Sarah Daly is an American writer whose work has appeared in As It Ought to Be Magazine, The Spotlong Review, Rejection Letters, Down in the Dirt, and elsewhere.
I am fascinated by the creative means through which women have expressed themselves. I first became interested in Philomela’s story through reading Shakespeare’s shockingly violent Titus Andronicus in which one of the characters undergoes a similar experience. My poem explores the resourcefulness of Philomela, who has been deprived of her speech. She names her attacker through a feminine-coded activity, weaving. The attack itself precipitates a chain of grisly destruction that is an outward manifestation of its emotional and psychological devastation. I found the myth fascinating and sadly relevant today.
