Maria Lassnig

At Tate Liverpool this late summer there was an exhibition of Maria Lassnig and her life’s work (1919-2014). Rare to find a female artist who had survived into late age and had produced art works that had early been recognised and encouraged. Frida Kahlo for example lived much of her life in the shadow of…

Time Will Not

Originally posted on First Draft:
Poet Rebecca Audra Smith looks at the theme of ‘retrospect‘ in this poem and guest blog. You can catch her performing at our In Retrospect cabaret night at The Castle Hotel on Monday 16 February. I wrote ‘Time will not’ for fun –  it’s a formal take from Edwin Morgan’s poem ‘I…

Protest the Cuts: Manchester Safety 4 Sisters

Content warning for discussion of rape statistics and barriers to women’s safety, this post will look at cuts to services such as refuges for women living with domestic violence. On Wednesday 10th December 2014 we gathered to protest in St Peter’s Square about the need to stop the cuts, in particular the cuts to women’s…

Bring Back Our Girls

BringBackOurGirls #BBOGManchester This was a recap I wrote shortly after the second protest: The first vigil was on Tuesday 6th May, a day after President Jonathon had spoken out about the situation in Nigeria; over two hundred girls had been taken from their schools, kidnapped as goods in a war against ‘sinful’ Western education. It…

Freedom and tyranny

This post will be discussing the racist reaction to Quvenzhané Wallis as Annie and Idris Elba potentially as Bond, referencing Azealia Bank’s amazing rant and Ben Okri’s article. I’ve been getting annoyed with the amount of people I’ve seen saying that Rush Limbaugh has a point that Idris Elba can’t be Bond because Bond is white…

Xmas: Activism

'Whatever you do not fight against is done in your name' Great Activist talking at #thequeerforum — Rebecca Audra Smith (@BeccaAudra) December 7, 2014 This year have been getting more involved in protesting, and there has been so much to protest about. What does going to protests, signing petitions, actually achieve? People sometimes try to…

Womb Fury@ The Crescent

WOMB FURY- ‘A term of historic interest for the presence (or absence) of the hymen in a woman, which was once regarded as a symptom of physical disease that, if not cured, might result in death.’ Being a woman=dangerous. Sarah Grace Logan and myself create joint poems that aim to explore this, how women are marked…

Feminism in a small package

I was very excited to discover the articles on Feminist Media Studies, with titles like: ”Your a Ugly, Whorish, Slut”: Understanding E-bile. (Mis)Perceptions Around Intimate Partner Violence in the Music Video and Lyrics for “Love the Way You Lie” It was brilliant to see these issues addressed in researched articles that built up a body…

NMP3: Rose Queens

“If we all helped carry the weight of injustice, we could not bear it, and so we would finally stop tolerating what we’ve been content to force others to carry alone.”- Emma Sulkowicz Coming together through craftivism to discuss what we want changed with the representation of women was a really powerful experience. Putting the discussion into…