Women don't write, he said

The remarkable poet Christine Webb has kindly allowed us to use this thoughtful and thought-provoking piece from her 2004 debut collection, After Babel. 

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 It was not the fruit

It was not the fruit she took

but the wood

not its flesh she chewed

but a pulpy fibre

(warm in that cavity

so various, ingenious

close to the brain

mother of language

thought shaper)

– spat out, finally

moulded and flattened

into rough leaves

a little bigger than the figs'

and drier

and for ink?

there were the experimental

berries, saps – ground

insects, even –

or the last resort,

the slow ooze

of red.

No problem of what

to say: creation 

all around, bursting

into words... In The 

Beginning... 

A shadow 

fell across the page as 

she squatted, rapt. – Women

don't write, he said

And screwed up her bible

Christine Webb

from After Babel, pub. Peterloo, 2004