Strains of Bessie Smith were audible before I walked into the lecture theatre. As I took my seat I watched the professor standing at the lectern, swaying gently to the music as she made last minute preparations for the class. I still remember that she was dressed in heeled brown boots, a chocolate corduroy skirt, and a fine knit cream cardigan that fell around her body in waves. Her long ash blonde hair worn swept up in a bun as only an English lecturer can; she twirled the wooden necklace in her fingers absent mindedly while making last minute notes, or perhaps a reminder to get bread? I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

I took one paper with Professor Harris for each of the four years of my undergraduate studies; her specialism of women’s literature was an easy fit into the education, psychology and women’s studies that comprised the rest of my degree. And I learnt more from those few hours immersed in her world, than anything else from my various forays into academia. She introduced me to Margaret Atwood, Virginia Woolf, Jeanette Winterson, Jean Rhys and Toni Morrison; the poetry of Adrienne Rich, Stevie Smith and Christina Rosetti. I got under the skin of texts, understood theme and critique, the context of literature, the politics of colonisation. And the act of rebellion that is a woman writing.

Aside from the content of the texts, she taught me about presence. The thing that I first saw in her but could not name, was the self-possession of a woman with a voice. Her sparkly mind was connected to her body and her spirit in a way my nineteen year old self somehow recognised. I knew this confidence was the thing I needed; to be able to hold myself in that way was an essential ingredient of the me I wanted to become. It has taken the best part of twenty more years of life but I have that feeling often these days. I sometimes sit at this screen, in meetings with lots of men in suits, or even stand at lecterns myself and I have that sensation of an unbreakable energy and I know I am reaching someone. Perhaps you?

Atwood’s clever pun in The Handmaids Tale that ‘pen is envy’ is at the heart of how women are in the world. Access to a pen allowed our diverse stories and histories to be told and validated. The internet has amplified these voices exponentially. Except in Iran. Parts of the Middle East, Africa, India, China. And the boxes we all construct around ourselves to keep our voices small, delicate, quiet. Contained.

Today is International Woman’s Day. And my hope is that you will speak. That you will ignore the Charles Tansley’s of this world and their assertion that ‘women can’t paint, women can’t write’, and find your voice.

The woman in the ordinary pudgy downcast girl
is crouching with eyes and muscles clenched.
Round and pebble smooth she effaces herself
under ripples of conversation and debate.
The woman in the block of ivory soap
has massive thighs that neigh,
great breasts that blare and strong arms that trumpet.
The woman of the golden fleece
laughs uproariously from the belly
inside the girl who imitates
a Christmas card virgin with glued hands,
who fishes for herself in other’s eyes,
who stoops and creeps to make herself smaller.
In her bottled up is a woman peppery as curry,
a yam of a woman of butter and brass,
compounded of acid and sweet like a pineapple,
like a hand grenade set to explode,
like goldenrod ready to bloom.
~ Marge Piercy

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