Still Life

Power Flower

Women's Day & Mother's Day

They sounded like fairytales,

stories that Mum told

of lost fortunes, drunk men

and moonlight flits –

resourcefulness demanded

in those interwar years.

Before then too:

great-grandmother Rose,

jobbing actress, sneaking

babies in baskets

into dressing rooms –

or her mother, Ann,

standing on the dock

in Liverpool, newly arrived

from famine-wasted Ireland

not knowing how

they’d ever make ends meet.

And on the stairs now, pictures –

mother, grandmother, daughter –

here and in the ascendant.

 

8 March is both International Women's Day and Mother's Day in Bulgaria.

Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips

Baba Marta

 

https://www.facebook.com/MyColourfulSoul?ref=hl

For the first of March, you say. Чеctиtа Баба Марtа! 
Among bolts of bright fabric, embroidered shirts, painted bowls, carved spoons, in the shop at the Ethnographic Institute in Sofia, you’re telling me about martenitsi – these woven red and white bands. Warding off winter, heralding spring, these twists of thread keep Baba Marta happy. Grandma March likes red.  

Season of snowdrops and crocus, birdsong and breezes, unexpected frosts and click-clacking branches like stripped umbrellas – March is capricious. Wants trust. Demands to be placated.


Images: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips