I Moved All My Women Upstairs

Beryl Baigent is a poet; her published collections include Absorbing the
Dark, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins, Triptych: Virgins, Victims,
Votives, and Mystic Animals.

Roberta Buchanan was born in South Africa, educated in England, and
emigrated to Canada in 1964. I Moved All My Women Upstairs is her first
book of poems.

The book is organized in three sections. Section 1, The World Above/The
World Below, contains a group of poems that draw on mythological images,
including the panther of European bestiaries, the thunderbird of America
and Africa, the Norse norns, and the pre-Vedic Great Mother Kali. These
images demonstrate the strength of women and the poet’s desire to
teach younger women to “[b]low [their] own trumpet, sing [their] own
song / ... Don’t shut up, open up.”

Section 2, Seasons, contains four poems. The first is a 15-syllabled
haiku admonishing “[b]itter spring.” In “Elemental Poem,” the
poet explores the yin and yang of air, fire, water, and earth, drawing
on ancient correspondences, while also acknowledging air pollution,
death camps, polluted lakes, and defoliation.

The title poem of the final section, “I Moved All My Women
Upstairs,” refers to the poet’s book collection, “These women who
have touched me. ... / They speak: ‘Write, my daughter, my sister: /
That’s all that matters.’ ” Poems are written in praise of Sappho,
Austin, Dickenson, Rich, Woolf, Charlotte Brontл, and Madame Curie, as
well as in praise of “whining womanhood,” which has the intestinal
fortitude to scream aloud about sexual abuse, rape, beatings, and
chauvinistic policies in universities, social welfare, and medical
issues.

Written in simple language and relying to some degree on shock tactics,
this is a feminist collection that can be quoted from to serve the
important objective of establishing women’s rights.