On the face it, my focus for this year’s International Women’s Day, unlike the focus here, here and here may appear disordered and quite random when it actually isn’t.

This year I celebrate a short and disparate list of women who have faced enormous challenges.

Shirely Ann Jackson is a physicist who received her PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the first African American woman to do so. I am currently pursuing a science-based degree and this fabulous woman inspires me (especially when I get stumped when drawing D and L Haworth Projections glucose structures).

Selima Gerima. Teza, the film she co-produced with her brother Haile Gerima has just won the Etalon d’Or de Yennenga (Golden Stallion of Yennega) at the 40th anniversary pan-African FESPACO film festival in Ouagadougou in competition with 18 other films. The film is about repression under the Mengistu Haile Mariam regime. Congratulations. This win will no doubt inspire the thousands of African women and girls who want to work in films.

I have always written poetry while listening to music and to my mind, the poems that have been the most fun to write are the ones when listening to cool blues and jazz and especially the music of long-departed divas, such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. This year, I celebrate Bessie Smith who achieved so much in an age where black people were treated like second class citizens.

Bessie Smith (1894 — 1937). Also known as the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith had perfect timing and a remarkable voice. A great singer, she had a distinctive interpretation and her unique style and delivery influenced many musicians then and now. She was a tough cookie by all accounts and I smile when I listen to ‘Gimmie a Pigfoot’:

Up in Harlem ev’ry Saturday night when the high-brows git together it’s just too tight,
They all congregates at an all night strut and what they do is tut-tut-tut..
Old Hannah Brown from ‘cross town gets full of corn and starts breakin’ ‘em
down.

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‘Each year, around 1 in 10 women in Britain experience rape or other violence. One in four local authorities leave female victims of violence without the specialised support they need’. Ethnic minority women are especially badly affected.

This is the shocking message for International Women’s Day for Amnesty International UK’s campaign on violence against women.

If you go to Map of Gaps, you can see which services are missing in your local area and email your MP, asking them to do something to about it. Further information can also be found here

Every year (and sometimes on specific occasions), I post a poem I had written several years, well knowing that words are never enough and sometimes it is just too late. The poem is reproduced below:

If only we had known
The first time it happened
She wore dark glasses, wept all day
Hormones, we sniggered

The second time it happened
Walked into a wall she said
Alcohol, we smugly declared
Signed her cast, wished her well

The third time it happened
Fell down the stairs she said
And wouldn’t smile
Lover’s tiff, we winked

The fourth time it happened
A bee stung her she said
Frolicking in the park, we laughed
The fifth time it happened

She didn’t come in
We heard she was broken
Like a toy
Which no-one could
Ever
Put back together again

If only
We had known
We cried

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On International Women of Colour Day, I celebrate by highlighting the work of Magdalene Odundo, Professor of Ceramics at the University College for the Creative Arts.

I cherish the memory of a workshop I attended where Magdalene, soft spoken and charming, presented her work. We, the audience, gave a collective gasp of awe and admiration as we watched her hands adroitly create poetry from clay as she built a stunning pot from scratch – a process brilliantly executed in the most superbly simple way one could imagine.

Magdalene’s work has been exhibited in many places including the Crafts Council at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg and the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire. Her work is also found in museums worldwide including the Smithsonian, the Gardiner Museum and in private collections. Due to their uniqueness and excellence, the works are sold for quite large sums of money – in 2006, for example, a piece of art was sold for £28,405.

If you look closely at her work, you can see the various forms of women represented; among them, flaring hips, the belly of a pregnant woman and a graceful long neck with the head elegantly tilted back.

Magdalene and her superlative art make me want to stand on a spire and tell the world: This is who we are. See what we are capable of.

Viva Magdalene.

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