The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Friday Poem on 13/01/23

We chose ‘Sisters,’ by Karen Smith to be our Friday Poem this week because sometimes it’s good to be reminded of how far we’ve come – the contraceptive cap has replaced half a lemon, condoms have replaced the pig or goat bladder, and both the Pill and the morning after pill are more reliable than any herbal remedy. Having said that, it’s also true that women and girls’ reproductive rights are currently under attack all around the world. Smith’s poem highlights how, in the seventeenth century, abortion was not seen as wrong if it took place before the foetus had quickened – around the fifth month – and the link below the poem explains that the woman herself decided when this had happened. In some ways, then, women today have less autonomy. Smith revels in the terminology of the time, demonstrating a nice way with line breaks and a keen eye for a telling phrase. As a last resort the ‘fallen’ woman is exhorted to trust to faith, rather than nature, and we all know how that’s going to play out. We think it’s a great poem, topical, clever and provocative.

Sisters,

there are ways to protect yourselves
from the perils of quickening in these 
days of proscription. After the event, hold 

your breath, sit with your knees bent
and sneeze out the seed, or prior
plug yourself with nettle leaves, the skin 

of half a lemon, a rod of dung, a stopper 
of tar or beeswax slicked with honey, sup
a brew of pepper, madder, rue and savin

to supplement his Venus glove, worked
from lambskin or the bladder of a goat, 
rinse in a cold bath of ginger and vinegar,

a swill of sheep urine or honeysuckle juice,
warm some weasel parts on your inner thigh,
or let a cupful of blood from your right foot

and if you still suffer, and you have a reading eye,
consult your herbal or household manual
for the recipe for ‘Cover Shame’ and other

purgative potions for troublesome growths
yet to be ensouled (it is no crime!) and if not 
your midwife or lady apothecary can send 

rumour of physicks, and if all else fails, sisters, 
pray, for the Lord knows nature herself will always 
bend to any young wench of simplest faith.

Scott, Caitlin: ‘Birth Control and Conceptions of Pregnancy in Seventeenth-Century England’ in Retrospectives, Spring 2013.

Karen Smith is a wild swimming enthusiast, librarian and poet from Uckfield, East Sussex. She loves working at the National Poetry Library, on London’s South Bank. Since 2018, she’s been collaborating with Kin’d & Kin’d, an Ecopoetry collective of writers and artists. Her pamphlet Schist (Smith|Doorstop) was published in 2019 as part of the Laureate’s Choice Series and she is currently working on a first collection inspired by water.

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