First Friday Poetry May 2025

I'm joining Beverly A Baird & Linda Schueler again in a year long poetry practice. On the first Friday of each month we, and anyone else who joins, writes a poem and shares it. This year the focus is going to be on using poems to inspire us.

This month we are on our own to choose our own mentor text poem.

I recently read an article about Janis Ian's first song, written and recorded in 1965 when she was only 14. I had never heard of Society's Child until then. The song of hers that resonated most with me is At Seventeen. I'm using it for my inspiration this month.

When I was in grade ten, I went off to a Catholic Youth Conference one weekend, and returned home with Hepatitis A. While at home, too sick and exhausted to read, I listened to CBC radio's Cross Country Checkup with Peter Gzowsky. He was interviewing national and international feminists. It was a revelation for me. I experienced a paradigm shift in my world view and returned to my small town high school a very different person than the one I was before.

At Seventeen

I learned the truth at seventeen
That boys should never fill girls dreams
That equal rights and equal pay
Would prove to be the only way
To control our bodies and our minds
According to our own designs
It isn’t what it seems
At seventeen

My mother’s life made clear to me
that a husband and a family
Was no guarantee
of equanimity
that education was the key
to choice and opportunity
it was clear to me

at seventeen

Those of us who dared to venture
Into a new kind of future
Someday, if we found love true
there never would be payment due
for independent girls like me and you

Life's different than it seems

At seventeen

Decades have past and much has changed
We’ve lost much that we once gained.
I ache for girls still in their teens
And hope that boys don’t fill their dreams
It isn’t all it seems
At seventeen

Here's Janice Ian singing her Grammy award winning song.