Well its just a few days now before my next meeting with the choir, so I've been thinking of ideas for my workshop (including something with knitting needles!)

One frustration has been trying to get permissions to use the Texts I want - the publisher for Jenny Joseph came back to say that she doesn't grant any permissions now which is a real pity, and the others are all being very slow.

So for now I'm concentrating on the texts that are out of the copyright period, and hopefully in time we might get permissions for some more recent ones - fingers crossed!

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to Tuesday night and will hopefully have some good ideas in store!

Hello!

Hello!

I've created this blog as a way for me to connect with the members of the Jubilate Ladies Choir, as well as my mentor Colin, and other members of Making Music.

As we progress over the next 6 months towards the premiere of our new piece, I thought this would be a good way for us to all be able to record our thoughts and ideas, and to keep up to date with what's going on with the piece.

Back in November I'd asked the choir for some ideas about themes/words/poems for the lyrics of the piece. Reading back over these, two themes that seemed to crop up frequently were 'women' and 'celebration'. I get the impression that the fact that this is a Ladies choir is more than just an artistic or logistical decision, but that the choir is a very tight-knit, supportive, positive group of women who love coming together to spread joy through their singing.

To that end, I've spent the last few days looking for poems that celebrate and explore what it means to be a woman, from a child to an old lady. I particularly have focussed on poems written by women, about women (although I do love the WB Yeats poems).

I want the final piece to be a combination of 'formal' sung element, spoken word, and some more improvised sections, so that will allow me to create a sort of 'song-cycle' which uses several texts to create a sort of narrative theme throughout the piece, but lets us explore various different styles and moods.

Anyway - these are some of the ideas I've had so far. I'd love if you could have a think if there are any others that might fit, or indeed write some of your own!

I'm writing publishers now to ask for permissions so fingers crossed!

Looking forward to seeing you on the 10th!

Ailie x

Phenomenal Woman

BY MAYA ANGELOU

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,   

The stride of my step,   

The curl of my lips.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,   

That’s me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,   

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.   

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.   

I say,

It’s the fire in my eyes,   

And the flash of my teeth,   

The swing in my waist,   

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered   

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,   

They say they still can’t see.   

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,   

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Now you understand

Just why my head’s not bowed.   

I don’t shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.   

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It’s in the click of my heels,   

The bend of my hair,   

the palm of my hand,   

The need for my care.   

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Her Kind

BY ANNE SEXTON

I have gone out, a possessed witch,   

haunting the black air, braver at night;   

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch   

over the plain houses, light by light:   

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.   

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.   

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,   

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,   

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:   

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,   

learning the last bright routes, survivor   

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.   

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.   

I have been her kind.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).  Responsibilities and Other Poems.  1916. 

The Heart of a Woman

Georgia Douglas Johnson

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

36. No Second Troy

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?	5
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?	10
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

When You Are Old

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Fearful Women - Carolyn Kizer

Arms and the girl I sing - O rare
arms that are braceleted and white and bare

arms that were lovely Helen's, in whose name
Greek slaughtered Trojan. Helen was to blame.

Scape-nanny call her; wars for turf
and profit don't sound glamorous enough.

Mythologize your women! None escape.
Europe was named from an act of bestial rape:

Eponymous girl on bull-back, he intent
on scattering sperm across a continent.

Old Zeus refused to take the rap.
It's not his name in big print on the map.

But let's go back to the beginning
when sinners didn't know that they were sinning.

He, one rib short: she lived to rue it
when Adam said to God, "She made me do it."

Eve learned that learning was a dangerous thing
for her: no end of trouble would it bring.

An educated woman is a danger.
Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger

like Darby's Joan, content with church and Kinder,
not like that sainted Joan, burnt to a cinder.

Whether we wield a scepter or a mop
It's clear you fear that we may get on top.

And if we do -I say it without animus-
It's not from you we learned to be magnaminous.


Grandmother Love Poem
by Sharon Olds

Late in her life, when we fell in love,
I'd take her out from the nursing home
for a chaser and two bourbons.  She'd crack
a joke sharp as a tin lid
hot from the teeth of the can-opener,
and cackle her crack-corn laugh.  Next to her
wit, she prided herself on her hair,
snowy and abundant.  She would lift it up
at the nape of the neck, there in the bar,
and under the white, under the salt-and-
pepper, she'd show me her true color,
the color it was when she was a bride:
like her sex in the smoky light she would show me
the pure black.

When I Am Old.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired, And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells, And run my stick along the public railings, And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick the flowers in other people's gardens, And learn to spit. You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat, And eat three pounds of sausages at a go, Or only bread and pickle for a week, And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry, And pay our rent and not swear in the street, And set a good example for the children. We will have friends to dinner and read the papers. But maybe I ought to practise a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised, When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple!  Jenny Joseph Bone to Bone The girl stands in front of the wet grass looking down If she could sink her arms through the cloying clay Reach through into time past She would find bone matching bone DNA vibrating through to the marrow Matching dimples, blond hair, long legs Granny and granddaughter Divided by 6 feet of pain regret and a precious missed bond The only thing possible now the hope of  renewal In the future …………………… Mad Mammy A pot of yellow plastic flowers Mum lovingly tends them Waters when not necessary Convinced a new bud is opening Such a simple thing which brings a fragile smile To a withered face The relatives decend to help Bin liners grow with dead man’s shoes The mayhem of clearing a tiny flat Leaving for the last time steeling myself a shy look over my shoulder the yellow daisies lying discarded next to the bins The last defence breaking down Who would have thought a little plastic pot Could bring joy and then such despair.