Poem 03

Listen to Giovanna reading Poem 03

In the UK, in March, we celebrate mothers.
Well, maybe “celebrate” isn’t quite right. We have one day where we are encouraged to buy a variety of mass-produced goods, the gifting of which is meant to represent gratitude for a year of everything that a mother does.

Motherhood is not perfume and flowers.
In my experience, it is a relationship of never-ending complexity, a sacrifice, an altering, a choice that feels less chosen when every society tells us motherhood is a woman’s true purpose – and does not tell us the constraints we gain by accepting it.

There are two billion mothers in the world.*
For 100million of them, the father of their children is not present.**
Every year, around 285,000 women die due to pregnancy complications or during childbirth. That’s one every two minutes.***

Instead of cards and chocolates, I wish supermarkets sold tokens that gifted 24hours without the bone-deep burden of maternal responsibility.

How do you survive as a mother?

What of the women that have chosen not to be mothers? Or who cannot be?
Where is your societal space and how do you live in it?

*https://financebuzz.com/mothers-day-statistics
** https://makemothersmatter.org/leave-no-single-mother-behind-solutions-from-across-the-world/
*** https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality
March 30th 2025 is Mother’s Day in the UK.

Giovanna is The Museum of Loss and Renewal’s Poet in Residence in 2025. Giovanna was an actor, and a journalist, and is now a poet and creative facilitator. Her poem Silenced by My Mother’s Tongue has recently been included in the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems list. Giovanna has been Poet in Residence for the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at University of Dundee and is part of the creative team working on Scotland’s Remembering Together Covid Memorial project. Her first collection, How the Heart can Falter, is available from The Museum of Loss and Renewal Publishing.

One poem is being published here each month. At the end of the year the poems will be brought together in a publication by The Museum of Loss and Renewal Publishing.