|
Unstopped Mouths and Infinite Appetites: Developing a Hypertext of Lesbian Culture |
Susan Hawthorne |
| EXTRACT |
Biography |
|
Unstopped Mouths In early 1997 I began to work on a series of hypertextual poems. The title, "Unstopped Mouths", comes from a phrase in Page duBois' book, Sappho is Burning (1995). She describes the "stopped mouths of statues" and this immediately made me think of the mouthless cycladic figures (2800-2500 BCE) who stand arms folded, eternally silent. And this led me to the ways in which lesbians have been silenced. So many lesbian writers have used metaphors of mouths and lips to represent sexuality and sensuality, in addition it carries implications of language, speech, writing, of sustenance, and eating. The unstopped mouths of many lesbians over the last couple of decades have transformed lesbian culture. We have invented ourselves, we have excavated the past, and we have reinterpreted much of literature and art. The hypertextual footnote to the words "unstopped mouths" is just the beginning, the first reference of many other references to mouths, to sexuality, to eating. And these other references crop up in other poems in the sequence, each resonating with the other, with all the others, becoming almost a chorus. The footnotes are also a kind of history. They range from scholarly to irreverent and whimsical in tone; they cover ancient history and the rigours of contemporary cultures. They include references to visual arts, historical interpretation, slang and quotations from poetry and literature, among other things. |
 Susan Hawthorne is a writer, publisher and circus performer, and her most recent book is a collection of poems, Bird. She has written a novel, performance scripts, poetry and non-fiction, and edited eight anthologies. She has degrees in Philosophy and Ancient Greek Language, and has taught in the fields of Philosophy, Education, Literature and Women's Studies. Her work has been published in journals such as NWSA Journal (USA), Tessera (Canada),Women's Studies International Forum (UK), Beitrage (Germany), Broadsheet (NZ), Journal of Australian Lesbian Feminist Studies , HEAT and Meanjin (Australia). She is an Academic Associate at Victoria University, St Albans Campus, and writing a PhD in Women's Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has won awards for her poetry, fiction and non-fiction writing and is also working on a collection of hypertextual poems, Unstopped Mouths. |
|
 |
|