Judymay Is Listening – Mariah Whelon, From Worse To Verse

Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. Welcome. I'm Judy Mae Murphy. You're listening to women's radio station supporting women's well being here on Judy Mae's Listening. What we do is we make sure that you get a say that you're not feeling alone in your life, that you're not feeling, that you have these concerns, these worries, and that it's only you going through it, and you're going through it all on your own. Often in your life you have some people that you can speak to, but sometimes you feel that you opening up might hurt those people or might add to their anxiety. So this is just one place of many in the world where you can just be heard, be seen and know that you are not alone in this, that you have family, you have tribe, wonderful tribe of women. This is what I love about being a woman, is the fact that we are tribe, that we do see each other, that you're walking down the street and there's a woman and you know, you can tell she's been crying. You'll give that little sympathetic smile and nod in a way that, you know, maybe, maybe the guys don't have that so much. But with men's radio station, of course, they're moving in that direction. So welcome here to Judy Mayer's Listening. And in the studio today, we have, just as you, a wonderful group of people, including the poet Mariah Whelan, who I really admire, and not just because we have the same publisher. I would admire her anyway, and I'm so excited we're going to be talking to her all about how poetry can transform your life and how creativity can transform your life. And also, as usual, we have our station manager, Melis with us and you know, pushing all the buttons, doing all the technical stuff as she does so well, as she used to do in her own studio. So we're very grateful that she, that she now does it for us. And we have our associate producer, Elspeth with us too. Elspeth Proudlock, who cuts her own hair. Now, when I say that, it makes it sound. You've probably created some sort of vision of somebody like with, you know, those glue scissors that like little kids have sitting, sitting away with a bottle of champagne, just late at night, hacking away. But she actually does a really good job. She does a really good job. She knows what she wants and she makes it happen. So she came in today and she's feeling like her hair is a little bit shorter than she would like it. So. So shout out to anybody who's feeling like anything in their life is a little bit shorter than they would ideally like it. And we know that it's gonna grow. That's for everything, not just hair. Everything's gonna grow. We're gonna grow. Life grows around us. It's all good. We've got this. Elspeth, tell us, do we have some questions for today? We have one simp. It says, when I feel bad, I read sci fi or romance novels to escape the awfulness of it. I kid myself that at least I'm watching tv, but I don't want to be. So sorry. All good. I'm full of the cold. You are so. You're so full of cold today. Doing great. I kid myself that at least I'm watching TV or I'm not watching tv, but I don't want to keep escaping life. It's like books are my cocaine and whiskey or something. If I feel sorry if I start to read a proper book, I feel worse for start to read a proper book. Okay. As you know, I always, oh, we're losing Ellsworth to tuberculosis right here. It's all good. It's all good. I'm just, I'm so happy that you're here with us. You absolutely would have been excused for taking a duvet day. So if you're saying that, you know, I feel like I should be reading a proper book. So already you're kind of being a little bit tough on yourself and you're telling yourself that there's a way you should be doing life. And we tend to do this as women. We tend to look at either what other people are doing, or we project an idea of what is the best way to do things. And we compare ourselves to that. So often when people are talking about either jealousy or comparison, they talk about comparison to, say, models in a magazine or online or comparison to the person in your work who got the promotion. But we're doing it in subtle and often quite unhelpful ways to ourselves all the time. In that we are negatively projecting out this idea of what we should be like and finding ourselves at fault, finding ourselves falling short all the time. So why don't we just change how we think about that ideal? So instead of like, we should be reading so called proper novels. And I imagine by that that she means things like classic novels or things that are a little bit challenging or things that would be helping her to get more eloquent or whatever it is, is her idea of a proper novel, then it's kind of a shortcut to making yourself feel bad. You're saying I'm doing a less good thing than I could be doing. You know what, honey, you're doing what you need to be doing right now. And the fact that you can say to yourself, I would like to get myself to a point where I want to read a different kind of novel. Like I am struggling right now through a reread of Middlemarch. The first time I read it, I flew through it. Absolutely flew through it, loved it, read it in a weekend. I've been doing the reread for about three or four weeks now and I'm finding it tough to focus. And a lot of that is because I've been reading a lot of self help and a lot of poetry and I just haven't been reading those books, big old gloopy doorstep style novels for a while. It's okay. And it's certainly not any kind of indication about our worth or the kind of person that we are or what we're going to be capable of in a month or two's time. So it's not endless. It's not like you are now the kind of person who does this. It's like you're doing it right now. Okay, now that we've got that sorted, now that we're not giving the whole guilt trip to ourselves. So let's look at what you would prefer. Because you've written in, because there's something that you prefer. So at the beginning you said that you see she's reading elsewhere, what was it? Sci fi novels. Sci fi or romance novels. Okay, so what that tells me is that you're looking to escape. In fact, I think she says that herself, right? That she's looking to escape because that's why we read them, that's what they're there for. So if you are looking to escape and you quite rightly say, you know, at least you're not kind of just mindlessly watching tv, at least you're actively doing something, well then why not find some really, really good romance writer? I mean, I think there's a romance writer called Julia Quinn who is just absolutely divine, she's lovely. Or even going to Jane Austen, pretty much everyone's favorite, right? And I, I actually ended up, I'm going to show off here like crazy. Last week I was doing a motivational talk in Bristol and I stopped off in Bath and the house that Jane Austen used to live in. Used to be open to the public, I think as kind of holiday let's or something, but now it's privately owned. But I managed to get myself invited to sit in Jane Austen's living room where she lived for five years, sit and look out the window while drinking jasmine tea. So that's my Jane Austen moment for today. And just, just feeling that. And that is escapism. So wanting to escape isn't a bad thing. There are some people who will advocate, you know, you've got to be realistic and you've got to be in it the whole time. But, you know, we're human and we're already doing way more than our bodies and brains were designed to do. We were designed to, you know, do much more simple things, to live in a world where there was a lot less stimulus coming our way to, you know, our life expectancy was shorter, we weren't expected to, you know, excel and impress. There's a whole bunch of things that we are doing that we really aren't giving ourselves credit for. And we're really, you know, living quite complex lives. So. So let's stop being so tough and let's realize that we do need to be able to escape. It used to be that when the sun went down, you had to escape because there wasn't electric lighting and there wasn't anything you could do about it. So your brain got that break. These days we've got to give our brains that break and our bodies that break. So it sounds like sci fi and romance novels are a lovely way for you to do that right now. So the question then is, what is it that you're trying to escape? What is it in your life that isn't working the way that you would like? And just setting in place a few things that you can do. Is it that there are conversations that you need to have with people? Is it that there are ways that you need to ask for more support? Is it that you need to maybe stop helping other people with their lives so that you can focus on yourself? So all these are things that you can start to just gently explore, but the way that you're going to be able to explore them is by stopping giving yourself such a hard time. No one ever, like, angered their way into having a better life. You know, you can use anger and frustration as some kind of initial impetus, but definitely that kind of tight feeling can keep you very, very stuck. So this is what we're going to be talking about today with Mariah is the fact that, you know that creativity and poetry and literature, you know, it's not just an optional extra. It's not just something that you can, you know, that you're supposed to do. It's not a guilty pleasure. Because it seems to me as if. Sorry, what was the name of our listener again? There was no name. There was no name. Okay, great. That's always good. Do remember that whenever you write in, whenever you call, when. And you can do that at infoudiemay tv. And when you do that, know that you are completely safe. We're not going to give away any of your details. And if you don't give a name, then we just don't use a name, as you've just seen. So whoever you are. And what I would say is, instead, let's get more curious and more creative and say something like, right, okay, I've been reading these great novels. I've been going into fantasy. And reading is also a very creative act. And so you've already proven yourself to be good at joining other worlds and creating other worlds. So all of that good stuff that your brain has been absorbing, start to use that you can even ask yourself, what would such and such a character have done? Or if I was facing ruin the way that person is, what would I do? Is there some part of that that I need to do right now? So I would say that you sound like you're ready to bring it on somewhere else, to bring it to another level. Great. You can do that. Just because you've been doing something, even if it's something you've been doing for years, it doesn't mean that it's going to be part of the next part of your. I met someone recently who just got divorced, just broke up with her husband after 10 years. And it was a good thing for both of them, and they're both a lot happier. But up until a couple of months ago, there was no indication that she would be doing that different thing. So just because something's been going on for a long time, whether that is reading sci fi novels, being married to a particular person where it's not quite working for you, eating in a particular way, or drinking in a particular way, if you've been very sedentary or you've been kind of manic, it doesn't mean that that needs to be the next part. We have this wonderful capacity as humans, and particularly, I think, as women, to just reinvent ourselves, to transform ourselves. But we can only do that when we speak kindly to ourselves and we support ourselves. So more about that coming up soon. Welcome to Women's Radio Station hello and welcome to future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie Mae is listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting Women's well being and we're talking all things autism women. The possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Nicole Goodman. And I'm Lauren Mishkon and this is the Self Care Club podcast. The advice for self care today is endless and can feel like yet another overwhelming job for women. The Self Care Club is part social experiment, part reality show. Every episode we trial a different self care practice, live it to the letter for a week and report back to you on the results. Will it actually improve your well being or will it be another waste of your time? We test out self care so you don't have to. Welcome to the Self Care Club. My name is Ingrid Marsh and I host the radical well Being show supporting women's wellbeing. On my show I bring you ordinary women like me and you who are sharing their unique stories. Women who have refused to be defined by their pains to be silenced by stigma or crushed by stereotypes and who are taking back their power. And together, our mission is a simple one and that's to inspire you to kick away the roadblocks too, to don your wings and be the person that you were born to be. Do you want to be a doula? Would you like to support families through pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period? Do you have qualities of compassion, listening, caring and empowering? At Nurturing Birth we offer approved doula training courses across the UK which are facilitated by an award winning doula. Here you will learn more about the support you can offer, explore the doula role and think about how to set up your business. No need for previous qualifications. Find out more@nurturingbirth.co.uk hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover and mental health advocate and you can listen to my show get booked here at Women's Radio station daily at 5am and 5pm throughout my shows we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chapter authors, publishers and book enthusiasts, all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch@presentersomensradiostation.com join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. You're listening to Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being. Women's radio station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter, womensradio station. That's womensradiostn or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back. You are here at WRS Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being. I'm Judy Mae Murphy and here with me today we have our wonderful guest, Mariah Whelan. I'm just checking that I was going to say Whelan. Right. Because I have a tendency to get everyone's last name wrong, but Mariah is a name I love and know really, really well. But I also remember that people, some people couldn't say that. Why do I remember that? Was it our publisher, who was. It was at the launch. At the launch. We had a big launch for all our poetry books and somebody couldn't get their head around that. Well, poor Todd has put such effort into calling me Mariah instead of Maria. Oh, really? That was, that was the effort and he was it. It's Mariah. And then he said, wellan, do you know what? That's where my fear came from. So it's your birthday today. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. From traveling down from Oxford to be with us on your birthday and in fact, from a small town outside Oxford, which sounds kind of idyllic. Is it idyllic to live? I mean, I'm just such an inner city girl. I live in Soho. So. Yeah. What, what is it like living somewhere like that? And is it something that you would recommend to other women? That's a really interesting, complicated question. In Chipping Norton, which is where I'm from, people will know it from the Chipping Norton set. David Cameron used to live there. The Beckham still lived there. Jeremy Clarkson lives there. And I think I didn't know that because I've been there, but I didn't know this. Yeah, it's got one of those. You know the Soho farmhouse. Yes. It's like a country retreat for the Soho Group. And I think if you have the means available to you to get yourself from point A to B to be able to pay your rent and buy a house. Yeah, great. Brilliant place to live. Yeah. If you've got, if you've got your Bentley sorted. But if you're still working up to that, then it can be a little more isolating, maybe. Yeah. There's no industry. So what are you going to do for a job if you've not Got a car to travel to one of the local larger towns. Where are you going to work? The bus service is unreliable and breaks down, so. And I, I do definitely think that because at the moment, with my financial situation, I'm just finishing a PhD, so it's a reduced circumstance time. But when I'm using things like public transport, it's always women on buses with prams who've been waiting in the rain to get the bus. And I think that's an interesting question of is it a good place for a woman to live. Yes, if you have certain things in place to support your lifestyle. Otherwise it can be quite hard. And poverty in England is a. Is a big deal. That is so fascinating because immediately when you started to describe where you lived, I had this great big pang of jealousy and thinking, you know, we always go to the grass is greener when we're creating pictures of other people's lives. But you're so right. And in fact that's something that I experienced in la. It was usually women and women of reduced circumstances who were there waiting an hour because the other bus had been cancelled, or waiting two hours because there was only a bus coming in two hours time. And I think that we know that throughout history that certain things have made things so much better for women. Things like washing machines, things like the pill. And I'm wondering if maybe every woman in the country should be given a segue. Yeah, just wheels. That we should just all have basic wheels. Yeah. And then that way, you know, women won't be spending so much of their life energy and their time just getting themselves and the kids from point A to point B. Because it is, you know, it is the mothers who tend to be the chauffeurs, isn't it? Yep. Even if both parties are working full time, do you think that's changing? Do you see things getting better for women in the UK or, you know, in academia in particular that you're very much a part of as a lecturer in Manchester University, do you see that it is getting better? Not particularly in that university, but just across the board. Because I remember when I was in academics, when I was. I did my master's in Trinity and I had done my undergrad there as well. And they ended up giving lecturing jobs to the guys who had been in my class who hadn't achieved academically as highly as I had. We were all doing post grad, but even after some of them dropped out, they were still allowed to keep lecturing. And I never, I did a three year Masters. I Never was allowed to do that because they just said, oh, we don't have any space, we don't have any space. And those guys who weren't even doing postgrad anymore who were lecturing and I just. Of course, as a woman you take the first thing you do is you take it desperately personally and you think it's you, but then you sort of realize that, hold on a second, there are no women lecturing in this department. And you sort of, then your brain starts to put two and two together. Do you find that to be a thing as well? I think there's probably more women than ever working in academia. And so in that sense it's probably improved demographics than it was even 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But I think shifts in how academics are now employed are unfavorably discriminating against women. Most, well, not most. An increasing number of academics are now employed on part time contracts on a non permanent basis. So you're only employed during term time and then you're let go at the end of every term and then have to be re employed. That unfavorably affects women because invariably when you are doing your family planning, you're thinking, okay, who's gonna be paying my maternity leave or who's going to be paying me so that I can have some cover in the holidays? And women don't tend to question that or stand up for themselves because the way we're taught to internalize misogyny and think, oh, I'm not good enough, that's the reason why I'm not getting paid. And we do go there, we do go there extraordinarily quickly. Like we jump right there, don't we? We, we just sort of say it's because, you know, the reason this person has a problem with me or the reason this person can't deliver what it is that I reasonably expect is because I am somehow flawed and broken. And I think that that is even a message that, you know, comes through through literature and through poetry a lot of the time. I mean, we look at some of our favorite authors and how they had to use male names. We even look at the way some of them wrote and the fact that even they didn't champion women. This is why I think we love Jane Austen, is because she did actually write it from the woman's point of view. But you look at a lot of the women writers and you sort of think, wow, get onside girl. Well, it's hard if you've only been taught that there are certain possibilities for what it Means to be a woman and live a woman's life. To break through that, I imagine, must be almost impossible. It's hard enough for me as a very empowered woman in 2020, but writing 100 years ago, when I hadn't had access to the things that helped me wake up. Yes. I can't imagine what I'd be like. I imagine I would have toed the line and blamed myself. Because when we look at someone like Emily Dickinson, you know, the fact that she didn't have to have to work, but even she was expected to just be in the parlor and be receiving people and be part of family life. When she first started writing poetry, she had to ask permission to have a couple of hours a day where she was working on her poetry. Whereas before I heard that story, I just presumed that, hey, she could just do what? She could just write all day, every day. Wouldn't it be lovely to be Emily Dickinson and then you learn that? No, the idea that we need to be controlled, the idea that we don't have autonomy over our own time, over our own resources, was there for her as well. But at the same time, I think for poetry, because you can actually write it in shorter bursts and you can sit down, you can be inspired, and then get back to whatever you need to get back to. I think poetry has often been a good alternative for women to be creative to longer forms compared to longer forms. Yeah, it can be a briefer process, for sure, But I think you're talking about those brief bursts often. It's a bit like a swan in the sense that there's the swan, the very calm part at the top that's on top of the water, and then underneath, it's like the manic feet paddling away. You need time and freedom to do all that unconscious processing in addition to the times when you're sat down. I do think contemporary life can impinge on your unconscious time to process things. Do you think that poetry also, whether reading or writing it, is a really good way to be able to help with that process? Like that method of kind of. I guess what I'm going toward is I see quite a lot of good poetry as therapy is in the writing of its therapeutics and the reading of it just bringing you somewhere else, giving new ideas, letting something come out that maybe wouldn't have come out, or receiving something in that wouldn't have been received. I think that's a really interesting question about the therapeutic possibilities of poetry, because it's very much dismissed as a therapeutic process and sort of that deeply personal writing about the self and your experiences is dismissed a lot of the time. Sort of highbrow. I'm doing inverted commas here. Hi, Rafields. But I think for me personally, I see a lot of commonality between the therapeutic process and writing poetry because the therapeutic process is often about making connections based on feelings and what feels authentic and meaningful rather than what I should be doing and received forms of communicating and making connections and actually thinking. If I forget everything the world's been telling me, what would I actually say? Oh, I love that. If I forget what the world's been telling me, what would I actually say? Yeah. And that is an extraordinary. Yeah, an extraordinary thing to wonder. Because the world is saying so much to us as women. It's saying so many contradictory things a lot of the time. And what I love about writing is it's kind of what Julia Cameron calls meeting yourself on the page. This idea of, okay, well, this is who the world is telling me I am, but this is who I'm deciding I am. For today, for whatever it's worth. We're going to be back after this short break talking more to Mariah Whelan, all about poetry and literature and creativity in general and what that can mean for women and what a great way to celebrate your birthday. I think so. Thank you. Oh, gosh, absolutely. Absolutely. And remember that you know, anything that you have to say is valid. So if you are listening right now and you're like, you know what, I feel that this is important that it gets out here. Do write to us on Judy Mae is listening and we will make sure that you are featured on a show in the future. Welcome to the Women's radio station supporting women's well being. Women's radio station is all about diversity from a opinions, career, ethnicity, education and most importantly, women's well being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. Do you want to be a doula? Would you like to support families through pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period? Do you have qualities of compassion, listening, caring and empowering? At Nurturing Birth we offer approved doula training courses across the UK which are facilitated by an award winning doula. 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For more information on how you can sponsor a Show, go to womensradiostation.com Women's radio station supporting women's wellbeing. Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. I'm Judy Mae Murphy and you are listening to women's radio station here in studio today. We have Mariah Whelan as well as our usual tribe of gorgeousness all sitting around here today. And the discussion today is about women and creativity, particularly because both myself and Mariah are poets. She has her wonderful collection called the Love I Do to you, which that title just blows me away. The love I do to you. And I also have my book out which is called Monster Proof Poetry and those are both with eyewear publications. So please either go to the eyewear website and pick up a copy or you can do it on Amazon or if you have a really good poetry book, Locally. And I think it's important that we do that. Not only that we create, but we also read other women's creations because very often men's work is favoured. There's a great bookstore here in SoHo called the Second Shelf. And it, because Alison, the woman who runs it, is just so extraordinary, she realized that the vintage books or the collector's items from women were being sold at a fraction of the price of the one for men. So you could have a book out by a man. Book's not that famous, Man's not that famous. But a first edition will be realizing five times more than a first edition by a woman where the book is famous and the woman is famous. And so she was, she's like, enough of that, no nonsense. And she has this incredible, like, little world of a bookstore, like, where they're all so lovely and so welcoming. We'll talk to you, we'll talk you through things, we'll find out what you like, we'll introduce you to new things. And I think it's really important that we do read each other because it's a form of listening to each other. And if you think of it like a dining room table where, you know, if we're only listening to the men, well, then after a while the women are going to stop speaking. If we're only reading the men, then after a while the women aren't going to feel as compelled to write. So I think it's really, really important. So please do go and buy Mariah Whelan's book, the Love I Do to youo. You'll be very, very happy that you did. Elspeth, you had a really great question during the break that I'd love for everybody to hear. Thank you. So as a woman who writes poetry about love, how much stick and pushback have you got from it? Or if you got any. Yeah. Do you feel like you have to kind of be more serious because you want to be taken seriously? Got more to prove as a woman. I've had loads of stick for writing love poetry, absolutely loads. And I definitely had a huge chip on my shoulder that came out of what I felt drawn to write about. I wanted to write about these deeply personal experiences of being in my 20s, living all over the world and a failed relationship. And it was only, I think, through getting onto a master's program at the University of Oxford that I felt I had the legitimacy to even start writing about those subjects. Before then, I'd only been writing prose style blogs about my life while I was living it Traveling all around the world. But that's just fascinating because you've got writers like in Russia you've got Turingev, and in Germany you've got Goethe. And they write the most sappy, saccharine books about like literally dying of love or you know, you know that they love someone and then found out that they were having an affair with the writer's father and all this stuff. And it's somehow legitimized because they're a man. So it's interesting when a man writes about it. It's boring when a woman writes about it. Why do you think that is? Well, I don't think it's true, number one. Well, I'll tell you an anecdote. When I was at Oxford, a very well respected poet came up to me after I'd finished reading my sonnets. I read some poems from my book at a college dinner and came up, singled me out, found me and asked me why. Why do young, pretty blonde women, I'm blonde by the way, only ever write and young unprety. Why do they only ever write about love and sex and then didn't pause for breath and then said, is it because it's the only intense experience they feel? Yes. Death doesn't touch us. No. Poverty doesn't touch us and justice doesn't touch us. It's just the only thing in our life is getting our heart broken. I mean, hello. Yeah. And I just felt so when that happened to me. I think this is such an interesting feeling that I felt. I felt ashamed, I didn't feel angry, I didn't feel like correcting him because he was in a position of authority. He was more intelligent than I am. He's a better writer than I am. He's got all the authority, so he must be right. I just felt deeply, deeply ashamed of my work. Of my work. Well, just so that we can hear how your work is extraordinary, would you like to share a poem with us? Yes, I'd love to. Thank you. So the book is dedicated to all the women in my life who saved me, including myself. So there's a little self dedication. I love that. And it is a. It's a novel in sonnet. So it's. It tells a story. And the story is a failed love story really between a man and a woman. But it's also a love story that's very positive and fruitful between a brokenhearted woman and her friends. So I think I will read a sonnet from quite late in the book actually. And her friends looking after her after the breakdown of a relationship. That's pretty much what you need to know. Oh, that's what we're all about here on wrs. Looking after each other. Exactly. So this sonnet is called Pacific Jonan Dori Hiroshima because every title in the book is a place where the action is taking place. I think I might have been a bit deluded, I said as Kristen sat beside me on the bathroom floor, letting her hand trail in the water. You wouldn't be the first, she said, frowning, swirling the white suds round and round the tub. But deep down, I felt so sure. Still feel he'll turn up and surprise me. Did I ever tell you he always knows where I am? I asked, rubbing a line of bubbles from my lip. Yeah, babe, you did. I gave up and let my shoulders sink into the water. Kristen sat quietly with me while I cried. When I was done, she took the towel she was warming and wrapped me in it. She dried my hair. She helped me with my buttons. She lay beside me, our bodies two question marks watching the neon sky all the ceilings of my life had clattered through my guts Lord, I prayed make me strong enough to give him up. Oh wow. That is something that so many women are going to be able to relate to. Lovely. Thank you for that. Thank you. And you know, I think that this is a really important part of us being tribe as women and being there for each other is finding new ways to share our experiences that aren't just us complaining and staying stuck. I think that, you know, if you were to just, you know, just keep complaining, as, you know, we have every right to do and sometimes that's what we need to do. But I think when we take it to that next level and we turn it into art, we get that little bit of objective distance and we get that little sense of time and sense of ourselves as being something extraordinary in the universe. And it's very healing, a very, very healing way to move forward. And I think those conversations, you know, we want to unload on our friends. I think usually it's the human need to be seen and to have someone say, I see your pain. I see what's happened to you. And if someone can't quite articulate their own pain and then they can see themselves in one of your poems, then you've really helped them to kind of go that, that's it. And help them to be seen through what it is that you've articulated that they can relate to. Absolutely. That's why we read, right? To find ways to see ourselves, but also the great thing about writing for me is it's become a way of seeing myself. Like, I don't need as much for someone to say, I see what you're going through. I see that this is hard for you. I can say, I know that about myself, and what you're doing is quite brave and valid. Yes. And then say, well, what would you like to do next? Rather than staying in that stuck place that you're talking about. It helps develop a connection as well, between. Okay, what makes me feel good using that to take you forward. And something that I know you do is you help people with their creative writing. What's it like when you help a woman to put something down in the form of a poem? I think it's a. For me, it's. I think, a sacred practice, really. That probably sounds very overblown, but that's really what I feel. Helping women, especially to put down their thoughts and feelings and to see themselves in writing is very, very important to me. And it's hugely transformational. And I think also because most of the students I work with are 18 to 21, I think if you can get. If you can help create opportunities for people to get into the habit of doing that, it can change the course of their lives. I really wish there had been someone like you. When I was at university, I remember at university, I wrote some poems, read them to one person again. The guy that was supposed to be the big writer on campus shared my poetry with him. And I asked him outright, what did you think? Hoping he'd say even something like, there's something in there. Or I liked this line. But instead he just said, well, everyone's poetry is terrible. And I didn't write poetry for another 15 years, just. And I had loved up until that point from, like, from 16 to 20, I had loved writing poems. Such a redundant comment as well, like, often critic critique of the writing, of the words, rather than just a value judgment. That's so unhelpful. Yes. But I think that his. I think what he wasn't trying to do was be helpful. I think as women, we presume because we're so helpful and we're always, you know, cooperative with each other, we're often presuming that that is what. What other people will want to do as well. But, you know, he got the job done. The job was to make sure that I didn't threaten his status as big writer on campus. Anyway, we will go more into depth with this right after these. You're listening to women's radio station I'm Judy Mae Murphy. This is Judy Mae is Listening. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Judy Mae is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being and we're talking all things autism women. The possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Nicole Goodman. And I'm Lauren Mishkon and this is the Self Care Club podcast. The advice for self care today is endless and can feel like yet another overwhelming job for women. The Self Care Club is part social experiment, part reality show. Every episode we trial a different self care practice, live it to the letter for a week and report back to you on the results. Will it actually improve your well being or will it be another waste of your time? We test out self care so you don't have to. Welcome to the Self Care Club. My name is Ingrid Marsh and I host the radical well Being show supporting women's wellbeing. On my show I bring you ordinary women like me and you, who are sharing with their unique stories, women who have refused to be defined by their pains to be silenced by stigma or crushed by stereotypes and who are taking back their power. And together our mission is a simple one and that's to inspire you to kick away the roadblocks too. To don your wings and be the person that you were born to be. Do you want to be a doula? Would you like to support families through pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period? Do you have qualities of compassion, listening, caring and empowering? At Nurturing Birth we offer approved doula training courses across the UK which are facilitated by an award winning doula. Here you will learn more about the support you can offer, explore the doula role and think about how to set up your business. No need for previous qualifications. Find out more@nurturingbirth.co.uk hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover and mental health advocate and you can listen to my show. Get booked here at Women's Radio station daily at 5am and 5pm throughout my shows we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers and book enthusiasts, all with the theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch@presentersomensradiostation.com join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. You're listening to Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter, womensradio station, that's womensradiostn or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. You are welcome back to Women's Radio Station. I'm Judy Mae Murphy. You're listening to Judy Mae is listening where we are listening to what it is that's going on for you and we're making sure that your life is transformed in the way that feels really, really good to you in your own time frame. It's okay. There's no huge rush. We've got this. We can have a sense of urgency and also be patient at the same time. Things are changing. Things are getting better. We have been speaking in studio today to Mariah Whelan, poet, writer extraordinaire. And a thing we were just talking about in the break was this bias towards women writers, particularly when it comes to things like reviews. Well, we really just had a big old. Isn't it exhausting about the whole being a woman anything but also just that fact of you're more likely to get a not good review if you are a woman. And some people have actually done the work on work on proving this, saying, yes, look, there's all these works and they got say, you know, if it was three stars and these works they got five stars where they clearly didn't deserve it. What is your experience of that? Do you find that it is just, you do have to be twice as good, minimum. Twice as good minimum. And then if we were women of color, it would be ten times more again. Yes, exactly. Absolutely. I suppose the most acute way I have to deal with it is when you finish a model teaching a module at university, you get reviews and they've looked at the gender dynamics of it and if you are performing as a woman, you will get worse reviews. Why are all these women actually worse than their male colleagues? No, we know they're very often better. It is bias. Absolutely. It's bias. And it's even things they think to do with the notes, the notes that women make when they're speaking higher pitched voices. It's little unconscious things like that that apparently because we associate deep male voices with authority from being little, those are the kind of things you're working against. And that's all happening on an unconscious level. None of, none of these lovely students are actively thinking, but they are just unconsciously thinking. They're unconsciously doing higher voice, lack of certainty. Lack of certainty means it's not good material or it's not. It's not right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have a couple of really close friends who work in Hollywood on sitcoms, and both of them kind of rose up to be showrunners, so they actually were running entire sitcom series. So these are highly, highly capable women and the stories that they tell. One woman tells a story. Her name is Diane Burrows. I know she won't mind me sharing this, because she's just fantastic. And she's spoken about this in public many times. But when she was early on working on very, very famous shows, she was told by someone in the script room she was the only woman there. So of course, she was only called on. It's like, well, what would a woman do in that situation? And her reply was, yes, because all women act the exact same way and react the exact same way. We're all the same. So that's the only reality that would validate that question. But she said she was told not to speak in the script room, that her voice was annoying because it was too high. And she doesn't have a particularly high voice. And even if she did. But there is that idea that we've been trained that, you know, that deeper voices have that kind of authority because they have that sort of certainty behind them. So a man can get up and he can speak absolute rubbish in a deeper voice, and a woman can say, oh, actually, I have a PhD in this. Actually, I'm trained in this. Or actually, it's been proven that. And he will still be believed. It's kind of like his confidence over her expertise every single time. And, you know, as we were saying during the break, it's exhausting. It is exhausting. So when, if we look at the poet, one of my favorite poets is the Japanese poet Kaneko, and she was in Japan, and she sadly killed herself, I think, at the age of about 30. And she had wonderful poems like Stars and Dandelions is one of my favorite poems. And she. All she could do was just do the work. She just did the work, sadly. Then, you know, her husband took her child away after they got divorced, and she just couldn't go on. And. And. Which is very common. Yes, absolutely. And it's because I know a lot of your book is. A lot of the poetry is based in Japan because you. You spent time out there. How do you. How do you feel it is. You feel it's even more difficult for women in Japan. Oh, I don't think I can answer that question because. Well, I will answer that question in a very specific way. What was it like for me as a British woman? Did it feel harder for me? Did, like, because ultimately, when I was thinking about, okay, do I want to build a life here? It was things like, to get the pill, I did need to be married. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Okay. That's just blown me away because I've spent time in Japan and it seems. Well, it does seem on many levels to be a very sophisticated society, but you have to be married to get the pill in Japan. M. Oh, my goodness. And if you divorce, you won't get your kids. Most likely, they'll probably be with their father. There's still a bias in the courts in terms of awarding primary custody to fathers. So are women blamed, do you think, more like, if there's a problem, is it more likely that women are going to be seen as the source of the problem, or at least the person that has to clean up the problem? My friends who were Japanese women who got divorced absolutely seemed like they were to blame. Absolutely. So, like Kaneko, one thing we can do, and like Emily Dickinson and many of our tribe coming before us is we can just sit down and write the poetry and know that over time it's going to get out there that, you know, women poets might not sell as much as male poets, but over time that our word will get out there and it will help build the tribe and get us to the next better place. Yeah. And I think it's a question of, who do you want to reach with your poetry? For a long time, I was killing myself because I was thinking, okay, I need to win the T.S. eliot Prize, which is like a big national poetry prize. I don't care about that anymore. I care about writing poems to and for my community of women writers who I love. And in a way, I always thought that was a giving up, like, not fighting for that sort of national recognition. Okay, so somehow, yeah, that pleasing the establishment was more important than helping other women and focusing on the work as well. But in so many ways, isn't that the message that we're getting? That somehow pleasing the establishment, fitting in, being lovely is somehow more important than just being genuine and being angry. And if you remember at the launch that we had, you actually, you told that story about what the guy had said to you. And I was so angry that I got up and I just did a very angry, dripping with anger kind of poem. And just took the permission to do that. It's sort of like, well, we're, you know, we're not going to be given the accolades that we want. If we have to work this hard, we might as well get something for ourselves from it. We might as well write in a more genuine way. And we might as well just be angry when we're angry, sad when we're sad, and. And maybe not try and have that be okay with men. Yeah, absolutely. I think I. Before I started my PhD, I'm just coming to the end of one, you know, four years ago, I genuinely believed that if I didn't win the T.S. eliot Prize, it's because I wasn't as good a writer as I should be compared to my male peers. But now the amount I know about the industry and having worked and published and, you know, come second in lots of competitions and third in lots of competitions is a stacked game. And I remember being younger and looking at people who said what I say now and thinking, well, she's just saying that because she's not good enough, but it's just not true. No, you're right. I mean, I actually don't put my stuff forward for competition because of that. Because it's. And again, you know, it's just. It's the opinion of a group of people, a small group of people, it's their preference in a certain window of time. And it really doesn't say anything about your ability, your ability as a poet or the poem itself, because it could be that that's the very poet that a year later, somebody who was on that committee that decided you should be in third place, that could be the poem that saves their life. So, yeah, this. I always think that it was really sad when it happened in architecture that people became so focused on competition and winning competitions. And I'm sad to say that, you know, a lot of poetry is going the same way and a lot of people are being charged money to enter competitions. Oh, yeah, it cost a small fortune. There are people who. That's their business is they set up a poetry competition and have people send in money, read the poems, award the prize, and then do it all again six months later. And. And I think that that is a. Is a shame for poetry because it's just so much more powerful than that. We can do so much more with it. So what is your. What. What is your future plan with your poetry? My future plan with my poetry? Well, I had the book out last year. I've got another short pamphlet coming out this year. Which looks at ideas of archives and uses archives to think about my own unconscious participation in white supremacy in my writing. So to think about the racial politics of writing. So I've been using sort of poetry in more of an academic way and then finishing another book at the moment which sort of thinks about Brexit and international politics through the frame of fathers and daughters. Then I think I might be done with writing whole books of poetry. I might turn to other genres, other forms, and then keep writing poetry when I feel more moved to do so, but actually switch. But I imagine that you are someone who you will always be heard, that you will always insist on, you know that your experience is valid and that in some way you won't be buried. Yes. And I'm. But I'm definitely looking for ways of feeling, of being heard that feel really good to me. That's a brand new journey. Oh, wonderful. Oh, happy birthday, Mariah Wheeler. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being here and sharing. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And remember, you need to go out and you need to buy the love I do to you. That's out with eyewear. And while you're there, Monster Proof poetry by Judy May Murphy. Why not? So have an amazing week. This is a week that a lot of people are saying is a kind of a tough week because it's the third week of January. But you know what, you can show them how it's done. We can show them that, you know what, we can be strong, we can be happy, we can just live our best lives. Because living your best life really is the best cure for everything and it's the best way to be an inspiration and uphold each other. So let's just be there for each other this week. Have a great one. See you soon. 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