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This week we're talking all things poetry in the lead up to #NationalPoetryDay this Thursday on the 6th of October. We are delighted that Pearl & Bone by the wonderful Mari Ellis Dunning has been met with some great reviews since its launch last Saturday. 'This is a brave, complex, powerful, angry, and loving book, full of poems that argue, discuss, share, and reject the abuse of power that women and children are constant victims of' - Tears in the Fence Dunning's second full poetry collection explores themes of motherhood and femininity using her own intimate moments of becoming a mother during a global pandemic...

My daughter, Scout, is 13 years old on Sunday. And no one is more amazed than me that I managed to get her to this age physically, if not mentally, unscathed.

It’s not the thing to say, I know, but I'm going to say it anyway – I don’t always enjoy being a mother.

I didn't see the fun in changing nappies. Those first 3 years of not sleeping weren't the best years of my life, to be honest. And her tantrums around supermarkets made me want to put her in someone else’s trolley and hope they’d scan her with the rest of their shopping and take her home.

I hated making small talk in the playground with other mothers. I resented having to cut packed lunch sandwiches in a certain, special way or face World War 3.

I don't enjoy helping out with homework, attempting to solve maths equations that I had no chance of solving when I, myself, was in school, equations that I’ve got even less of a chance of solving now.

I dread parents’ evening, having to brush my hair and put on the only smart jacket I have and act all sensible. I don’t enjoy the constant drama, stress and worry that comes with a teenage girl.

But apart from all of that, being a mother is alright.

I’d like to think that, despite the list of things she could write that she has had to put up with because of me for the past 13 years, Scout thinks I’m alright, too.

I asked my favourite MILFS their opinions on being mothers.

Over and out. X

Rhian Elizabeth here. Parthian have given me control of their blog for the next month. Perhaps this will be a mistake on their part. I’ve been asked to write as much as I can manage and whatever I feel comfortable with. Since I’ve been focusing on poetry this past year, I haven’t written prose in a really long time, so whatever I can manage may not be very much at all. I’ve got to try and remember what a full stop is, where the caps lock is on my keyboard, and to fill the page with loads of words. Becoming...