As America prepares to head for the polls to decide whether to elect its first female president, it’s worth noting how far women have come in terms of achieving a political voice. I’m pleased to welcome author Lucienne Boyce to HistoryWithATwist. Lucienne’s book, The Bristol Suffragettes, is a timely reminder of the ingrained social attitudes that early campaigners for women’s rights had to battle against in their bid for political equality.

In June 1914, Joan Lavender Guthrie, a 24-year-old actress also known as Laura Grey, wrote a final letter to her mother and then committed suicide by taking an overdose of veronal. She was pregnant. The coroner’s verdict was “suicide during temporary insanity”. In court a tragic story emerged of prostitution and addiction to both drugs and alcohol. A doctor determined that Joan had been mentally unstable ever since she self-harmed herself aged 16.

These all seemed sufficient reasons to account for…

I thought it
with my heart
so I could say it
with my tongue
so I could see it
with my eyes
so I could hear it
with my ears
so I could breathe it
through my nose

and what I said
it was
and what I saw
it was
and what I heard
it was
and what I smelt
it was

I could feel it

I reported
to my head
and it reported right back
to my heart

and so
it was
from nothing

that’s what I thought

© Frank Prem, 2016

Poem #2: way poem #12: sorrow and joy (up here in heaven)