0:00 - Girl 3:00 - My Mother Says I Wasn’t A Bad Girl 6:15 - We All Got Burnt That Summer 9:15 - My Grandmother Asks Why I Don’t Trust Men 12:06 Mans/Laughter 16:40 Murder Of A Little Beauty 18:05 She Lit Up Every Room She Walked Into 20:38 Aileen Wurnos Takes A Lover Home 24:10 Ode To Pink 26:23 All Of The Missing Girls Are Hanging Out Without Us
She's said before that her focus is writing about girlhood and I think that's why it's so incredibly relatable. We all have these shared experiences of girlhood and growing up with ingrained fear of ourselves, our bodies, and every man we interact with.
lol, thank goodness men don't feel so sorry for themselves and constantly whine about how hard being in the universe is. Jeez, there's only so much gushing empathy and sympathy to go around yet half the entire population see themselves as 24/7 victims. You girls need to man up and quit bellyaching about how hard you have it.
You should have seen that tweet of hers. (Before she deleted it) @oliviagatwood: burn it down. Fuck property. Fuck cops. @JamesEBeatty: So you’re cool if I burn your property? @oliviagatwood: this is a weak & unhelpful take
Mattie (from Who's Naked...) Thank you so much for sharing this gift of words! I have shared similar sentiments of the words written by this artist! Olivia's poetry collection is a lightning bolt, powerful and electric!! 💜🔥💜
After hearing this I looked up woman found dead in my hometown, and the first search results was of a man killing a woman because she refused to marry him
Me too, Girl, me too. I don't live by the ocean; but I live the closest one can get without living on a coast. I work a job that is hard, and so stressful it often it keeps me up at night, but I'm doing something meaningful, that I love; while it may not be worth the pay some days I am reminded every day how much I am valued, needed, and that my contributions are important to my small team. I'm told that I matter to someone everyday, even when I don't matter to myself. No, I wouldn't say I'm happy all the time, or even most of the time. It's hard to wrap my brain around the idea of contentment, of feeling safe enough to lay down roots anywhere or with anyone... but I got married last year. The girl who "wouldn't be tied down" by a home or a person is starting to plant herself somewhere and with someone...willingly (I know, it confuses me too 😅). I have never known a life without chronic pain, and admittedly for the last 3ish years or so I have not known a day without fear. Much of it comes from being a woman in America; the rest from being a young person with a chronic disorder who is constantly denied reasonable access to healthcare/accomadations because young people can't have had migraines since 3rd grade, hips and a spine which can barely carry her body. Young people can't have multiple forms of asthma; and if they do, it will surely get better as they get older. I laugh; I laugh so hard because mine didn't. Mine got so much worse, so mysteriously it took me and the top specialist in my state 4 months to figure out what had triggered such symptoms. Maybe it'll make you laugh too... it's polypropylene. I'm deathly allergic to polypropylene. You know what's even funnier? Polypropylene is the synthetic fabric disposable masks and gowns are made of. Then less than two months later, as I was still adjusting to the idea that I'm allergic to plastic and that all my medications I need just to breathe cost me more than I can make in a 12-hour work day, a pandemic started and people started wearing it on their faces. Throwing it on the ground when they couldn't find a trash can... leaving a dirtied, disposable mask on a gas pump because apparently moving two feet to the right to throw it away was too hard for someone. but, hey, it's better than the alternative of no masks because if I get COVID it is expected that I will die (as told to me by multiple medical professionals). and then people ask me if I fear death. This I laugh at too- how can one who is literally afraid of being beaten, murdered, and/or raped because she knows it happens and has seen it happen or has already had it happen to her live a life in fear of death? If I did that, I would already in spirit be dead, and as a victim of poor circumstance and too-high expectations, I can assure those who ask that there are worse things than death.... From people of all ages telling me that either I don't belong where I was told I needed to be (a specialist, physical therapist, most of my college classes back in my undergrad to name a few), or that I'm not worth a treatment, medication, or these days a vaccine because I haven't done my time in my "short" existence on this planet, and my disorder and disability don't exist because I'm not yet old enough. Oh, and if my gynecologist didn't put in my medical records that I'm "trying to concieve" my insurance wouldn't cover my necessary care whatsoever unless I was on birth control because for some reason pregnancy in America is classified as a "pre-existing condition" (ps I recently found out that I have been "trying to concieve" since I was 15 years old and the decision to go on birth control was forced upon me, and the form I was forced on nearly killed me because... well, because it was plastic-I'm allergic to that which I didnt find out until almost 10 years later; I'm aneimic so naturally have low of deficient iron; and I was still a kid whose body hadn't figured out its own hormones, much less foreign ones forced into her body against her will). God help us if I ever did get pregnant; carrying a child would probably kill me for reasons that are too long and deep and specific for any comment section. Being a woman in America is already like torture for many. I can think of at least a dozen women I know personally (not "know of", but actually know as friends, half family) who have been raped, two of them by their husbands. Double that is equal to the women I know who have been abused in some form or another. and despite most people knowing that facts: that women in America are more than twice as likely to be murdered, that more than 1 in 10 women will be physically and/or sexually abused by someone they know; that women in America are more likely to die during childbirth or have a child with a serious disorder than any other first-world country in the world;that men make exceedingly disproportianate amounts of money and other forms of wealth compared to women working the same job with the same experience and education (I once knew a female college prof who had been teaching for about 8 years longer than anyone else in her department and when she told me she made 20K less annually than her newly hired male professors...all I could do was hug her, and cry too); that if you're part of a minority group these rates and disproportions compound exponentially... Women are instructed to sit down, shut up, and look pretty and are threatened that if we don't we're not just wrong, but we are worthless. Yet then people are surprised when a thoughtful/kind/beautiful woman is found dead, bound, with tape over her mouth in a ditch or trunk. When a quiet neighbor who didn't seem to speak English the best was killed because she refused to be forced into a sex trafficking ring (this literally happened in my "small" midwest town; it took the local law enforcement almost SIX YEARS to actually bust, arrest, and shut down several businesses which were fronts for sex trafficking; and do not be mistaken, the women that were "rescued" were not affluent white women; they were a mix of immigrants and first-generation American citizens, the most vulnerable populations for being trafficked for sex or labor work). Women are taught not just to fear these real things which happen on a daily basis across America, but to anticipate it. Beauty is a curse and it can be pain, but I believe that isn't the way it should be. yet so many mothers reassure their daughters that tight hair, tight clothes, and a tight ass is the norm and expectation. Everytime I cried as a child because I was physically hurting the response was that either a) I was lying/overexaggerating because, again, 3rd graders can't get migraines and getting your long hair brushed doesn't actually "hurt that bad", and nowadays mid-20 year olds are the best at breathing air or b) "Beauty is pain" as if my pain was a punishment for trying to be what others told me I was but I never once saw it. I still struggle to see it, and frankly, don't want it given the cost of admission... but as for hundreds of years, women are just exaggerating. We're "hysterical" or just "on our periods". People fight and argue about whether women are treated as less than men... and when someone asks me, I laugh, and burst into tears because women are often treated as less than human.
th-cam.com/video/Fb3yp4uJhq0/w-d-xo.html I thought this might be something interesting to you. I have myalgic encephalomyelitis but I always notice that no matter what chronic illness somebody has their story is always similar to mine. I hope the days will come when you aren't just surviving. For me it's been 7 years and just seems to be getting worse.
I love Olivia Gatwood's work, and I think I came across these poems exactly when I needed to, when I became frustrated with my friend's inability to understand the fear I had about gender violence. That being said, there is something about Murder Of A Little Beauty and Gatwood's introduction that really rubs me the wrong way. You have no privilege when you're dead.
Juliet Rosner im not sure if it’s in the book or if she’s said this somewhere else, but she has said “it is a privilege to have your body be looked for.” And when we take into account the countless missing/dead women of color, trans women, TRANS women of color, sex workers, women who suffered with addiction, etc. and how their cases have often been dismissed and their bodies not looked for, I think her assessment of that privilege is valid. Cases of murder are treated different based on race/class/sex. I also believe during the poem she was calling out the media’s mistreatment of this little girl, how she was not afforded her humanity post-death but sexualized, and maybe almost blamed for what happened to her. I think your critique is valid seeing as that’s how you interpreted the poem, I just also think we’re treated much differently post-death based on a number of things
Yeah no, she’s right about that. Just put yourself in the shoes of someone who was murdered & there was an intense search to find the body, and someone who was murdered and no one even tried to find them. If you listen to stories about missing indigenous women in America, you see what it’s like to have very little effort / resources invested in finding your body or solving your murder. It happens so often and there are so few resources in some communities that it’s brushed under the rug.
I definitely feel her comments about how feeling happy is the reason for not being able to write good poetry. Sometimes I yearn for the angst of my early 20's just to feel something that I can write about without it sounding like a robot telling a story. Also, how come Rupi Kaur gets so much credit for talking about raw, serious issues, when there's relatively unknown poetry like this out there? That just doesn't make sense to me.
this was so brilliant. see u soon in toronto i'll be the tall emo lookin gal in the front row sobbing our names are the same can we be friends ok thank u xoxo
Hey check out this amazing dude with this amazing talent of writing poem in a unique way by adding your name into the poem he has lost his job due to an work injury and him and his 2 kids and wife lives in one room under one roof with no toilet and no kitchen, so now he opened his site for a donation for a unique poem with your name in for only a $1 donation its called poem4donation check it out on this link hakeemwilliambaker.wixsite.com/poem4donation
0:00 - Girl
3:00 - My Mother Says I Wasn’t A Bad Girl
6:15 - We All Got Burnt That Summer
9:15 - My Grandmother Asks Why I Don’t Trust Men
12:06 Mans/Laughter
16:40 Murder Of A Little Beauty
18:05 She Lit Up Every Room She Walked Into
20:38 Aileen Wurnos Takes A Lover Home
24:10 Ode To Pink
26:23 All Of The Missing Girls Are Hanging Out Without Us
Thank you
a godsend
“maybe I’m tired of people talking about the murder of girls like it is both beautiful and out of the ordinary”
her writing expresses what everyone feels but never admits too
She's said before that her focus is writing about girlhood and I think that's why it's so incredibly relatable. We all have these shared experiences of girlhood and growing up with ingrained fear of ourselves, our bodies, and every man we interact with.
lol, thank goodness men don't feel so sorry for themselves and constantly whine about how hard being in the universe is.
Jeez, there's only so much gushing empathy and sympathy to go around yet half the entire population see themselves as 24/7 victims.
You girls need to man up and quit bellyaching about how hard you have it.
Olivia always makes being a girl sound so beautiful it's healing something in me
Me too
@@oliviatynes2548 ☺️☺️☺️
Favorite one is "murder of a little beauty". Intellectually brilliant!
i live for her poems honestly
I feel you
I just love Olivia's way with words, I have her other book and I might just have to get this one too now!
I was there! This show was phenomenal. Olivia is always amazing. Her work always seems to educate and/or empower me and everyone who listens. Amazing
Her poetry is so relatable it made me cry. Things she said have literally happened to me and people I know.
i swear this woman has never written a bad poem
You should have seen that tweet of hers. (Before she deleted it)
@oliviagatwood: burn it down. Fuck property. Fuck cops.
@JamesEBeatty: So you’re cool if I burn your property?
@oliviagatwood: this is a weak & unhelpful take
Mattie (from Who's Naked...) Thank you so much for sharing this gift of words! I have shared similar sentiments of the words written by this artist! Olivia's poetry collection is a lightning bolt, powerful and electric!! 💜🔥💜
I have a lot to say. I thought I wanted to write an e-book or book. Today because of you I realised that I want to write poems. Thank you
god, I love her so much. she is so amazingly talented..
I don't know why I haven't heard of her sooner. Gatwood is brilliant, holy cow! (and a fellow New Mexican!)
After hearing this I looked up woman found dead in my hometown, and the first search results was of a man killing a woman because she refused to marry him
Incredibly beautiful....
she is amazing i just love her !!! she is so talented its unbelievable
God this woman is brilliant!
ok so My Grandmother Asks Why I Don’t Trust Men really just walked in and said SMACK CAM huh
like i need a minute oh my god
wow i love her
Me too, Girl, me too. I don't live by the ocean; but I live the closest one can get without living on a coast. I work a job that is hard, and so stressful it often it keeps me up at night, but I'm doing something meaningful, that I love; while it may not be worth the pay some days I am reminded every day how much I am valued, needed, and that my contributions are important to my small team. I'm told that I matter to someone everyday, even when I don't matter to myself. No, I wouldn't say I'm happy all the time, or even most of the time. It's hard to wrap my brain around the idea of contentment, of feeling safe enough to lay down roots anywhere or with anyone...
but I got married last year. The girl who "wouldn't be tied down" by a home or a person is starting to plant herself somewhere and with someone...willingly (I know, it confuses me too 😅).
I have never known a life without chronic pain, and admittedly for the last 3ish years or so I have not known a day without fear.
Much of it comes from being a woman in America; the rest from being a young person with a chronic disorder who is constantly denied reasonable access to healthcare/accomadations because young people can't have had migraines since 3rd grade, hips and a spine which can barely carry her body. Young people can't have multiple forms of asthma; and if they do, it will surely get better as they get older. I laugh; I laugh so hard because mine didn't. Mine got so much worse, so mysteriously it took me and the top specialist in my state 4 months to figure out what had triggered such symptoms. Maybe it'll make you laugh too... it's polypropylene. I'm deathly allergic to polypropylene. You know what's even funnier? Polypropylene is the synthetic fabric disposable masks and gowns are made of. Then less than two months later, as I was still adjusting to the idea that I'm allergic to plastic and that all my medications I need just to breathe cost me more than I can make in a 12-hour work day, a pandemic started and people started wearing it on their faces. Throwing it on the ground when they couldn't find a trash can... leaving a dirtied, disposable mask on a gas pump because apparently moving two feet to the right to throw it away was too hard for someone. but, hey, it's better than the alternative of no masks because if I get COVID it is expected that I will die (as told to me by multiple medical professionals).
and then people ask me if I fear death. This I laugh at too- how can one who is literally afraid of being beaten, murdered, and/or raped because she knows it happens and has seen it happen or has already had it happen to her live a life in fear of death? If I did that, I would already in spirit be dead, and as a victim of poor circumstance and too-high expectations, I can assure those who ask that there are worse things than death....
From people of all ages telling me that either I don't belong where I was told I needed to be (a specialist, physical therapist, most of my college classes back in my undergrad to name a few), or that I'm not worth a treatment, medication, or these days a vaccine because I haven't done my time in my "short" existence on this planet, and my disorder and disability don't exist because I'm not yet old enough.
Oh, and if my gynecologist didn't put in my medical records that I'm "trying to concieve" my insurance wouldn't cover my necessary care whatsoever unless I was on birth control because for some reason pregnancy in America is classified as a "pre-existing condition" (ps I recently found out that I have been "trying to concieve" since I was 15 years old and the decision to go on birth control was forced upon me, and the form I was forced on nearly killed me because... well, because it was plastic-I'm allergic to that which I didnt find out until almost 10 years later; I'm aneimic so naturally have low of deficient iron; and I was still a kid whose body hadn't figured out its own hormones, much less foreign ones forced into her body against her will). God help us if I ever did get pregnant; carrying a child would probably kill me for reasons that are too long and deep and specific for any comment section.
Being a woman in America is already like torture for many. I can think of at least a dozen women I know personally (not "know of", but actually know as friends, half family) who have been raped, two of them by their husbands. Double that is equal to the women I know who have been abused in some form or another. and despite most people knowing that facts: that women in America are more than twice as likely to be murdered, that more than 1 in 10 women will be physically and/or sexually abused by someone they know; that women in America are more likely to die during childbirth or have a child with a serious disorder than any other first-world country in the world;that men make exceedingly disproportianate amounts of money and other forms of wealth compared to women working the same job with the same experience and education (I once knew a female college prof who had been teaching for about 8 years longer than anyone else in her department and when she told me she made 20K less annually than her newly hired male professors...all I could do was hug her, and cry too); that if you're part of a minority group these rates and disproportions compound exponentially...
Women are instructed to sit down, shut up, and look pretty and are threatened that if we don't we're not just wrong, but we are worthless. Yet then people are surprised when a thoughtful/kind/beautiful woman is found dead, bound, with tape over her mouth in a ditch or trunk. When a quiet neighbor who didn't seem to speak English the best was killed because she refused to be forced into a sex trafficking ring (this literally happened in my "small" midwest town; it took the local law enforcement almost SIX YEARS to actually bust, arrest, and shut down several businesses which were fronts for sex trafficking; and do not be mistaken, the women that were "rescued" were not affluent white women; they were a mix of immigrants and first-generation American citizens, the most vulnerable populations for being trafficked for sex or labor work).
Women are taught not just to fear these real things which happen on a daily basis across America, but to anticipate it.
Beauty is a curse and it can be pain, but I believe that isn't the way it should be. yet so many mothers reassure their daughters that tight hair, tight clothes, and a tight ass is the norm and expectation. Everytime I cried as a child because I was physically hurting the response was that either a) I was lying/overexaggerating because, again, 3rd graders can't get migraines and getting your long hair brushed doesn't actually "hurt that bad", and nowadays mid-20 year olds are the best at breathing air or b) "Beauty is pain" as if my pain was a punishment for trying to be what others told me I was but I never once saw it. I still struggle to see it, and frankly, don't want it given the cost of admission...
but as for hundreds of years, women are just exaggerating. We're "hysterical" or just "on our periods". People fight and argue about whether women are treated as less than men... and when someone asks me, I laugh, and burst into tears
because women are often treated as less than human.
th-cam.com/video/Fb3yp4uJhq0/w-d-xo.html I thought this might be something interesting to you. I have myalgic encephalomyelitis but I always notice that no matter what chronic illness somebody has their story is always similar to mine. I hope the days will come when you aren't just surviving. For me it's been 7 years and just seems to be getting worse.
i love Her
I love Olivia Gatwood's work, and I think I came across these poems exactly when I needed to, when I became frustrated with my friend's inability to understand the fear I had about gender violence. That being said, there is something about Murder Of A Little Beauty and Gatwood's introduction that really rubs me the wrong way. You have no privilege when you're dead.
Juliet Rosner
im not sure if it’s in the book or if she’s said this somewhere else, but she has said “it is a privilege to have your body be looked for.” And when we take into account the countless missing/dead women of color, trans women, TRANS women of color, sex workers, women who suffered with addiction, etc. and how their cases have often been dismissed and their bodies not looked for, I think her assessment of that privilege is valid. Cases of murder are treated different based on race/class/sex. I also believe during the poem she was calling out the media’s mistreatment of this little girl, how she was not afforded her humanity post-death but sexualized, and maybe almost blamed for what happened to her. I think your critique is valid seeing as that’s how you interpreted the poem, I just also think we’re treated much differently post-death based on a number of things
Yeah no, she’s right about that. Just put yourself in the shoes of someone who was murdered & there was an intense search to find the body, and someone who was murdered and no one even tried to find them. If you listen to stories about missing indigenous women in America, you see what it’s like to have very little effort / resources invested in finding your body or solving your murder. It happens so often and there are so few resources in some communities that it’s brushed under the rug.
i immediately knew the artist she was referring to.
fuck dude, that song he made coz of that...
I relate to the true crime thing rn haha
Is there anywhere you can listen to her read the whole thing?
Who else came back to this poem after the Gabby Petito episode?
I definitely feel her comments about how feeling happy is the reason for not being able to write good poetry. Sometimes I yearn for the angst of my early 20's just to feel something that I can write about without it sounding like a robot telling a story.
Also, how come Rupi Kaur gets so much credit for talking about raw, serious issues, when there's relatively unknown poetry like this out there? That just doesn't make sense to me.
Wow these are fantastic. Murder of A little beauty is just wow
"I wasn't a bad girl, I was just bored after Kim Mara.." Does someone know who she is talking about?
"..after Kim Addonizio"
She was inspired to write her poem after one that the poet Kim wrote.
this was so brilliant. see u soon in toronto i'll be the tall emo lookin gal in the front row sobbing our names are the same can we be friends ok thank u xoxo
is she coming to Georgia or did she already stop by this year? I'm a little late to the party lol
One of the very few modern poets I actually would listen. And by modern I mean Gen z. Not TS Elliot modern.
when she says "you don't know whether you wanna be someone or fuck them". the ETERNAL question..
if you can relate you have no self awareness
such improvement from "hey science" congrats.
I’m helping my teacher pick some slam poems any suggestions?
An Origin Story by Phil And Sarah Kaye
anything by phil and sarah kaye or anything up on the button poetry channel
milos by anis mojgani
bitch face by Olivia Gatwood
Melissa Lozada Oliva
what is the name of the video of Melissa she talks about?
im scared but ive been here before
hands up if you're finally seeing her in london 🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️
Hey check out this amazing dude with this amazing talent of writing poem in a unique way by adding your name into the poem he has lost his job due to an work injury and him and his 2 kids and wife lives in one room under one roof with no toilet and no kitchen, so now he opened his site for a donation for a unique poem with your name in for only a $1 donation its called poem4donation check it out on this link hakeemwilliambaker.wixsite.com/poem4donation
she is a mermaid.
Olivia te amo, estás re pendeja pero eres increíble, te amo toda la vida
I only liked her Manic Pixie Dream Girl poem, the others are too meta for me
Have you listened to Backpedal?
all of them suck
That's not poetry. It's just overly wordy prose being called poetry.