Miriam Hechtman
March 2018.
I lay horizontally at the foot end of my bed as my two young daughters finally slept. It had been a tumultuous night of fevers and restlessness and yet, despite my fatigue and worry, my mind was busy. Poetica’s International Women’s Day gathering was that night and I hadn’t written a word. Where to begin with the Patriarchy – the obvious starting point for a rant on all that had wronged woman. Police. Prisons. Patriotism. P. Hmmm. What’s up with the letter P? Nothing like a little sound repetition to get words flowing.
‘Dear letter P’, I began, ‘you have let us down.’ And so began my ode to the letter P. Lying there with the sounds of my daughters’ slow breathing, the sun rising outside my window for a new day, it was like Sesame Street had met the Vagina Monologues, and unsurprisingly there was more to the letter P that needed unpacking.
After my performance that night to a very receptive audience, a friend suggested I write and perform the whole alphabet. I casually laughed, thinking, absolutely not! But a seed had been planted. And seeds have a tendency to grow, especially in budding poets!
Fast forward to 2019 and the title “The Alphabet of Women” merrily landed in my notes. This, coupled with being surrounded by a growing mix of eclectic, women poets, solidified my quest to explore woman’s story through the sounds and cadences of the alphabet, but so too through many women’s voices, not just my own. I also knew that the alphabet was a clever structure for a book, a way to bookend thoughts and observations but still allow for imagination and innovation to thrive. I reached out to poets in my community, sharing my vision for the project.
The poetry challenge was twofold, I wrote to them. It was both a womanhood inquiry but also a poetic challenge, using alliteration as the key. The story was open. Poems could be anything related to women/woman but had to use many words with the allocated letter. Themes around women could vary, as could style. From rage to tenderness, politics to the body, motherhood to daughterhood to sisterhood to vaginas, poets were instructed to follow their heart and dive in. This was not a feminist call to arms, I cautioned. This is the story of Woman, however, it feels for you right now.
After starting with poets that I knew, I ventured out to find more women who would add to the overall story. I wanted the narrative to be diverse, to include women from different backgrounds, religions, ages, colours, cultures, sexual preferences. 26 women born around the globe comprise the Alphabet of Women. From Ireland, Brazil, Sri Lanka, America, England, South Africa, Bosnia, Argentina, New Zealand, Israel, and Australia.
To be a good poet was a paramount qualification, and knowing this about each poet allowed me to give the women permission to write freely so long as they followed the letter guidelines.
I wanted to hear their woman’s story with their style, their voice, their guts.
Some poets used the letter at the beginning of the words as I had with letter P. A couple of poets who were assigned vowels wrote shape (concrete) poems and used the sound of their letter inside selected words. Themes of a woman emerged: from mother earth to changing bodies to ex-lovers to loneliness and coming out. The stories were indignant and tender, humorous and melancholy. Not one story was the same as another.
Like The Vagina Monologues, the intent was always to perform the poems. Poetry that uses alliteration is clamouring to be heard, and listening to just a handful of the women share their words in our first rehearsal I knew we were on to something unique. This would be an education as much as a celebration, an immersive production that would use music and dance to bring these poems alive for the stage. Our first live performance was on March 11 in Sydney. Though non-Sydney poets couldn’t attend, audio recordings filled the room and other women poets performed several poems. The audience was spellbound, immersed in the overall linking arc of the letters to tell women’s tales.
Then COVID hit, and we moved the Alphabet to ZOOM which inadvertently allowed for poets not in Sydney to perform their poem for the first time. That night was a tour de force. Not just for the technical and practical feat of uniting women all over the world for a one-off performance – but for the opportunity for these words to be heard and seen live, together in real-time. Next on the Alphabet train is the book and more performances when events return. This project is an evolving creative beast, a moving feast of woman’s words released.
