By Lowri Simmons
Featured image and gallery: Molly Goble

Manchester Metropolitan University’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence festival concluded on December 10, Human Rights Day, with a thought-provoking finale at the Manchester Poetry Library.

Award-winning poets Dr Kim Moore and Professor Helen Mort led a compelling evening of readings and discussion, spotlighting the intersections of female desire, sexism, and the enduring challenges faced by women in society.

Originally billed to feature feminist writer Dr Katherine Angel, who was unable to attend, the event continued in her absence, with her influential ideas remaining central to the discussions led by Moore and Mort.

The event capped off a series that, according to co-organiser Moore, was as much a showcase of resilience as activism. “We’ve weathered online abuse, hackers, storms, cancelled trains, and speaker illnesses, yet we held it together,” she reflected.

“I think the mark of a good organisational team is not that nothing goes wrong during a festival or series of events, but how you respond to the chaos and carnage. I think we’ve done well, and I really couldn’t have had any better people to run this with than Sarah Cleave, Frazer Heritage, and the Manchester Poetry Library team.”

Moore opened the evening with an epigraph from her acclaimed poetry collection, All the Men I Never Married, inspired by the work of feminist writer Dr Katherine Angel. The collection delves into how female desire exists within a landscape shadowed by sexual violence.

Moore explored the complexity of representing this tension, reading: “How are we to represent in writing the fact that sexual desire lives entangled with sexual violence? How are we to deal in art with the powerful, destabilising forces of both violence and desire?”

She also shared harrowing examples of how women’s sexual desire is often weaponised against them in courtrooms. Moore said: “Katherine Angel points out that evidence that a woman has used apps such as Tinder to meet sexual partners, can work against her in a courtroom even if this is irrelevant to the allegation before the court.”

She added: “Women learn quickly in cases of sexual assault and rape, that any indication that they have felt sexual desire, whether for the abuser or in past relationships, can be sued as proof that they were willing participants in whatever act occurred.”

Moore explained how poetry can offer a way to communicate the female experience in this current climate, emphasising the importance and power that poetry holds: “Experimental poetry can describe what it’s like to live as a woman in this landscape of violence. Whether we like it or not, even consensual sexual encounters take place in this landscape, complete with the rape myths that are repeated in courts, in the media and by the general public. Men and women live in this landscape together and we are all implicated, impacted and changed by it in different ways.”

She added: “Lyric poetry can hold a space open for a discussion about the complexity of desire. If finding out what we want in terms of desire only in the doing, can be talked about in poetry. The next step is to discover how we talk about desire in this way, in real life. How to acknowledge that it is, as Angel puts it, a conversation, a dynamic.”

Moore discussed how we can change the narrative around what society perceives as trauma and the way that females experience trauma with a reading of her critical essay, ‘Sexism is a Slippery and Fluid Term.’

Moore read: “In Writing Otherwise, [Janet] Wolff and [Jackie] Stacey write that a feminine existence is in fact a traumatised existence. These words made it possible to reframe some of the things I had experienced and my reaction to them. There’s an essay, ‘Not Outside the Range’ by L.S. Brown, that argues to understand that a woman’s existence is traumatised, may require a reframing and expansion of our understanding of the word trauma and result in post traumatic stress disorder, to encompass the everyday assault on integrity and personal safety.”

“The traditional definition of PTSD, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, requires the individual to have been confronted with death, threatened death, or actual injury or violence. It now includes sexual violence, but that is only a very recent addition. Historically, the recognition of PTSD has always been limited to public and male experiences of trauma, failing to acknowledge the daily lived experience of women and other minority groups.”

Moore also shared her personal experiences as a female poet and how male audience members, in particular, have often reduced her to just her body. She invited the audience to step into her shoes and experience her encounters with sexism: “Imagine this: I have just finished performing. I may have read poems about female desire or an experience of sexism, or both. They were probably poems about relationality – about how we relate to and fail each other. In that vulnerable moment after reading, where the part of myself that chose to show itself, that chose to be looked at, is hiding deep inside once again. 

“A man will come up to me and tell me how much he likes my hair, or my shoes, or my dress. These are compliments, and I should be flattered. But I’m not. Because they happen straight after a reading and they register as dismissals, as attempts to undermine me and my work.”

Award-winning poet Professor Helen Mort, introduced by Moore as a “poetry hero”, exchanged a moment of allyship as the mic was handed, before reading her emotive poem ‘Precious’. The piece explores intergenerational female pain and how women carry the burden of generations of sexism.

It was followed by a reading of ‘I touch their pain,’ taking the audience on a journey of her grandmother and mother’s pain through an intricate description of an inherited ring. 

Mort then went on to share her fascination with tattoos, particularly female tattooed bodies. She spoke of the sexualisation she has received as a tattooed female and the way people feel entitled to speak of your body in an inappropriate way, especially if you are a heavily tattooed female.

“I am very interested in tattoos,” said Mort. “Tattoos are interesting in terms of how people talk about your body. On the one hand, you’re kind of drawing attention to yourself, and it’s not an aspect of your identity that you were born with. It’s something that you choose. But also, I’m fascinated by the different ways that different tattooed bodies might be observed in the world, and the different type of unwelcome attention that they attract.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of heavily tattooed women, who have been told it’s okay to be tattooed, but not too much as a woman. I’ve spoken to a lot of female tattoo artists, and people try to sexualise them when they’re out and ask very intrusive questions. And I have experienced those things.”

Mort proceeded to read her tattoo-inspired poem, ‘The Illustrated Woman’, where she powerfully declared to the audience: “Let me be decorated”, highlighting how every facet of female autonomy over her body is controlled and dictated by society and sexism.

Mort told the audience about a review of ‘The Illustrated Woman’ and how it emphasises the dismissal of sexism that we experience every day: “I saw a review of ‘The Illustrated Woman’, where the person said about the focus on the female body and how kind of claustrophobic it was. Like she’s just going on and on about her body basically, and how it’s really boring.

“I was reading this review and going, that’s the whole point. Try having that experience of having this for grounded all the time, that is the whole point. The review was saying it would be nice to have a bit more variety, and I was like, ‘Yeah it would, wouldn’t it?'”

After further readings, Mort revealed her forthcoming satirical novel exploring the power dynamics between a renowned male literary figure and a female student.

The event concluded with a Q&A session where Moore and Mort discussed writing about resistance and navigating criticism of “boring” or “taboo” topics like motherhood. Moore spoke about what it means to give yourself permission: “I’ve been told two main things that you shouldn’t write about as a poet: sexism and motherhood.

When I became pregnant I wrote a poem about being pregnant, and one of my best friends who is a man and a poet said: ‘I hope you’re not just gonna go on about pregnancy all the time’. I was devastated and cried for two days. Then I had a moment where I was like hold on, I’ve just done a PhD in sexism, I can’t just keep reacting like this. I’m gonna give myself permission to write about nothing but motherhood, and just see how it feels.”

Reflecting on the festival after the final event, co-organiser Frazer Heritage said: “It’s been a fantastic line up of 16 events, and we’re all very happy and elated about how brilliantly they have been.”

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is a global campaign aimed at raising awareness and driving systemic change. Running from 25th November to 10th December, 2024. Manchester Met’s festival brought together poets, activists and academics to spark critical conversations.

Explore aAh! Magazine’s 16 Days of Activism coverage here and follow @aAh_mag.