than isolating from a virus. She’s now petrified of the neighbour’s cat tho x
We have so many gemstones to congratulate people who literally just stayed married for certain lengths of time. Can we have at least one gemstone for people who got out of negative marriages despite strong societal pressure to stay in them no matter the consequences?
i cannot get my body back to what it was before it grew and fed a fucking baby because that old body doesn’t know the shit this new one does, it’s like asking me to get my brain back to how it was before I read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it’s not fucking possible
This morning I’ve looked after one friend’s kid, made two breakfasts, one packed lunch, helped one kid with homework, walked two kids forty minutes to school, walked a half hour back and apparently, according to our definitions, am only now about to start ‘work’.
i always found it strange
in biology class
how we girls were still assumed
more squeamish than the lads
as the teacher brandished
lamb’s hearts
tissues soaking blood
as i rearranged my pants
because my pad
had come unstuck
(hollie mcnish)
Happy
#InternationalWomensDay2020
Go breastfeed in the streets. Don't even use a 'discretion cloth'. Be proud of your milk-stained skin. Ignore the people who say 'I don't mind women breastfeeding their baby, so long as they do it discreetly'. They are the worst ones. Fuck 'em.
Yes, I'd love to be a better poet. Yes, I'd love to have more time to study and improve my art form, but my kid's nagging me for dinner and unlike most of the poets I read about in articles discussing how shit I am in comparison, I'm actually the one who goes and makes it.
For anyone else who doesn’t enjoy baking, struggling with this guilt. I did not make my kid’s birthday cake. I bought it from a supermarket. They all ate it. No-one choked on the lack of home icing. I’m still a fucking brilliant mother.
A London poet once said to me: I just don’t see the point gigging outside London cos every other city is just like London but not as good. Here is a photo of Edinburgh for you. There are volcanoes and castles and an underground city . Come see it. London will still be there x
Dear
@LNER
. I love train journeys with you but I often see really panicked parents and carers like I was when my child was little. I have designed you a poster or pamphlet to put on the walls or hand out to families. Hope it helps. It would have helped me a lot. You’re welcome. X
TERRIBLE TWOS
now you can walk
now you can run
now new words
drip each day
from your tongue
...
we complain,
claim it’s the
‘terrible twos’
our first shitty label
for small humankind
the minute they start
to know their own minds
Just found out that lots of guys thought we could hold in our periods until we get to a toilet and so didn’t understand why the fuss about period products. Like we’re just being a bit lazy asking for that shit to be tax free. Glad education is getting better.
You know how some people have bigger breasts so when they wear vest tops / tshirts / shirts / dresses they show more of their breasts. That’s because they have bigger breasts, not because they’re showing their breasts off.
Last year I wrote complaints to Royal Mail about ridiculously blonde white Mary / Jesus Christmas stamps. This year they correctly have brown skin. I’m not saying this is All down to me I’m just saying that moaning can be a great thing. KEEP MOANING ALWAYS. Go buy some stamps 🌲
For me, fingering is the most under-rated word and skill in the English Language. If it was expertly taught in sex education, I think it'd dramatically lower future stress levels, unwanted pregnancies, stds, electricity consumption and possibly save the planet
#ecofingering
post-partum
they told me i was pregnant
then told me i was glowing
then told me i was blooming
belly slowing growing life
i gave birth to a baby
i took the baby home
they told me she was beautiful
they told me, i agreed
my body wrapped in silence now
to lie and weep and bleed
you will never be the cleverest
or the prettiest or the funniest
and you will never be the wittiest
or the fastest or the sexiest
and you will never be the best
at anything you try to do
so perhaps just be the best
at being you
Over my life, I’ve been told that nearly every clean bodily fluid of mine is dirty. My sweat, my periods, my vaginal and vulval juices, even my breast milk. Meanwhile, I’ve read numerous articles about how male semen can be used as skin moisturiser as if it is holy angel serum.
TAKING A COMPLIMENT
you called her clever
you called her curious
you called her witty
you called her fun
you said
she wasn’t
like the other girls
she said
yes
yes
i am
Thanks so much for all the lovely messages this morning and for
@BBC6Music
and
@laurenlaverne
for having me on to talk about my granny’s butter dish. Here are the two poems I read out for those asking 💛
The arrogance of people to speak on behalf of brilliant poets who are long dead just to back up their own opinions of a few modern poets they want to call 'rubbish' will never cease to amaze me. Criticise me by all means, but leave Keats out of it. I think we'd have got on fine.
Another one of those polite, middle class subtle reminders for women everywhere how to show just the right amount of skin balanced respectfully between prude and whore. Makes me wanna run through town with my tits hanging out
Midwives are not superheroes or angels. They are people working in a very hard job where they are over-worked and underpaid and stressed to fuck.
Read more:
Share
@MidwivesMarch
#MarchWithMidwives
Whenever I gave my kid a treat when she was really little I took it out the packet first. Crisps, chocolate bar etc. That way she didn’t recognise the marketing / packaging in shops and didn’t nag me to buy shit all the time when we were out. Just in case it’s of help to anyone.
From now on, I'm no longer referring to my menstrual 'moodswings' as 'fucking PMT' or 'that time of the month', I am going to refer to them as 'my monthly v.i.p access to a heightened state of awareness of the strength of emotions my body is capable of'. Like LSD, but with blood.
Dear world where we don’t even write the words for female genitals on instructions for cream for female genitals. What does ‘apply only on external intimate areas’ mean? Like not in the vagina? Or only on the top of the vulva? Or outer but not inner labia?
To any parents still telling their kids that you have to be married to have a baby, please stop. My kid has now been asked ‘how she exists’ as well as being constantly told she must be adopted by some very confused classmates.
All those years I was told off that my school skirt was too short and that it was distracting boys from their studies when in reality it was me being distracted from my studies constantly worrying about my body every time I was told it was distracting boys.
A video for
@Channel4
, please listen, from me and lots of people who've messaged me. And now I want to write poems about clouds and not have to think about my body parts ever again. Thanks x
I see you pigeon!
see that neck!
all emerald
and amethyst
sick to death
of all the parrots
the tourists
rave about
if you were
on instagram
I imagine
your account
would be
everyday updated
selfies of that
lovely neck
shouting
look at me you bastards
I’m beautiful as well
Today I would like to see a ‘please stay at home / just chill’ video not done by someone who lives in a palace or a celebrity mansion or who has a private golf course.
on her deathbed my granny did not say: i wish i'd spent more time criticising the layer of skin between my chest and my armpit that folds when i put my arms down
It's funny being in the world of poetry so much cos you get so many emails leading up to
#NationalPoetryDay
and then you go outside into your real life and realise again absolutely no-one gives two shits. Anyway, Happy
#NationalPoetryDay
!! Tomorrow is National Vodka and Taco Day
Went to Tescos to see if they had a maths puzzle book for some homeschooling and came out with two chocolate bars, a packet of twix, chocolate biscuits, chocolate milk and a bottle of prossecco.
CONVERSATION WITH AN ARCHAEOLOGIST
he said they’d found a brothel
on the dig he did last night
I asked him how they know
he sighed:
a pit of babies’ bones
a pit of newborn babies’ bones
was how to spot a brothel
(hollie mcnish)
Scribbling poems remembering being told by many people around me that the queen was like our grandma ‘in a way’. I think the idea that people in the monarchy, ditto current leadership, care about us or are in any way comparable to family looking after us, is very unhelpful.
Bringing up a teenager is beautiful. It is also utterly devastating watching the process by which corporations - skincare, beauty, phones, shit energy drinks, vapes - work so, so hard to fuck up their confidence and health and rinse them of their minimal savings. Keep strong ❤️
SOME THOUGHTS ON BEAUTY ADVERTISING
I know you think we’re ugly
you tell us every day
- our skins and shapes
are wrong
as age sweeps us away
i know you say
I need ‘fixed’
since I took upon
a woman’s shape
but swear to God
I'll beat you down
If you tell my child
the same
MISCARRIAGE
at the school gates, we congratulate
comment on her bloom
her child has told the whole class
he will have a little sister soon!
at the school gates, one month on
children play, her bump is gone
adult silence strikes again
- she carries on alone
I have wasted as much time responding to people online telling me i’m too ugly to read poems as i have reminding my daughter to brush her teeth. Both are mind numbingly fucking boring to do but at least one has a practical outcome. Focus on what actually makes a difference x
Dear parents - if your son pointed to his penis and said it was his balls and then called his balls his foreskin, we’d correct him I think. But only 1% of parents will use the word vulva or misuse vagina for vulva. We will continue to fuck up our daughters’ this way.
@eveappeal
Just thinking about when someone at Cambridge Uni told me there was no inequality between state school / private school applicants cos admissions were now 50% from each, ignoring that only 7% of the country go to private schools.
Dear daughter, yes I know some people think swearing is wrong, but I don’t. And yes, even if it is a prince, you still have the right to tell him to go fuck himself.
on her deathbed my granny did not say: i wish i'd spent more time cooking a wider selection of dinners to suit each family member's individual tastebuds better
Stella Creasey doesn’t ‘want’ to take her baby to work. This is not some overwhelming desire she has. And no, it’s not the same as taking your pet rabbit, unless you are keeping your rabbit alive by letting it suck milk from your tits
Fuck me, if I spend anymore of my precious brain time trying to decide the answer to the parenting question 'how much screen time is too much screen time for a child in the midst of a pandemic where screen time is the only place friends can meet' I'm going to fucking explode.
For any parents looking for creative inspiration during lockdown, Saturdays in my house are now called ‘lazy bastard day’ (yes i swear with my kid). The rule is I do not enforce any exercise or work or time limit on screens. I sit on my ass and read until I’m wanted for food. X
Sitting in the doctor’s waiting room listening to all the folk complain about the ten minute delay - wishing I was confident enough to tell them to shut the fuck up and be grateful we have this free service.
we are born
without one worry
how we look
on the outside
and when we die
we’ll look shite
but we’ll be dead
so we won’t mind
the only time
we waste with worrying
about our body’s
shape and size
is that tiny
inbetween-time
known as
life