daughter press

i’ve been thinking about being daughterless

i’ve been thinking about how when you become mother you’re forever mother

i’ve been thinking about how we all mother

i’ve been thinking about how the ‘daughter’ relationship is a less obvious one, my use of the word increasing as i got older

i’ve been thinking about how my sister uses ‘daughter’ as a title at the end of her emails to professionals about my mother

i’ve been thinking about my mother’s stroke in 2008 rendering me motherless in many ways

i’ve been thinking about how i had to reframe daughterhood because its parameters changed irrevocably from one moment to the next

i’ve been thinking about reclaiming the word daughter, returning to it, now knowing how i abandoned it

i’ve been thinking about belonging, mother-daughter belonging, mother-daughter ties

i’ve been thinking about how my writing is as much about being a daughter as it is about being a mother

i’ve been thinking about how when i became a mother i was no longer only a daughter

i’ve been thinking about how i was never only a daughter

🀦

these are a few of the thoughts swirling behind the name of the press that will now envelope motherlore magazine and other upcoming projects

daughter press will follow me toward the watery, the tidal, the delicate and the feral, with stitches of lyre and lyric, belonging and abandonment, chronos and kairos

it will be care-full, communal, slow and ritualled

it will spill secrets, embroider selves, speak nature

it will be both daughter and mother — as nouns, as verbs — and the liminal, the unsayable, the creatures of us in-between

𓍊𓋼𓍊

MOTHER/CARE/WRITE

🀦 Glimmers with Wee Sparrow Poetry Press and Poetry Pharmacy // call for submissions, deadline 30th June

🀦 HerStry // accepting personal essays, published every Wednesday, $3 submission fee, $10 payout per accepted piece