In-sistered writing

“She was a homely body; an old lady in a plaid shawl which was fastened by a large cameo; and she sat in a basket-chair, encouraging a spaniel to look at the camera, with the amused, yet strained expression of one who is sure that the dog will move directly the bulb is pressed” —…

Just an ordinary day Shirley wore a dark brown cardigan over a plain cotton dress and sensible shoes to carry the weight of the words she wanted to write. With four children to raise, she hadn’t had time to make herself look pretty or straighten her lipstick on just an ordinary day.[1] Shirley Jackson, 1996,…

“When I lived with my people, I spoke the lingo. I was a happy little Aboriginal kid. We just enjoyed life and played, and we were all Yanyuwa. Our mothers all loved us”, Hilda Jarma Muir, 2004 [1]In “Not thinking about colour”, Hilda Jarman Muir, A Very Big Journey: My Life as I Remember it,…

Sylvia cries, “Shirley! Come let’s be grisly and girly together!” She looks at the light streaming through the cracks in her quill feather.  Words arrive incandescent and spare; Sylvia cries, “Shirley! Come let’s be grisly and girly together!”     Another angle flares the passage of time as it weathers; They are friends forever called and…

The number 21 demands attention What if I decided that number 21, reducible to three, thereby naturally imaginative, creative and optimistic, was worth paying attention to? And, what if turning to page 21 of books written by feminist writers I adore, a particular sentence demanded my attention? Then, what if I took that sentence on…

Soaked by sentences on a rainy Sunday morning Trying not to wake the slumberous body beside me, I reach over and quietly pick up my recently purchased copy of Charlotte Wood’s [1]A fiercely eco-feminist friend and voracious reader often recommends books she has recently read she thinks I might like. For weeks Renee kept saying,…

    15th January, 2023: Stanley Street, Liverpool In a grey backstreet, Eleanor Rigby sits on a stone bench where a memory of her and so many others have been. She sits down next to her as close as she can to pick up Eleanor’s silent words living in a dream, waiting at the window,…

“Thought is patchy and material. It does not find magical closure or even seek it, perhaps because it’s too busy just trying to imagine what’s going on”. “The act of description, then, is a peering, accidental glimpse of what matters” (Kathleen Stewart, 2007, p. 5; 2016, p. 31). A light that tries to write “In…

Hints of passion in a pocket of joy  I was recently asked to be the keynote speaker at the 2022 Faculty of Education Awards for Excellence and Recognition night at Southern Cross University. The Awards committee was looking for someone who would deliver a congratulatory and inspirational speech to the student winners, their guests, and…

“When you’re working in a strict form, sometimes a certain magic takes place. You realize that the content is finding itself in the form. The form gives you your poem” (Late in the day, 2015, p. 80). Ursula K. Le Guin Feminist, science fiction and fantasy writer, poet and non-fiction essayist       In…