Margaret McLeod
Biography
Margaret McLeod is an Atlantic Canadian Poet who has lived her entire life in New Brunswick. Much of her poetic and editorial work have been considered under the light of child sexual abuse, yet in a way that garners hope and reassurance for victims. Particular works of this genre include her poem “Mother, I Want to Fly” (Wild East, 1993) and the co-edited compilation of poems titled Shout and Speak Out Loud: Atlantic Canadians on Child Sexual Abuse (Wild East, 1992).
McLeod was a former co-editor and publisher for Wild East Publishing, a publishing company run out of Fredericton, NB. Many of McLeod’s poems have been published in anthologies such as The Amethyst Review, Contemporary Verse, The Cormorant, The Douglas College Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, and The Fiddlehead.
McLeod began losing her vision ten years ago and has since had other developing health issues. She currently lives in Fredericton with her husband, daughter, and two dogs, and is a close drive away from her son in Saint John.
McLeod was a former co-editor and publisher for Wild East Publishing, a publishing company run out of Fredericton, NB. Many of McLeod’s poems have been published in anthologies such as The Amethyst Review, Contemporary Verse, The Cormorant, The Douglas College Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, and The Fiddlehead.
McLeod began losing her vision ten years ago and has since had other developing health issues. She currently lives in Fredericton with her husband, daughter, and two dogs, and is a close drive away from her son in Saint John.
Poem: "Mother I Want to Fly"
mother when I kick home through leaves a hand hides under them nobody
only a hand that grabs and kills mother I move too slowly can’t dance can’t learn to
dance like the others do the hand moves underneath the leaves stirs beneath the
leaves beneath the covers
grabs
mother I want to fly like a dragon wings of silver and gold and crimson and bronze
and green laughing and dancing against the sun eating destroying craving
firebreathing Bone Eater alone against the sun
I was dead and alone She Who Does Not Speak they buried me and after that it did
not matter who spoke oracle without a face a small child the gods spoke through as
the fires raged around me and the dragon screamed and the wolves threw back their
heads and screamed at the moon
mother I shall be fire and air and water and wind spinning spinning raging down the
river faster faster wind calling prophet calling waves of loneliness in and out across the
beach
I shall be dead and a ghost calling softly across the sand
they always catch you run flee hide behind the trees behind the barn the wolf will
chase you growling and drooling the devil himself is behind you through the living
room up the stairs through the bedrooms his teeth at your heels
The whip cracks around me beast woman her claws her eyes black and blank my
neck in collar my arms pulled back fingers inside my mouth my lips cuts her finger
taste of warm blood
I can’t see mother help me milk white eye can see nothing to my left old hag with
hairs and fangs I see nothing to my left
She Who Does Not Speak does not dance mother
I am 1000 years old crone hiding under cloak and heavy gloves hunchbacked warts
fingers falling off bear boots on my swollen feet gradon toes I am old and fat hiding in
A cave go out and lurk behind rocks no on must see me see the ugliness under and
over and above me what hides in my blue eyes grins in my green eyes weeps in my
grey eyes no one must see
naked cut stone cut
flayed skin in tatters
her tongue whips her tongue lashes
words shred like skin
hang your head
lift it and reach hands to the heavens
tongue cracks whip cracks laughter
me naked stone cut
mother I shall be crazy angels and devils shall sing for me dragons shall ride beside
me on the winds and the lion look up and roar with pride
mother I shall be crazy
Published in River Readings: M. Travis Lane, Margaret McLeod, Joe Blades (Wild East Publishing. 1993). .
Used with permission of the author.
Critical Analysis: The Disconnected Body in Margaret McLeod’s “Mother I Want to Fly”
Lisa Banks (ACPA Managing Editor, 2011)
In a 1999 interview with Jeanette Lynes, Margaret McLeod commented that “sometimes what’s inside a person’s home in the scariest thing of all—what happens when you close the door” (231). McLeod’s “Mother I Want to Fly” is what happens when the door is closed, as she constructs a fantastical world for her speaker, creating a world in which the line between adversary and ally is firmly established and unbroken.
These lines are blurred for the survivor of sexual abuse. In the realm of the fantastical McLeod creates, the natural has become something to be feared, as she writes “when I kick home through the leaves a hand hides under them no body / only a hand that grabs and kills” (7). The leaves obscure the threat to the speaker, with the act of abuse disintegrating any relation that the body has to the individual: instead of being the hand of an abuser, it is simply “a hand that grabs and kills,” (7) divorcing McLeod’s speaker from an understanding of the relationship between the body and the individual.
Due to this lack of understanding, McLeod’s speaker is continually testing the limits of the body. Finding it at fault, McLeod’s speaker observes “I move too slowly” (7), resulting in her rejecting her body and instead striving to shroud the real in the fantastical. Rejection of the body is conveyed as a means of coping with the horrors of a body violated, with the body in question being destroyed in order to preserve any semblance of self, as McLeod’s speaker insists:
mother I want to fly like a dragon wings of silver and gold and crimson and bronze
and green laughing and dancing against the sun eating destroying craving
firebreathing Bone Eater alone against the sun (7).
With the body destroyed, however, McLeod’s speaker is left speechless, unable to communicate her experience. The speaker continually embraces the monstrous and fantastical to avoid the real, which is presented as grounded in the body, as evidenced by a preoccupation with the non-corporeal, such as “I shall be dead and a ghost calling softly across the sand” (7). As the speaker is unable to communicate her experience through the body or speech, she is left with “discursive words—whether written or spoken— [that are] are guided, constrained, and organized” (Alcoff and Gray 265). These constraints are reflected in the speaker’s inability to voice her experience, as McLeod continually writes of “She Who Does Not Speak” (7).
McLeod demonstrates the destruction of the body even through her use of narrative tone, as she shifts from first to second person. While the first five stanzas of the prose poem consistently use first person narrative, the sixth stanza is the one stanza in the entire poem which is written in second person. Notably, this stanza is also the only stanza even vaguely grounded in the realities of childhood sexual abuse:
they always catch you run flee hide behind the trees behind the barn the wolf will
chase you growling and drooling the devil himself is behind you through the living
room up the stairs through the bedrooms his teeth at your heels (7).
With McLeod’s momentary shift in language from the fantastical first person to the real second person voice, she is also disconnecting self from body as a means of self-preservation, as the body is even used as a weapon:
naked cut stone cut
flayed skin in tatters,
her tongue whips her tongue lashes
words shred like skin (8).
With the physical inflicting harm on the body and the self through language, the journey of McLeod’s speaker has come full circle. The body and mind are disconnected as a means to preserve herself, yet the speaker nonetheless closes with the proclamation of “mother I shall be crazy” (8). Unfortunately, the outside world does not see the pathway that leads to craziness, but instead determines the child’s inability to follow her dream and fly as her own downfall, and not the inexcusable destruction that is emotionally inhibiting her.
Works Cited (for analysis):
---. “Mother I Want to Fly.” River Readings: M. Travis Lane, Margaret McLeod, Joe Blades. Fredericton: Wild East, 1993. 7-8. Print.
McLeod, Margaret. Interview by Jeanette Lynes. “Margaret McLeod, Poet of Hazard and Danger.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Lockeport: Roseway, 1999. 228-31. Print.
Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Andrews, Shari. “Blind Hill.” (W)ri(gh)t(e)s. By the Fredericton Women’s Theatre Collective. Eds. Linda McNutt, Margaret McLeod, and Joe Blades. Fredericton: Wild East Publications, 1991. 41-2.
---. “Dawn Penetrating.” Shout and Speak Out Loud: Atlantic Canadians on Child Sexual Abuse. Eds. Margaret McLeod and Joe Blades. Fredericton: Wild East, 1992. 141-2.
---. “Words to a Sister.” (W)ri(gh)t(e)s. By the Fredericton Women’s Theatre Collective. Eds. Linda McNutt, Margaret McLeod, and Joe Blades. Fredericton: Wild East Publications, 1991. 28-9.
Blades, Joe and Margaret McLeod, eds. Shout and Speak Out Loud: Atlantic Canadians on Child Sexual Abuse. Fredericton: Wild East, 1992. Print.
McLeod, Margaret. Interview by Jeanette Lynes. “Margaret McLeod, Poet of Hazard and Danger.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Lockeport: Roseway, 1999. 228-31. Print.
---. “Mother I Want to Fly.” River Readings: M. Travis Lane, Margaret McLeod, Joe Blades.. Fredericton: Wild East, 1993. Print.
Secondary Sources:
Alcoff, Linda and Laura Gray. “Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation?” Signs 18.2 (1993): 260-90. JSTOR. Web. 22 Apr 2011.
