By Freya Barwell and Megan Hall 
Photography: Jack Oliver

Manchester Metropolitan University’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence Festival continued with a series of powerful readings by award-winning poets Dr Malika Booker and Clare Shaw at the Manchester Poetry Library.

Marking the second day of the 16-day campaign, Forward Prize-winner Dr Malika Booker led a thought-provoking tribute to all the women killed during the pandemic due to gender-based violence. She poignantly highlighted the unseen epidemic that worsened under lockdown conditions, with more women becoming victims of violence behind closed doors while the world shifted its focus to the pandemic.

Booker was joined by poet and mental health facilitator Clare Shaw, whose work is known for exploring the intersections of trauma, mental health, and violence. Shaw, winner of the 2022 Poetry Society Book of the Year Award, presented a powerful set of readings that included pieces from their acclaimed collections Towards a General Theory of Love and Flood. Their poems grapple with the language surrounding gender-based violence and its devastating psychological impact.

Manchester Poetry Library Director Becky Swain introduced the poets, describing Shaw as a “dynamic facilitator and performer,” whose poetry reflects a profound belief in the transformative power of language. Shaw’s readings delved into themes of personal and collective pain, offering a nuanced look at the psychological legacies of violence.

Speaking about their work, Shaw reflected on their previous experience as a mental health trainer and how it informs their poetry: “I think poetry often in a way conceptualises my own experiences, beyond my own, other peoples experiences and an attitude towards language.”

Shaw also performed the poem ‘Monkey,” featured in Towards a General Theory of Love, explaining: “I found a whole new metaphor or personification of some of the stuff that I’d been describing. In ‘Monkey’ there was sort of this imaginary survivor of Harlow’s horrible experiments on baby Rhesus Monkeys, and I think it gave me a kind of more nuanced and a much more overtly psychological model for analysing gendered violence and its impact.”

Shaw concluded their readings with the poem Something Must Come of Broken Things from their new book, which discusses ideas of the supernatural and uncertainty.

Swain then introduced Booker, who was welcomed onto the stage with the song Endangered Species by Dianne Reeves. Booker credits Reeves’ lyrics with deeply influencing her creative process, saying: “A lot of times when I’m doing this work I’m crying. Sometimes it brings up things, and afterwards I play Dianne Reeves and sing it at the top of my voice – she’s part of my best work.”

Booker performed a series of readings from her book Pepper Seed, which draws from Caribbean influences, as well as poems informed by the King James Bible.

Reading hard-hitting poems, Booker became emotional during the discussion of gender-based violence in lockdown and the loss of her friend. She explained: “As you do when you start writing, you start looking up statistics and realising that each day that we were locked up, more and more women were being harmed within locked doors.” She ended her readings with “a tribute to the women, to all the women we lost in lockdown and how we’ve gone back to normal and not talked about this epidemic”.

In the Q&A, Swain began by delving into Shaw’s experience navigating ill-defined terms and descriptions of complex mental health issues. She asked how Shaw has used poetry to communicate those experiences. Shaw responded: “It’s rooted in optimism or faith in people. I’m being hopeful about people. It is my motivating thing that when we communicate those realities in a full, meaningful way, that it leads to the right action.” 

Moving on to Booker, Swain asked her thoughts on the link between poetry and social change. Booker spoke about how the literature she read as a young girl lacked representation of women, saying: “I was in a space where there wasn’t representation or a space for black women.” 

She explained how discovering poets who resonated with her helped her understand that “poetry can really speak to the individual.”

They also discussed the challenge of choosing words to describe such painful and disturbing events. Booker explained: “The act of writing is trying to find a way to articulate what you cannot say and actually pushing through and the only thing I ask myself to do is to be true to the poem. That’s all I’m asking myself to do.”

Shaw added: “Poetry [is] a much less direct and safer way to communicate.” They added: “After years I was becoming quite separated from some of the things I was describing. The book I’m writing now is largely prose because I find that [in] prose there are fewer places to hide.”

Shaw also shared a structured self-care practice called RAIN, which stands for Recognise, Accept, Investigate and Nurture. As someone who has worked in the mental health sector, Shaw recognised how poetry serves as a tool for self-expression. “Poetry is stepping away from what it is at its core, which is a human desire to communicate and connect. Poetry is just one way that we do that.” 

The 16 Days Of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Festival includes a series of poetry readings, workshops and panels in response to the international campaign hosted by UN Women. The festival runs from 25 November to 10 December to call for systematic change and create awareness.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Festival runs from 25th November to 10th December, 2024. For more information and tickets, visit mmu.ac.uk/news-and-events.