Joanne Ward

Utility Joanne Ward

"I am stunned by these poems. Joanne is fearless in carving out a place where, as a woman, she was told she didn't belong, where she worked building and maintaining substation equipment, climbing in towers, handling high voltage cable, and where she saw the spot a wireman had died when he went to work by mistake on a live breaker. A number of poets have tried to define what work is, but few have succeeded as well as Joanne Ward in not only creating a world that tastes of blood but in conquering it."

-Thomas Brush, author of Last Night, winner of the 2011 Blue Lynx Prize, Open Heart, and God's Laughter, with Lynx House Press.




In these poems, Joanne Ward documents her life as a "high-voltage" woman who spent a barrier-breaking career in the electrical trade at Seattle City Light. With humor and linguistic precision, she traces how she and other pioneering journey women gained their foothold, literally and figuratively, in this heretofore male and largely white electrical trade of Seattle's publicly owned utility. Ward vividly recounts her efforts to succeed, in the face of life-threatening sexism on the job, and to "prove I was good enough to do 'a man's job.'" We sense her satisfaction and even love of this work, as she and her sister electrical helpers "turn to callous and leather / and move like our well-oiled tools..." learn that "our muscles will hold." I wish I had known of Joanne Ward's work, both as high-voltage electrician and poet, when Raising Lilly Ledbetter was being put together-one of these poems would have been included! Brava to this poetic debut by a ground-breaking woman in a challenging workspace!

-Carolyne Wright, author of This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems, and lead editor of Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace