In collaboration with Keele University and with Arts Council funding, ’Older Women Rock!’ is now in North Staffordshire with a project ‘Poetry [E]motion’, bringing together poetry-writing and listening partnerships.
The base for the project is an ‘Older Women Rock!’ pop-up exhibition in an empty shop at York Place, 27 High Street, Newcastle-under-Lyme, ST5 2AE [next to Holland & Barrett]
The exhibition runs from 13 June – 29 July 2017
Tuesdays and Wednesdays 11am-2pm
Thursdays 11am-4pm
Lines on the window are from a group poem written by local older women
‘Speaking as an older woman who is sick and tired
of this novel paunch and the need to nap,
speaking as an older woman from India who rearranged her life
for a Stokie man fifty three years ago and loves it still,
speaking as an older woman who is witnessing family
slipping through her fingers like fine sand,
I see that hope is the burst of a sherbert lemon on the tongue
and a lump of sugar, brittle and dense, that never quite dissolves
Speaking as an older woman who asks you to look into her eyes
to see the youth and fun within her,
speaking as an older woman who doesn’t feel old,
whose mind still races as it always did
but whose body tends to lag behind,
speaking as an older woman who is not the reason
for the collapsing NHS and pension funds,
I see that hope is the ascent from base camp
up the crevices of determination, pain and love
to the oxygen burst at the summit’
Older Women Rock! 