“Women’s Voices” by Diana Woodcock
Sometimes I listen to
Turkish music, Bahar,
Kordes Turkuler, even though
the tempo’s too fast, too
brash, because I need to feel
at last a little unsettled,
a bit rattled by discordance—
the voices of women from
Turkish, Armenian,
Kurdish borders calling
out to me. Language
mysterious, but no
mistaking their message.
Same in every language:
absence of love and respect
the ultimate atrocity.
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image by Miles Lowry
Diana Woodcock Artist Statement:
Diana Woodcock’s first full-length collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders, won
the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Women’s Poetry Prize. Her second, Under the Spell
of a Persian Nightingale, was published in 2015. Chapbooks include Beggar in the Everglades,
Desert Ecology: Lessons and Visions, Tamed by the Desert, In the Shade of the Sidra Tree,
Mandala, and Travels of a Gwai Lo. Widely published in literary journals and anthologies
(including Best New Poets 2008), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and
Best of the Net Award, as well as performed live onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco in 2014
at Artists Embassy International’s 21st Dancing Poetry Festival. Several of her Alaska poems
toured Alaska as part of the ‘Voices of the Wilderness’ Traveling Art Exhibit, Alaska 2014-
2015. Prior to teaching in Qatar (since 2004), she worked for nearly eight years in Tibet, Macau
and on the Thai/Cambodian border.
the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Women’s Poetry Prize. Her second, Under the Spell
of a Persian Nightingale, was published in 2015. Chapbooks include Beggar in the Everglades,
Desert Ecology: Lessons and Visions, Tamed by the Desert, In the Shade of the Sidra Tree,
Mandala, and Travels of a Gwai Lo. Widely published in literary journals and anthologies
(including Best New Poets 2008), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and
Best of the Net Award, as well as performed live onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco in 2014
at Artists Embassy International’s 21st Dancing Poetry Festival. Several of her Alaska poems
toured Alaska as part of the ‘Voices of the Wilderness’ Traveling Art Exhibit, Alaska 2014-
2015. Prior to teaching in Qatar (since 2004), she worked for nearly eight years in Tibet, Macau
and on the Thai/Cambodian border.
