After writing last week’s book club post, poetry has been on my mind more than usual. With the wet weather casting a grey cloud over everything, on top of recent announcements, a more intense atmosphere seems to be lingering in the air. Therefore, it could be a good time to try writing a poem this week. Considering everything that is going on, I feel like there is plenty of inspiration and emotions that can be expressed and used at the moment. I was looking through some poetry books the other week and found some poems written by Margaret Atwood, who is an incredible individual. Coming across her poems prompted me to put ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ as this week’s book recommendation.
What I find most amazing about Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, is the fact that it was written in 1985! You could read this book today and be excused for thinking that it was written this year. This dystopian story is set in a totalitarian state called Gilead, which has arisen after the United States’ government was overthrown. The lead heroine in this tale is Offred. Her role, along with many others, is to provide children for the women of the higher social class. It is a bleak and harrowing fable, yet it still manages to be funny at times. On top of this, Atwood provides a brilliant and powerful insight into life during suffering.
To finish here is one of my favourite quotes-
“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”