Stephanie Farrell Moore on writing desire
Poetry (pen) Pals #24
I am so grateful and happy to be bringing you this weeks guest post.
This is writing of such quality, with such depth and insight, can I suggest you grab yourself a quiet spot and a cup of tea to enjoy it in its entirety.
I discovered Steph’s poetry book, Bleed Between the Lines, last year as part of my ongoing search for poetry that recognises and celebrates female experiences. It did not disappoint. I never ask guests to share a particular poem or write about any specific subject but I’ll be honest, after nodding intensely throughout this piece, I was thrilled to see where it ended up.
Without further ado, I’ll hand over to
.Kate Baer
Both Ways:
I walk down to the river of myself
and see what I have always known.
That as long as there is life,
As long as I am able to stand on my own two feet,
I will want more than I’ve been given.
I will want and I will want and
I will die trying to swallow every part
of this world. The hardness of any
man and the curve of any
woman and the mouth of
anyone open for something
other than a conversation.
I see so vainly then
in the reflection of my youth
that I would have myself
if I could stand her.
You ask me my intentions
but darling, I have none.
I only have desire.Everything comes from a want. And so it is that I have returned to and shared this poem countless times since I came across it a couple of years ago. My guess is that ‘Both Ways’ will speak to most women who read it. It’s one of those poems whose hunger I could almost taste and contains that sort of ‘ah-ha’ universality we all wish we could capture. The older (and more hormonal) I get, the more pressed for time that I am, the less I want to have to work for the relief I get from reading, and in all of Baer’s collections there are pieces that manage to catch my breath in the space of a few seconds. In a poem I like simplicity and succinctness, something I can devour in a moment over a slurp of coffee before the mad dash of the school run or in between finishing work and collecting the boys from football.
At almost forty and part of the generation told they could have it all, I find myself at times tormented by all the wanting. And all the doing that has to accompany the wanting in order to attempt making it all happen, rather than sitting inside the beingness that ignites and allows us to identify our quieter, more aligned desires. These days the writing, art and creativity I seek and feel most connected to seems to be increasingly spiritual or somewhat erotic. Anything that makes the mundanity of the everyday, the churn of the routine more bearable. I crave to know that I am not the only one seeking these escapes and when I read poems such as this one that resonate at the pulsing core of me, the momentary peace in being connected to other women in my longing becomes the deepest affirmation of existence. The possibility that this wanting must be part of the point of our being here. Of being able to be alive inside the lives we have chosen alongside the depth of our yearning.
It has become hard to ‘want’ since becoming a mother (almost twelve years ago now) even harder to write about wanting and harder still to allow people to read my writing about wanting. But when I do, it is usually met with a raised eyebrow and a sigh of recognition, opening deep conversation and, at times, confession. When I feel viscerally moved by poems (always David Whyte and Mary Oliver) or books (currently All Fours by Miranda July and The Giant on the Skyline by Clover Stroud) it is usually because they articulate a buried, potentially shameful desire or an unnameable longing for something other, possibly an intensely intimate experience they cannot imagine in the life they are currently inside of or a connection to something other, something, sacred - what many might call God. Sexual and creative energy are one and the same- both springing from the same desire and so articulating any kind of desire, (especially within Motherhood when you may find yourself down a certain path wondering what the path untaken might feel like) feels brave and dangerous and necessary.
I’m increasingly drawn to writing that explores the inner conflict that arises between endeavouring to be the best mother that one can be (especially when mothering is seen as being done well when it is wholly selfless) but also not losing the woman/wolf that exists underneath it all (see ‘Nightbitch’ by Rachel Yoder). Claiming this writhing juxtaposition and surrendering to the tension of holding both aspects of ourselves whilst sharing our experiences make holding on and not settling for one definable version of ourselves more bearable. I am buoyed when I see other women pinning their want on the page - Joy Sullivan’s new poetry collection, ‘Instructions on Travelling West’ has a section entitled ‘reacquaint yourself with desire,’ that includes poems with titles such as ‘Want’ and ‘all day long there is a bursting’ in which she boldly repeats ‘I want this’ three times. It made me want to moan with delight. Yes, I thought. I want to read about this want. We are continuously encouraged to be grateful, to want less. And yes, I am grateful and yes I am trying to consume less, to acquire less, to not chase more of the wrong things yet there is still a part of me that wants more of something that is persistent and untameable and hard to admit.
Baer expresses this desperation for more. For being greedy for ‘the world’. For wanting the whole spectrum- the hardness of a man and the curve of a woman - and, more than anything, a primal ineffable connection. So ravenous is the woman in the poem that she would devour herself if she could stomach her. Now that my children are beyond those all-consuming early years, I feel at a point in my life where I am straddling two identities- the mother and the other part of me that needs to grow wilder again- propelled not only by my own voice that wants to evolve and expand but also the voice of the women that have gone before me. In these moments, finding the right poem can allow a wave of wholeness to wash over and Baer’s words bring me to that place.
As an adult there is no manual, but in poetry, you can find guidance, a companion, a rightness of being, and, perhaps most importantly, a moment of being seen. When a poet like Kate dares to pen a poem like ‘both ways’ it can make being in a body feel fleetingly more bearable. We are not just made up of good, pure intentions. We can and should be able to want for the sake of wanting. Her final line ‘I have only desire’ lands in every cell of my being each time I read it. After she has addressed the reader in the line before, but darling, we feel a part of her confession, her internal battle-the one we can all relate too.
There is a lot of burying that goes on when you become a mother and I think that poetry uncovers things that have been denied or suppressed. One of the ways I rediscovered the language of my wants, my longing, was to to get out of my thinking mind, into my body and connect with all the different and dismissed versions of myself. To discover parts of my being I had long ignored. After studying menstrual cycle awareness and training to become a Menstruality Mentor with Red School it became apparent that at different times of the month we need and want very different things. That how we feel is to be believed, that we are right to trust in the changing form of ourselves and that no one else can determine how we should be feeling or what we should be wanting on any given day.
My small contribution to uncovering the unapologetic truth of female desire is in writing from the ever-changing phases/seasons of my menstrual cycle (follicular-spring, Ovulatory-summer, pre-menstrual, autumn, menstruation- winter). Every poem, ever written by a woman comes from a unique place in their cycle- each day with a quality, timbre and essence that will be different to the day before or after. The tone and outlook of her words belonging to that particular and precise cocktail of hormones, her inner thermostat. I find it extraordinary to think that a moment, experience or relationship can be viewed so differently depending on the seasonal lens through which we are looking. As Baer touches upon in her poem by ‘walking down to the river of (her)self’ we have to journey inwards to reach and then admit what it is we are truly longing for. A place others cannot see and may never be able to reach.
Poems from these depths are food for the soul and the only ingredient need be truth. How precious when a handful of words on a page can touch a known or unknown truth in us. Providing an escape but also a home. A home away from the home where I love my children to death but where there are bits of me I have let die that still long to live. Poetry is a way to bring them back. Sometimes it is hard to remember the full depth of yourself without having time, stillness or solitude to hear your wants untangled from what everyone else is wanting from you and committing to tracking my cycle and making it a part of my creative practice has given me some of the spaciousness I was lacking.
Poetry and the space around it has led me back towards my own knowing. It’s a bridge between the things I can’t always articulate myself and the energy that is always moving through us, whether we choose to notice it or not. I don’t follow a set religion or strict spiritual practice but I continue to circle back to poetry as a method of prayer. Reading it, writing it, waiting for it provides the opportunity for intentionality and reverence and blank space. The ripple effect of reading or writing a poem that is on the exact frequency you need at any given time is nothing short of magic. These peri-menopausal years throw up all the ways we’ve abandoned ourselves and when a woman shares the ways her soul is breaking we can return to wholeness and be buffered by our collective struggle. We are not alone in our wanting.
I am including a poem from my menstruality collection, Bleed Between The Lines, because whilst touching upon this theme of desire I must recognise that I continue to feel called to say the things that feel uncomfortable. Things that might reach another woman in the place she’s in but perhaps can’t quite yet articulate. If we don’t share from these edges of ourselves, we make ourselves and others wrong or, worse, become detached in our loneliness, thinking that no one can meet us in our personal hell. Every inner season has its own unique flavour, but the world doesn’t always favour our changing behaviour, our outspokenness, our burning discernment that peaks during the second half of our cycle. I’m interested in the force of energy we can access at this point, the liminal spaces we can reach, the sense of connection to something greater than ourselves. And the pulse of wanting…it may not always be the sexual wanting we associate with ovulation but still, it is a wanting for more, for different, for a greater depth of meaning, for our authentic needs to expressed.
I am here to remind you how good your body feels sink your teeth hungrily into the truth of what moves you it’s almost like it will always be impossible to ever be too full your fullness all yours to savour expanding into the present oh so able to be generous without resentment.
This poem comes from the ‘voice’ that moves through me when I ask it blunt questions. Questions I don’t always want the answer to but that usually give me the answer of what it is I’m wanting in that moment. It’s about expressing more than just something inside of my head. Whatever it is that moves through all of us. Jon Fossee (2023 Nobel prize in literature) asks ‘and what do you hear if you listen well enough?’ For me it is the same force that Liz Gilbert references in Big Magic- the energy that grows an acorn into an oak tree. This divine, synchronised energy we can all directly access if we care to listen to and then listen longer. The ovulatory phase of our menstrual cycle (the release of the egg, the potential for new life) can be challenging as we get older, especially if we already have children, have a multitude of responsibilities and may also have the most energy at this time to do things for others so our own pleasure or direction of desire can become easily ignored or forgotten. We can burn out and end up resentful, disconnected from our intuition and what it is that feels good for our bodies and souls. Writing from the place I’m in within my cycle feels like a defiance, a commitment to bringing out what is real and what is hidden and this dedication to the regular connecting of the womb and the voice opens a truth I am now unable to unhear.
Your Writing Prompt for this Week:
And so I ask you to lean into what day you’re on (day 1 being the first day of your period and day 28+ being the end of your cycle before the next one begins. If you’re post-menopausal or for whatever reason do not ovulate, you may want to tune in to the lunar cycle and lean into the moon’s rhythms) and feel into what it is that’s asking you to listen. And then listen longer. What is it your body wants today? What is it you want when no one else is wanting from you? You may be surprised by what arises.
Inspired by Joy Sullivan I’d like to leave you with the prompt ‘I want this…’ and I encourage you to leave any censoring behind. I can’t wait to read your cyclical responses.
Stephanie Farrell Moore (she/her) is a neurodivergent Actor, Voiceover Artist, Writer and Menstruality Mentor. Her collection of 'inner season' period poetry, Bleed Between The Lines is available on Amazon and Kaleidoscopic Minds: An anthology of poetry by neurodivergent women she co-edited with Catherine Bell is available on Etsy and will be featured at the 2024 Henley Literary Festival.
You can also keep in touch with
over on her Instagram account here.Thank you Steph, what a great writing prompt,
Have a good week everyone x
Wow 🔥
Holy fuck - I devoured this, greedily. ALL OF THIS. My suppressed soul wants MORE, MORE, MORE ❤️🔥