“My hope for this poem is that it reminds dykes of our unity when so much of the world tries to undermine us. Campfires give us a way of celebrating the rare joy of being in a majority.”
Campfire
All winter long, we wait to be
nestled in these Welsh Himalayas,
sat around a hundred-log fire,
to drink in our favourite kind of free.
Beneath a black brilliance of stars,
cheekbones lit by red flames, we
put on our – just for us campfire
dyke-love show, where biker dykes
admire shiny Lycra cycle dykes,
and traveller dykes, who’ve parked big vans
at the field’s end, chat up gold star
dykes who’ve never had a boyfriend.
Hippy dykes, in rainbow tents, kiss
Scottish dykes with firm accents.
Our skin is big-inked and tribal,
our hair high-quiffed and buzz-cut.
I squeeze into the cuddle of singers,
drummers, drinkers, the I-don’t-do-ers,
avoiding some eyes, lingering on others.
All of us here together – women lovers.
This poem is such a beautiful celebration of unity in the lesbian community, breaching the labels which categorize people into smaller subgroups. how did you decide that the gathering should take place around a campfire rather than another setting?
This narrative poem is about a lived experience I wanted to share. Every year for the past twenty-five years, a few hundred of us would gather for a week of music-sharing, but the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown forced me to imagine what I might be missing.
Dykes who don’t live in a big city are often marginalised. In this poem I wanted to show how freeing it is when we experience being just us together. Even when there are people in a group we don’t appreciate, we all belong. I highlighted the different types of dykes to reveal how broad a spectrum the term is, whilst we still have one big thing in common.
The campfire is both real and symbolic, an ancient and practical element of human physical connection, where we work hard together to make sure we have enough wood to last until morning. Nowadays, without animal predators, we can use the fire as a place of relaxation and flirtation while being out in the wild nature that feels so curvaceously feminine.
While reading your poem, I keep coming back to the anticipation of the first line: “all winter long, we wait to be”. This makes the warmth of the piece feel well-deserved, as if we too have worked up to this point. Did you consider giving more space to the winter section initially, or has it stayed the same throughout revision? Were there other beginnings to the poem you considered but didn’t end up pursuing?
I like the short form poem as it delivers energetically for the reader. I didn’t want to focus on the winter but use the isolation of winter to deliver a contrasting backdrop to the main theme of the community of the campfire. I quickly plunge into that action so the reader arrives into a roaring party in the present. It felt important to show how the winter was quickly forgotten once we were back around the large firepit.
Among all the singing, drinking and good times at the campfire, what do you imagine the playlist for this scene to be?
Over the many years we have been gathering, of course we have got a set of shared songs: some pop, some written by dyke songwriters, or goddess-inspired which helps us envision an end to patriarchy and feel good about ourselves.
I draw the focus onto the circle of women around the fire. Singing provides an opportunity for everyone to speak at once. It is a choiring, where we become a culture of harmony despite our differences. My hope for this poem is that it reminds dykes of our unity when so much of the world tries to undermine us. Campfires give us a way of celebrating the rare joy of being in a majority.
Jane Campbell
Jane Campbell‘s (she/her) debut collection Slowly as Clouds won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2021. Jane also won the Disability Arts Cymru Creative Writing Award 2022. Her poems appear in Ink Sweat and Tears, Black Bough and The Plumwood Mountain Journal. Jane has recently produced two films of her work which will premiere early 2025, and three new poems appear as artworks in the ‘Tir Cwair/ Queer Land‘ Exhibition, Elysium Gallery Swansea until March 22nd 2025.
Photo credit: Kitchou Bry
How I Write a Poem is our bi-monthly interview series digging in to the nitty-gritty of poetry writing. Explore the full series here.