Minutes of the Meeting of the Women’s Workspace, 11th September 2023

Present:
Yes, this is the present.
This is now, and you are here,
These are indeed our minutes, these are our hours,
Ours.

Apologies: We make none!

Item one:
The plan is to start simple, and evolve.
Simple is not the same as small – it’s a simple intention, to welcome all,
to hear, to HERE, a room on the third floor, to open a door, to make
in this place a set-aside of time and space,
set apart, designated safe, an offering, a blank slate – culd be
a piece of peace inside your day,
time0kill, while-away, clear desk, hideaway,
clear my head, meet you there, comfy chair, nurse the bairn,
airpod head-down speed-write zone, a home from home,
a boost of heat on dark days with no coffee to pay,
a place to work, a place to play, a place to go as refuge
if frightening footsteps follow…

Item two:
The plan is to start small, sort of pocket-sized,
and invite you to make it with us.
Can’t smash the patriarchy in three minutes,
Can’t make a women’s space with no women in it!
Small is neither simple nor simplistic –
You’ve felt what we can do with just our voices
WORDS – ART – TRUTH – HEART

Now the future of this workspace comes down to our choices.
Will you share the gold-dust of solidarity?
From the root-word ‘sol’, meaning “whole and safe; well-kept”
Sisters, well-met! Will you spit grit to seed resistance?
Communicate community?
Both come from ‘com’, the root word for “with-ness”,
And I call upon those here present to bear witness to our with-ness,
we have values agreed, we have sister-creed, that’s HUGE!
Fuck it -

Item three:
START LARGE! and GET LARGER!
Scream and shout and stim it out, melt down and make it massive, fuck the fear, fight the shrinkage,
refuse to be passive, shove that carrot up any old donkey’s arse, make your mark!!
Did you know that space itself gets bigger over time?
It stretches out and all within
get equal room to shine and spin;
feels only right that there should be room for women
to eat and walk and rest and swim
and cease their vigilance;
for women alone, no chaperone, singularities, glories.
Not crushed by statistics like a hit and run,
half of us whitening our knuckles, wolverining our keys,
swallowing the sick feeling that uniforms are no guarantee,
that we’re on our own again, always will be…

Any Other Business:
Only everything!!
You’ve heard how we define ourselves as scarred flowers, clawed survivors,
a line of maternal ancestors holding a pulsing thread.
You’ve heard the world enumerated in all the many ways it is hostile

to women’s wellness, safety, sovereignty, sanity…
Women’s work is never done, they say – so come together
in so much more than a gaggle – a labour, a wave
for the work of resistance and sustenance,
the weaving of trampled threads,
the lifting up, again and over again, until we’re purple in the face
and our fertile minds sprout a meadow corona as evergreen as women’s dream to feel safe.
Their right.
In this space, may it be no dream.