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Showcasing our writing serves all the items listed on the WomanWords Statement of Purpose: sometimes it only takes reading/listening to another’s stories to spark our own Creative Fire; we are telling our stories, no matter what form they take in the writing; we are encouraging others to tell their stories simply by telling ours first (someone’s gotta go first!); and we empower ourselves and each other every time our voices are heard.
This page will change, as Marilyn solicits writing from various groups and women connected in some way with WomanWords. And we expect to archive the writings as well. Eventually, it may move toward a more general submissions policy. For right now, though, you’ll enjoy poetry and perhaps some short prose from invited groups of women—and hopefully get inspired to write a few lines yourself!WILD WOMEN WRITING
Wild Women Writing began close to four years ago when Marilyn Day decided she needed a small group, less structured than the WomanWords workshops and meeting more often. She invited a small number of women to join, and they now gather at individuals’ houses. They write from prompts, without a facilitator, although Jan and Marilyn tend to be the ones to bring the prompts. Members include: Jodi Ackerman, Marilyn Zembo Day, Linda Kaplan, Pamela Mitchell, Marion Perkus (who has moved out of the area but continues to drive from further downstate as often as possible to join them), Judith Prest, and Jan Marin Tramontano.
Why do these women write? Perhaps for different reasons on different days, but here are their responses (click on the name to go to the writing):
Jodi Ackerman (Saratoga Springs, NY): Whether in the form of a poem, essay or journal, writing for me is foremost therapeutic, bringing me into the world and relieving me of it as the same time.
Marilyn Zembo Day (Colonie, NY): I write because something inside pushes me to put it to paper; and because there is nothing else like the satisfaction of "getting it right," of putting words together that might affect someone else, whether it be to make them laugh, cry or simply say, "Yes, me too!"
Linda Kaplan (Guilderland, NY): I write because Marilyn said to repeat after her..."I am a woman who writes!"
Pamela Mitchell (Guilderland, NY): I write because, since childhood, it is and has always been my safe refuge. It is the place I go with questions and fear and uncertainty. It is the sure source of answers that seem to magically birth themselves as poems or stories, and through them I am renewed.
Marion Perkus (Bovina Center, NY): I write because something comes to me—a line of a poem, an idea, a memory – and it’s very satisfying to mold it, craft it into a form that I like. I write so that all those thoughts and memories and feelings get down on paper, and don’t have to go rattling around in my head anymore. I write for fun—just to see what wants to emerge.
Judith Prest (Duanesburg, NY): I write because language heals me. I write because I want to capture moments of life and learning before they vaporize into the fog of lost memory. I write because it is how my soul breathes.
Jan
Marin Tramontano (Guilderland, NY): Joan Didion articulated why
I write by saying, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking,
what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means, what I want and what I
fear."
