Author Archive | Martha Shelley

Down by the river near St. Johns, Portland OR My latest poetry book, Released from the Wheel, is hot off the press. You can order it at https://ebisupublications.com/books/. Reviews are coming soon, but here’s what two other writers have said so far: “Like all great poets, Shelley’s poems are about life and death—how imminent and […]

When my mother died, in 1974, and left me some money, one of my first purchases was a VW bug. A novice driver, I remember taking three members of the Women’s Press Collective across the Bay Bridge, and thinking that if I made a mistake I’d wipe out our entire enterprise. All the same, despite […]

I worked at the Women’s Press Collective (WPC) from 1974 until 1977. The WPC was a flashlight battery of an operation powering a dynamo of social change. It gave voice to the genius of women, particularly lesbians, at a time when men owned most print shops and publishing companies and would never let our work […]

I arrived in Oakland at the beginning of October 1974. The communal house I joined, on Terrace Street, had three stories. Each of the other women had a room on the second floor. Mine was in the attic. My new housemates—two couples, Carol and Alice, Judy and Wendy—had their routines, and I tried to fit […]

Recently I was part of a panel discussion with other elders about the last 50 years of feminism, the current state of the movement, our current situation, and what we might tell younger women about our successes and failures. Since then, I’ve done some more thinking and a bit of research, which I’d like to […]

I’m writing this on Purim, the holiday when Queen Esther is purported to have saved the ancient Hebrews from destruction. As you will see below, it is a perfect day to review Judy Grahn’s new book, Eruptions of Inanna. For those unfamiliar with her, Inanna was the chief goddess of the Sumerian pantheon—the Queen of […]

I moved to Oakland at the beginning of October 1974, into a big old rundown house which I shared with two couples: Judy Grahn and Wendy Cadden, and Carol Wilson and Alice Molloy. Each woman had her own room. Mine was in the attic. I was the extra person, most welcome but still feeling like […]

  One night Sylvia and I were talking about this and that, when Shakespeare’s sonnet #55 came up–where he brags about how his poem will live until the end of time; that is, until Judgment Day: “Not marble nor the gilded monuments/Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme…” I submit this humble response: Not sonnets […]

When I was in high school, my best friend Yehudit repeated a sarcastic line about New Yorkers’ provincialism: “The world ends west of the Hudson.” At that time I hadn’t been west of the Hudson River before and had no idea what the rest of the country was like. Ten years later, in February 1968, […]

The other day a young friend expressed shock at Trump’s half-assed attempt at a coup. I’ve read comments in the news expressing shock at the attempt to overturn a legitimate election, at the attack on democracy. But anyone paying close attention to our would-be dictator over the last few years could have predicted it, as […]