Reaching the Stars at International Women’s Day, M Shed

Liz Brownlee ♦ March 6, 2017 ♦ 2 Comments

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On Saturday, I was at the International Women’s Day event hosted by Bristol Women’s Voice at the M Shed in Bristol – by the beautiful harbour in the city centre – here’s the view out of the window:

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I was there selling copies of Reaching the Stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls, pub. Macmillan, which I wrote with Jan Dean and Michaela Morgan.

We were situated next to SeeItFromHer, an organisation that focuses on giving a platform to women and girls in isolated or marginalised communities, or those who feel oppressed, to have a voice through photography, and we enjoyed the photos very much – having done photography at film school.

We had a great day, lots of interesting stalls, bought some wonderful beeswax candles from Hives and Herbals, listened to The Great Sea Choir from our seats, and sold lots of books.

One of the poems in our book, by Michaela Morgan, is about the matchgirls, who went on a march in 1888 to strike against the abysmal working conditions they were forced to work in. One of the women who came to our stall was the great, great granddaughter of the woman who organised the march – if anyone out there knows who this is, please get in touch as we’d love to hear from her – my brain was addled and I didn’t take any contact details.  My contact details are at the end of this post.

As usual at events I took along my giant animal poem jigsaw, and while their parents looked at the book, their children could puzzle! It’s always very popular:

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And here is Lola, patiently waiting on her blanket!

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If you are a school who would like to employ Jan (south U.K) , Michaela (Midlands) or myself (Bristol and west) to read and/or do workshops based on this book, get in touch! lizpoet @ gmail.com