Critic Cal

I'm a reluctant traveller but there's something about the 'liminal space' of an airport that captures my imagination, drawn as it easily is towards questions of order and chaos, boundaries and negotiation, norms and transgression, "exclusion and embrace" (see, e.g., Volf) , etc. As such – and helped by the fact that my dread of missing flights tends to leave me with above-average amounts of waiting time to fill – the process of flight travel has emerged as a recurring theme among my recent poem attempts. Except ... well, even before I was done admiring my latest effort, the whole exercise struck me as grimly ironic. Just how much unheeding privilege does it take to find an airport 'interesting'?! Where I see  symbols  of the status quo (inviting my imagined metaphorical subversion), other people are experiencing the oppressively, dehumanisingly tangible outworkings of it. [1] So (a bit like a cryptography researcher who proposes a secure scheme ...

The other day I enthusiastically embarked on a book by a male theologian popular with some people whose opinions I rate considerably. It took me to the end of the preface to start wondering whether it was too late to cancel the Kindle purchase. Of the 30+ luminaries, mentors, colleagues and assistants mentioned by name as having helped make the book happen, precisely one was female. [1] Now, such cases are hardly rare: I've read plenty of similarly-prefaced books without batting an eyelid, and probably many more where the data would have been on a par had they been available. But for some reason – perhaps because I'd had such high hopes for the author – I just couldn't let this one go. Here was a book which purported to instruct the church, and yet it seemed as though the author was quite content to disregard half the church in the writing of it. Was it even worth my reading? How relevant could it be to me, if I was irrelevant to it ? Meanwhile, Christian feminist Twitt...

In an effort to pre-empt all the "yeah, but"s that this sonnet invites, I invented the foot-sonnet... LEAN IN   Are you sitting comfortably? Then lean in. Once upon a time there was a table Where it happens. All the seats were taken While we women were off menstruating, So we waited, brought the drinks and snacks And hovered in our heels and push-up bras Pretending to a winsome cluelessness, While they made laws and wars and wrote out cheques. But we took notes. And when the moment came, We’d take it: nothing beyond sacrifice To prove ourselves as fully man as them: We’d fight, pollute, exclude and brandish choice With laughter, all to gain a seat or two – And after, who knows what we might not do.†  † Sure, many men have led with wisdom and The best of motives; many women feel Empowered in a push-up bra and heels; Our bodies do not warrant being scorned, And nor do acts of service for the sake Of others. Free market economies Have made the poore...

Mr. W and I had the privilege of reading bedtime stories to the children of some friends the other day. The three books we were presented with were quite charming – beautiful illustrations, gently wholesome messaging (friendship, courage, the joy of reading, and the importance of keeping libraries open) and, best of all, one of them rhymed. Only, no joke, of the twelve or so characters across the books none were female, with the passing exception of somebody's unnamed mother. *Sigh*. In conversation about the new Star Wars (which I haven't seen yet), I heard it suggested that there were 'too many women'. So, I went and, with the help of IMDB and key stage 3 level maths, I found out that, of the entire cast, 25% were female, while of the top 12 characters, 40% were. Granted, headcount may or may not be a good proxy for screentime, but still: 'too many', as too often (see, e.g., research about perceived and actual speaker ratios), meant 'a larger mino...

[Edited to add (31/03/2020): Two and a bit years since writing this, my unexpectedly drawn-out relationship with university has now, finally, for the time being at least, come to an end. But that part of the story is for another day.] I wrote recently about my  university days  – lessons learned (and unlearned), people met, struggles faced (or fled). Except of course, in spite of my undergraduate malaise, those days haven't technically finished yet ... I've just moved from one university to another, switched fields, raised my qualification level, and meandered recklessly into perpetual postdoctoralism. Still, change has this way of happening around me and at me in spite of my best efforts to avoid it. And this season is one of endings and new beginnings in the group where I work – including talk of an en masse removal from the uni building we've been based in since before I joined to some off-site offices just down the road. In nostalgic tribute, here is a poem –...

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. ( Matthew 15:21-28 ; see also  Mark 7:24-30 )                   THE FLOOR         ...

A tipsily cheerful, older-than-me chap in the pub where I go to write recently informed me that, d'you know, he'd walked past my table a couple of times and  he couldn't decide whether I was a man or a woman! To be fair to my new friend, I wasn't dressed as a woman. I wasn't dressed 'as' anything. I was just there in jeans and a conference hoodie – ideal for the (coldish) weather and the errand-y to-dos on my list, but hardly apt to give a person curves they don't already possess. My medium-length hair had been styled by the elements, my complexion was as even and clear as OK-ish hydration and cleansing would have it, and I hadn't so much as sketched a single facial feature. And yet, here I was outside the confines of my own home and apparently quite comfortable to be seen in public. It does seem like more the sort of thing a man would do... Not that all men choose to present themselves 'as-is', but at least it's socially acceptab...

A poem that I wrote for the Sophia Network blog around this time last year... REHEARD The witnesses were inadmissible: Gossips; pedlars of idle tales; Adam's deceivers ever since the Fall; The first found weighed and wanting in the scales. It's true they'd been around, had followed close Upon the tear-stained heels that later bled; They'd even put up funds and played as hosts, As students, too, and filled each little head. But his appearing to them? — deeming they Should greet the new dawn first, and first be sent! And yet, this was — had always been — his way. The case submits it was no accident That, at the crux where all things re-began, Believing women brought good news to man.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2016. Variously culturally stereotyped as hysterical, manipulative, ignorant and/or irrational, women at many times and in many places have faced a disproportionate  struggle to be taken seriously . Female experts experience greater scrutiny of...