International Women's Day 2021 quotes: Best quotes to celebrate International Women's Day
| Published date | 08 March 2021 |
| Publication title | Express, The/The Express on Sunday: Web Edition Articles (London, England) |
the fishes’ red gill to me
the flame tree’s spread to me
the crab’s leg/the fried plantain smell
replenishing replenishing
Go to your wide futures, you said
Grace Nichols’ Praise Song for my Mother is the perfect poem to celebrate International Women’s Day and is also relevant to share around Mother’s Day as well.
Ashanti said: “It seems necessary to appreciate Grace Nichols’s tribute for her mother- a woman who no doubt Nichols believed to be strong and wise.
She said: “Nichols makes sure to lace this poem with her Caribbean heritage associating the warmth of her mother with the exotic blended aromas of traditional Caribbean foods by referencing plantain and crab’s leg. Don’t we all enjoy our mothers' Sunday dinners! Yum!
“Nichol’s ends the stanza with a beautiful metaphor ‘replenishing replenishing’ demonstrating how a mother’s love for her child is eternally giving, not only with nourishment but in everything she does.
“Nichols’s mother, much like many of our mothers, encourages Nichols’s to be anything she wants to be, describing her future as wide – gender is definitely not a limit to this wise woman.”
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Kat Dennings - ‘The Catastrophic Alphabet’ in Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies by Scarlett Curtis.W is for wedding.
Don’t bother getting married until you're forty. You’re not going to like it.
If you’re looking for something short and sweet, take these lines from Kat Dennings’ ‘The Catastrophic Alphabet’ and share them with your friends.
Ashanti said: “Dennings writes an acrostic poem about how our mothers always fear their daughter’s kidnap and always manage to come up with the most exaggerated scenarios in their minds.
“Dennings ends each hypothetical situation with a kidnap. This line specifically, however, does not end in kidnap.
“Her mother simply but cleverly tells her not to get married too soon and to go and enjoy her life first.
“Her deliberate omittance of the word kidnap at the end of this line can infer she already views early marriage as a kind of kidnap which made me giggle. Live your life girls!”
On days I would not move
It was women
Who came to water my feet
Until I was strong enough
To stand
It was women
Who nourished me
Back to life.
Rupi Kaur is responsible for a number of feminist poems you’ll see all over your social media feeds, and ‘Sisters’ is particularly fitting for International Women’s...
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