Hecate articles from October 1995

Hecate archives from October 1995

Editorial. (women's literature in Australia)
October 1, 1995... This issue of Hecate is devoted more exclusively than usual to literary (and the associated political) questions: fiction, poetry, a playscript; and articles either on particular writers and literary texts or on questions of interest to women's...

Taslima Nasrin: tales of shame. (Bengal author)
October 1, 1995... I'm going to move ahead Behind me my whole family is calling, my child is pulling at my sari-end my husband stands blocking the door, but I will go. There is nothing ahead but a fiver I will cross. [Taslima Nasrin, "Border," translated by...

A day in the dreams of Dulcie Downe. (short story)
October 1, 1995... I have to go." "What?" "I . . . I . . . have to go . . . check on the paperwork. Make sure everything's ok." "Jeff, don't go!" "What difference does it make? It's going to be alright." A telephone ring jabbed away persistently....

Beetroot. (poem)
October 1, 1995... Months navigating fat-gut submarines through a landsea of compost they have erected phallus periscopes in this feminist garden. Irresistible then to pull them into light from worm-dark . . . equalise them in the boiling pot And afterwards...

Tide turn. (poem)
October 1, 1995... I walk the shore, the zone uncovered briefly once this day, but tidal terror turns me back. Confused, panting with heat and fear, despising my despair, I stumble in pitted sandstone, slip sudden on seaweed. No friendship there in that wracked...

Frida Kahlo rode it out. (poem)
October 1, 1995... The accident buried deep Kahlo made bright ectopic art. Understood the wounding stem. Some cannot remember. The psychoanalysts block. Healing or dwelling? Making it better. However you can. She knew about struggle. That, we don't...

Winter. (poem)
October 1, 1995... at the window the apple tree. last year the flowers were heady. they crowned the dark branches of your hair lay sweet in the moist earth where you bloomed. you ate what fruit was left by blight blessing with your tongue the crisp skin the...

Ophelia in paradise. (poem)
October 1, 1995... This is heaven then, a world of absences when no mucous courtiers disturb the night's silence where, all being dead, no ghosts clank and clatter up eternity's steps to make trouble and where no father's voice drones on endlessly with advice...

Joyburst. (poem)
October 1, 1995... My bubble of joy hung in tatters so simple a thing, so easily shattered, like a broken egg impossible to mend sun-warmed sweet clean washing in a full basket from the line under bare winter trees and ice-blue skies hanging piece after piece...

A storm is brewing. (poem)
October 1, 1995... Four women are brewing, chattering like a tea pot hissing and haaing. In a Chinese tea house - incandescent incantations chitter zing chat with lips that flush and blush like the Queen of Diamonds This dainty, delicate dialogue is all askew: a...

From Lesbian Nation to Queer Nation. (homosexual rights movement)(interview with activist Bonnie Zimmerman)
October 1, 1995... Bonnie Zimmerman interviewed by Susan Sayer in San Diego, November 15th, 1994 In 1973 Jill Johnston's Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution(1) was published with the following dedication: This book is for my mother who should've been a...

Spells. (short story)
October 1, 1995... Christina and Melissa live together with Christina's four children and Melissa's black cat. Christina used to live with Denis. She lived with him for fifteen years. Life with Denis was very tiring. Her energy went into the washing machine with...

About Lores. (aviator Lores Bonney)
October 1, 1995... A Few Facts In Brisbane in the 1930s men didn't swear in front of women. And women tried to refrain from swearing in front of men. When Lores Bonney, pioneer 'aviatrix,' accused Charles Kingsford Smith of using 'bar-room' language to her I...

Rosalee. (short story)
October 1, 1995... Rosalee's husband is in jail again. When he is out of jail they live in an aluminium clad house in a laneway off the main street. Rosalee visits him in jail. She is a regular passenger on the rail bus, the station manager starts writing out her...

Waking in the night. (short story)
October 1, 1995... I am reminded of a house I used to live in. Water coating the inside of the pipes. During the drought the tanks were almost dry and we were forced to use bore water for everything but drinking. The bath turned white with lime. Our clothes were...

Daughters of the sea. (poem)
October 1, 1995... (for the four merwomen of Inverloch) In the house by the sea our lives greet each other like stories the salt air spices our tongues with myths we might not otherwise tell in the tidal channel above ancient walls of rock minute silver fish...

Boxed emotion. (poem)
October 1, 1995... because you cannot box emotion she says i love you, he says so, too and feels the fear grow fat inside his chest because you cannot box emotion, she gets sick on swollen dreams and he moves fast to patch up the thing inside his chest that is...

Intervening in a male-dominated field: 'The River Ophelia', the Brat Pack and social realism.(The River Ophelia: Four Views)
October 1, 1995... Despite the way The River Ophelia has been written about by the dominant reading group, it was not my intention to write or to author it as a social realist novel. But before I go on to suggest a possible reading of my book that presents it as an...

Sex, writing, and 'The River Ophelia.'(The River Ophelia: Four Views)
October 1, 1995... What I'd like to do is make a few comments about the cultural context for the reception of The River Ophelia; to try and locate it in some way as to explicate why terms like 'shocking,' 'scandal,' or the more literary version, 'transgressive'...

Queering 'The River Ophelia.'(The River Ophelia: Four Views)
October 1, 1995... Today I'm presenting an alternate re-vision of The River Ophelia in an attempt to overcome some of the stagnant assumptions and ideologies contained within this text. The blurb claims The River Ophelia "explores the uncharted waters of female...

Justine Ettler: 'The River Ophelia.'(The River Ophelia: Four Views)
October 1, 1995... Justine Ettler's The River Ophelia asks questions about sex and power in a postmodern, postfeminist, urban world. Those questions are not new ones, and her central character, Justine's, experience of being "fucked over" has painful resonances...

Long black hair: I remember. (poem)
October 1, 1995... For Dora, my mother and Steph, my daughter. My mother showed me her long black hair, plaited, in a plastic bag. I gave in to the pressure. To look modern, to look Australian. I was your age. In another plastic bag was her mother's long grey...

Inscriptions. (poem)
October 1, 1995... I'll walk into the bathroom and walk out - a new colour 45 minutes for intense result Hair cling-wrapped where's those tweezers? Courting a new image; turning the pages in a magazine I should cucumber the eyes mud-pack the face sand-rub the...

Collaboration. (poem)
October 1, 1995... First, I would like to thank my owe a Without whose made possible and offering their honest And the invaluable second Too many people to so I dedicate witting and unwitting Those my eternal gratitude I realise that without of all the the...

Pie in the pure land: a meeting in the 'sweet bye and bye.' (play)
October 1, 1995... (An Historical Play for Radio) Preface This play is about a meeting between three historical actors who never met: Emma Goldman, Kanno Suga and Kaneko Fumiko. Thus, for reasons to be explained, it is, and is not, History. The first draft was...

Jar. (short story)
October 1, 1995... Tomorrow, I get sacked. The jar and I understand what this means, and what then needs to be done. And done quickly. I remove my coat. I glance at the clock. Eleven. I take a good look at the jar. It is my favourite in this antique shop. I polish...

To be a bird. (short story)
October 1, 1995... I'm too skinny for the sea. Dugongs and seals and whales are covered in fat. The sea is cold and I'm no fish. It's cold, a cold as clear as glass. My feet shrink from the water but still I plod along the wet sand, toenails shells, and all I...

'The times they are a'changin.' (realism in Australian literature)
October 1, 1995... After much thought I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the concept of the Realist Writers' Groups and the Realist magazine is an expression of sectarian trends of separatism long prevalent amongst Australian communists and left wing...

Dorothy Hewett: Selected Critical Essays.
October 1, 1995... Bruce Bennett's introduction claims that this collection fills a need for investigation of "Hewett's forms of remembering, recording and imagining" (12). This is merely a pretext for an anecdote in which Bennett observes a conversation between...