I am pretty sure the unofficial theme of International Women’s Day 2016 is don’t give up. After all, we have got so far. Pity we have so much further to go.

As this is a writing blog, I’m sharing a poem that I wrote about my grandma Connie, who died a long time ago of breast cancer. So much has changed since then. (Check your breasts.)

So here’s the poem of the few that I sent to Faber and Faber in 1998 that was said to have ‘the best atmosphere’.

Connie

The large print novels with the lilac titles. She’d

Read without the light on. Her back was hunched from

Making tea in gasworks that now hang

Skeletal on the landscape. In the war she was beautiful

And wooed a Scottish footballer to the factory.

Then, years later, still up before the cock crowed, I’d ask

Why she wasn’t resting. ‘Layards to catch meddlers,’

her reply. She’d give me a sweet, and I’d suck it hard

To try to understand. And before she went out for a lager and

Lime or a game of bingo she performed the lipsil lipstick ritual.

At seventy-five she was still in its thrall.

(c) Rebecca Deans 2016