Patience Agbabi’s poem ‘Eat Me’ and Frances Leviston’s ‘I resolve to live chastely’ both explore ideas of pleasure, with particular regard to the experiences of women and the constrictions of masculine society on female pleasure, whether derived from sexual contact, eating, or interaction with the world. Both poets deal with the rigid roles their female speakers are forced to inhabit, implying that they are trapped by condemnation and constriction. Moreover, both poets use food as a mechanism to explore female pleasure, perhaps alluding to eating disorders and their disproportionate impact on women.

Both poems deal with how women are forced into rigid roles and standards for societal and masculine pleasure. In ‘Eat Me’, the speaker is forced by her abusive male partner into a submissive role as he overfeeds her for ‘his pleasure’, rather than hers. Possessive pronouns run throughout the poem, intensifying in the fifth and sixth stanzas, where the word ‘his’ is repeated four times in four lines. They create a sense of objectification around the speaker, who no longer seems to have control over her own body. This sense is exacerbated by the metaphorical links between the woman and inanimate objects such as ‘breadfruit’ or ‘jacuzzi’ — the disturbing visual imagery makes the reader feel as if the speaker only exists for her partner’s pleasure. Moreover, the partner’s voice actually intrudes into the poem as Agbabi utilises heteroglossia in the fourth stanza with ‘I like / big