Why so little poetry about birth?
Sally Jenkinson considers vulnerability, vulgarity, and viscera in the writing of women she admires, and their supportive influence on her writing process for Pantomime Horse, Russian Doll, Egg.
Cover image, Sally Jenkinson Pantomime Horse, Russian Doll, Egg (2022)
My new chapbook of poems Pantomime Horse, Russian Doll, Egg is a poem cycle responding to my experience of giving birth in 2019. After giving birth, I searched for poetry which explored birth, hoping to begin contextualising and understanding my own journey. After all, if poetry is ‘the desire to get beyond the infinite and the historical – the human world of violence and difference – and to reach the transcendent or divine’ (Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry) then shouldn’t it be the perfect medium to process such a violent, but ultimately transcendent experience?
At first there appeared to be a shortage of poetry about birth, and I wondered how such a fundamental and commonplace act could remain so underexplored in contemporary poetry. Of course, this is not the case. A wide and diverse selection of poetry on birth exists in the world. I found poems which helped me to process my own experiences and emboldened me to write about them. But I really had to search – I found them by word of mouth, by social media call-outs, and by library deep-dives, rather than by mainstream reviews, major literary prizes, and ‘Top 10’ lists. In truth, what there appears to be a shortage of is serious critical engagement with these poems, and indeed poetry by women in general.
In ‘The Public Voice of Women’, Mary Beard says that not much has changed since Roman times in terms of how women’s voices are received. ‘In making a public case, in fighting their corner, in speaking out, what are women said to be? ‘Strident’; they ‘whinge’ and they ‘whine’.’ This historically undermining attitude to any woman who raises her voice was a heavy burden to carry when attempting to write about something as vulnerable as childbirth. I was reminded of the dispiriting experience of reading a recent interview with Lucy Ellman, whose writing I admire so much, where she says:
‘You watch people get pregnant and know they’ll be emotionally and intellectually absent for 20 years. Thought, knowledge, adult conversation and vital political action are all put on hold.’
It would be so easy to become culturally and critically dissuaded from the relevance of writing about anything personal, as a woman.
So, it became necessary to read widely and trustingly of the writers who had gone there before me. For example, in trying to describe the experience of my self-examination during labour in my poem ‘Hospital Transfer’ it felt terrifying and shameful to include the lines:
‘…The performance of dilating.
I put my hand between my legs and found
an unstable star…’
I removed it many times. It felt too exposing. And yet, it is such a commonplace (and profound) part of many birth experiences that it felt insincere to delete it. When I read Helen Shepperd’s poem ‘Opening’ about her midwifery experiences, in which she writes:
‘Her muscled hammock softens, slackens
I am with her wet slit, hands quiet, ready’
I was encouraged that in order to write authentically and evocatively about birth, it was necessary for me to sometimes use boldly visceral language which might be considered gratuitous or even vulgar in another context. I was going to have to take my cues from the writers who had trodden this path before me.
Although I have no real desire to write poems which might please prominent critics, the weight of knowing this type of poetry is so often dismissed as simply therapeutic (in a pejorative sense) was a spectre looming over my writing process. These poems were therapeutic to write, in the sense that I needed to write them. They tumbled out, glistening with shame and fear, and the process of bathing and nurturing them was the process of making sense of, and healing from, my experience.
When writing this pamphlet, it was important to surround myself with the work of writers who I knew held some value in women writing about their lived experiences. When I hesitated to mention of my botched episiotomy stitches in ‘Forensics’:
‘he sews me up tighter than before
I didn’t ask him to’
I re-read Sharon Olds’ ‘New Mother’ and was fortified that there is power in writing vulnerably and openly about that exact subject.
It turned out that in fact there is not ‘so little birth poetry’, but there does appear to be less critical and indeed societal capital invested in artistic responses to women’s experiences, especially when those experiences are messy, grotesque, noisy and ultimately, heroic. In pushing out of my comfort zone (wearing the armour forged by Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire, Liz Berry, and so many more) I have attempted to write poems which embrace the vulnerability, viscera, and vulgarity of my birth experience, and put my proud boast right here, with the others.
Sally Jenkinson is poet, care worker, community arts producer, and Mum. She lives in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean. Her pamphlet ‘Pantomime Horse, Russian Doll, Egg’ is published with Burning Eye Books. Her work has been recently featured in Lighthouse, Emerge Literary Journal, and on BBC Radio 4. A free online book launch for her new pamphlet will take place on Sunday 9th October at 3pm – you can book your ticket here. Follow Sally on Instagram @sally_jenkinson and Twitter @sallysomewhere
Artwork: Becca Lewis
