Home sweet home....

You're probably all wondering where my life's intimations have disappeared to in recent months? Well.. I've been decorating!

That's right Lady readers, as well as throwing myself into my poetry, I have also moved house and decided to make yet another fresh start! Naturally I decided to resettle again in the N1 and I can assure that the area is impeccable. I live opposite an organic cheese shop and an Odbins, although there is admittedly the sad presence of a Sainsbury's Local in between them, like some cursed unstylish philanderer ready to come between you and your man.

And talking of men I cannot stress enough that this re-location has very little, in fact it has nothing at all to do with men, nor does my sudden immersion into the poetic scene (I all know what you're thinking: poesy + Posie / the cathartic forests of verse x genius = Depression). But my reasons for moving are purely theraputic. Spending most of my time penning that incredible literary object: A Year off the Ward, has brought back all kinds of memories that I could really do without.

Indeed, I shall be recounting some of them here on this blog. For instance, do you remember the chapter about my eating too much around Christmas time? Yes well that's just one part of my journey into the recreational boarders of insanity. Heaven.

So, I have been spending the last month or so putting the finishing touches to my new, much larger and opulent abode. I have included some 'design ideas' for your viewing pleasure below. But best of all Melody Wittgenstien has found me the most incredible workwoman's hat to wear as I paint, hammer and drill.

See above.

Isn't it charming? Why, yesterday I went to Hackney for some reason (to be honest I'd rather forget about the entire expereince- incredibly dirty place) and I wore it there as self defence. It worked a treat and some young people were rather complimentary.

Toodles!

P.S.

Not that I would ever take the Megabus of course. It would only be for 'research purposes'. Instead I've persuaded Aunt Lily to attend so we are taking the family's pink helicopter from London. Toodles!

ninerrors Newcastle poetry-fest and sleepover!

Yesterday, on Radio 4, I was listening to one of the 'culture' features (I forget which, although I think I was stuffing Spanikopita at the time, so perhaps it was Front Row). The presenter happened to mention that a lot of very interesting art is being produced in Scotland at the moment, and being exhibited in Glasgow to be precise. This was in relation to the new Saatchi exhibition in London, Newspeak, which, by the way, was described as quite uninspiring. The reviewer mentioned our friends in the Hebrides in order to point out that very little of this art ever makes its way to London, and for this reason, very rarely becomes popular in the Saatchi sense of the word. He also pointed out that the situation might be remedied if art critics from the London-based media ever actually bothered to leave their concrete-soaked environs and make the trek up North (that is, discounting the annual month-long binge that is the Edinburgh festival, in which the entire population of Hampstead is transplanted person-by-person to the leafy urb-suburbs of Stockbridge, leaving poor North London to deteriorate into a less squelchy landscape from Drowned World.)

Now, this London-centricity struck me as decidedly unsporting - bloody-minded perhaps - and got me thinking that unless we children of the Capital extend an stuffed olive or two up North soonish, our Caledonian compatriots might just as well devolve off entirely (aka claim independence from the English oppressor) and take all their desirable socialist principles with them, leaving Bohemians like me stranded on a mere bit of an island inhabited entirely by Tories. Clearly, this will not do.

Thankfully, these reflections chime with the exciting news that I will soon be heading up North - not to Scotland sadly, but better near than ... never - to the bustling industrial city of Newcastle, which Melody tells me is a cross between a Jules Vernesque cityscape and Reading: FUN!

The occasion is the launch of a poetry collection to mark ten years since the passing of Newky poet Barry MacSweeney, who also wrote a collection called Odes. The title of the new collection, complied by poetry wizard Linus Slug, is no coincidence, although following in MacSweeney's wake has proved tough (I myself am a contributor) due to the complex historical inheritance of the ode form, as well as MacSweeney's own unique interpretations. Some questions raised include what is an antistrophe? What would Sappho have done? Was Elizabeth I altogether fair to Spencer? To find the answer to these questions, you're just going to have to purchase the beautiful book aren't you?

There's a facebook group which contains a beautiful album of photos charting the books' creation, as well as ample information on Slug's ninerrors blog. Oh, and the reading takes place in Morton Tower in Newcastle on Sunday 27th June. Why not come and drink wine with us afterwards? They tell me its grim up North, but with a Megabus heading staight for Pimlico booked for 8am on Monday, who cares?

Posie in public - reading success in Cambridgeshire!

I'm utterly refreshed having returned victorious from a visit to the playground of my late teenage mind, the University of Cambridge. As well as having enjoyed a nostalgic Dolmades Kebab at Gardi's (still standing! still counter-hegemonic!) and a vigorous cycle to Grantchester on a be-basketed bicycle, I had the utmost pleasure in giving a poetry reading to some keen young students who reminded me all too much of myself as a siren of truth circa 2001. The temptation to ink the JCR was quickly dismissed in favour of late talks into the night, over endless bowls of noodles & impossibly weak spliff, concerning Aeschylus, the Utopian potential of renga and the lyrical verse of Kool Keith. I've been so sad since I got back to N1 having left Cambridge's gentle shores that I've returned with a frenzy to the drama I began there as a second year - Put That Woman Down!: the life and times of Meredith Lynchfield, Cambridge Suffragette and Assassin, in three Acts. Emmeline is heartbroken - I promised to take her on a kitty voyage to Eel Pie Island yesterday to throw an effigy of King Charles VII into the Thames to commemorate the capture of Joan of Arc at the Siege of Compiegne, but I told her she'd have to wait until the 30th to commemorate her burning (I thought we'd torch the French Embassy). Needs must when creativity calls.

Here's a nice picture of me in front of a display created by clever techy Mike W-H to accompany a reading from my chapbook, tristanundisolde (Arthur [C]hilling Press (at the moment at least!)) It communicates how I feel better than I ever could do myself in words.




Helpful imp Joe Luna over at All Over the Grid / Fallopianyoutube had this to say about my collaboration that night with shouty-man poet and mere part-time patriarch Jow Lindsay:


"Posie Rider & Jow Lindsay’s reading on Friday night (21st May) assumed much less than it would perhaps be safe to assume a Cambridge Reading Series night of experimental avant-garde poetry would assume, but by this very play was able to open up a space in which the performance of the reading constantly flirted with, insulted, disparaged, castigated, comforted and barely became a means of effecting a communitas based upon what was already there, what we already have, and what we might possibly become. Recent national political discourse was both appropriated and mocked, but also re-constituted into the political space of the reading, tracing a line of constant watchfulness over the machinations universally predicated upon and in the name of the folk whilst at the same time tragically powerless to prevent those machinations from organising/mobilising satirical negations & refutations of constructed collective identity. The creation of the radical experimental "we" through such a gathering was tempered with a dangerously isomorphic "we" of satirical invective and absurdist comedy, the laughter of the audience perhaps the most realistic effect produced by the Wagnerian, mythological, polysemous diatribes flitting between the two barely realistic personas of the poets. The potential for a delineation of a universal WE to be reductive and obscurantist is enormous, and these are the precise means by which corporate advertising and party political affiliation seek to homogenise humanity into demographics and target audiences destined only for differences in the vagaries of their consumption and tactical voting preferences. To say, as I believe I heard Posie Rider say, that "we are the poets laureate" in the midst of an exhausting and increasingly overwhelming dialogic code is a re-appropriation of a political right and the creation of, or at least the exciting image of, a fragile community existing, fleetingly, in the heart of the multi-national flux of assumed identity. What is "assumed", that is, taken as given, a priori, implicit, hereby becomes inverted to be that which is passed over in haste, ignorance or ambivalence, and what must be attested in the act of the reading is the human capacity for engendering caucuses of radical community so that we may attain enough trust to assume in the positive sense once more. The figures of Jow Lindsay and Posie Rider are mythological tricksters, ever playing with our trust in assuming that we are assuming the same thing/s as the poets we heed. We are not simply given to assume that we can all trust each other and can therefore sing together the firmament of the new world, but rather the intimidation and awkwardness these trickster aspects produce in the audience (for example, naming specific people in the audience, something I’ve seen Lindsay do a number of times both in improvised performance and in published work) work to make the sense of place more malleable in order that we may mould new ways of listening to and being with each other. Those moments of joyous augmentation, (self-)plagiarisation and re-organisation result in a mixtape-like quality that presents not only a plurality of voice, but voices of real collective experience and instantaneous memory.

Only by carving difference into the universally reductive notion of humanity itself can we become truly human, and by dint of this, humane. That is the axiom at work on the macro-level of experimental poetry communities and the micro-level of the individual reading.

This is also how readings act theatrically without becoming theatre. The creation of such communitas is contingent upon its only lasting as long as the reading itself, its durational nature perhaps the key to the feeling of common endeavour, even if only articulated negatively. Lindsay’s exhaustive prose performances are, I think, a beautifully doomed attestation of the occasion of the reading as the productive mechanism by which communities are made, defining themselves against both an undifferentiated humanity-at-large replete with built-in sensors to detect love, companionship, truth & beauty as well as by more positivist means declaring a space for the activation of radical subjectivities inexpressible within the nexus of the everyday uses of language. The temporality of the reading as play is therefore the crux of the meaning of the performance in terms of its delineation of our time, our language, our wound, our response. It is the proper occasion of song which frames and therefore reveals the event itself as constitutive of a collective grand narrative forged from the desire of those for whom pre-packaged national, gender, ethnic or sexual identities have become useless and restrictive."

Instructive, n'est pas?
xxx

A belated happy birthday to the pill!

IS FIFTY YEARS OLD (last week)

Whoops I missed a day or two.... (if you'll excuse the pun)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sarah-boseley-global-health/2010/may/06/pregnancy-maternal-mortality

Suffragettes attack the post! Yet again my brilliance strikes at the core of patriarchy...

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the talk Fe:MAIL – a history of how the suffragettes attacked the post to really ‘get their message across’ (if you’ll excuse the pun). The talk, given by the Scot Dr Norman Watson at the Women’s Library, explored how our suffrage ancestoresses managed to destroy around 8,000 letters during their attacks on post-boxes during the years 1912 to 1918, when WW1 paused the movement and women finally set about running the country themselves for a change.

“But how?” I hear you ask. “Not – how did they run the country – but how did they attack the post-boxes?"

Well, that’s a very good question.

They used ink, pots of ink to be precise, whose corks had been craftily loosened so that when a young lady, incensed by social and political inequality, really had just ‘had enough’, she could throw the ink pot into the post box where the dark liquid would slowly trickle over its contents. Envelopes from the time show that they really did get quite, quite black. As a result people missed their mail and the campaign gained publicity, although it must be said that the postal campaign hardly endeared the public whose correspondence was destroyed; it was a risky move to encourage wider support for the women’s cause.

On a lighter note, postcards (again you must excuse all my witty puns) were also jolly useful to the suffragettes. They ‘postcarded’ comrades about upcoming meetings (sometimes using suffrage code) and sent postcards depicting recent events to raise support for the cause (clever Kodak produced photographic ‘postcard’ film which meant the campaigners could produce images of events within hours). Two suffragettes even travelled to Number 10 as ‘human letters’, i.e. wearing placards, but the patriarch prime minster Asquith described them as ‘dead letters’, or rather letters that were lost, and refused to read them. Oh and it is also probably worth mentioning that they smashed up quite a few post offices too, using stones and hammers- but no one was ‘hurt’.

Dr Watson, a journalist, doctor (in the academic sense that is) and all round renaissance man, has taken it upon himself to explore the history of the suffrage movement in Dundee, and to great effect. For instance did you know that Winston Churchill was the MP for Dundee (isn’t that queer?) and when he gave a speech to his constituency in 1908 the stealthy Pankhurst sisters decided to send him a message (again, another pun) by dropping a pile of slates onto the roof above the patriarch’s head, ruining his address. Hurrah women!

But what the talk really brought home to me was the importance of the suffrage movement at a regional, rather than simply at a national level. The attacks on the postal system really brought this home (unlike those poor inky letters). The attacks on mailboxes were carefully coordinated throughout the country and required the team work and in-depth planning of women’s organisations in all towns and counties, so that their ink pots went flying all the same time in order to create maximum publicity for their cause. Watson bemoaned the lack of research into the activities of WSPU across the country. Indeed he inspired me to research the herstoy of my own town to be entitled, The Feminists of Wo-Hampshire.

HOW TO 'INK' A LETTERBOX

Below I have included a short guide for any of you thinking about ‘inking a letter box’ in protest, although one must remember that it is awfully hard nowadays what with those awful CCTVs everywhere.

(1) Ensure you are carrying a muff in order to disguise your ink.
(2) Ensure the cork in your ink pot is loosened but not totally removed (you want the ink to slowly trickle down the letters), and you should probably carrying a hammer for good measure, possibly some explosives.
(3) Make sure no one is about when you chuck it in, however be sure to choose your time carefully, usually just before the patriarch postman is scheduled to collect.

Run away, fast, after you’ve posted your little protests surprise

Tories threaten to disenfranchise non-middle-or-above class women, single parents and gays. HELP!

the photo below is a mannequinn by the way; its not a real woman.

STAND UP FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS: DO NOT VOTE CONSERVATIVE

TORIES WILL LOWER THE ABORTION TIME LIMIT TO 20 WEEKS. THAT'S REALLY BAD. I URGE YOU LADY READERS: STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS AND VOTE FOR ANYONE BUT THAT EVIL WIZARD DAVID CAMERON.

TODAY THE TIME LIMIT, TOMORROW MORE SEXISM, ALL THE TIME.

A wooly vagina I saw on the F-word- genius!

Shopfront sexism strikes again!

I was wandering home after a delicious meal at a French bistro in Soho last night when I was confronted with this shocking window display in the shoe shop Kurt Geiger on Regent's Street (the store was worryingly close to Hamley's).

As this image demonstrates, the mannequins were lying on their backs with their legs spread high in the air (modelling the frightful shoes) indicating a provocation for sexual intercourse. They were dressed in corsets and bras; some were wearing no knickers.

But it doesn't end there. Inside the shop, visible straight on through the store's glass door, was a electric neon light 'Peep Show' sign that read "Great shoes available downstairs' - ultimately likening the the sale of sex to purchasing some pretty disgusting, over priced strappy sandals.

It was awful. In the middle of central London / a tourist area / next to England's most famous toy shop.

Sexist stilettos, misogynistic mules, lecherous loafers... what's next?

It completely ruined my coq au vin, which I can tell you now was jolly expensive for a supposedly rustic French dish.

Does shopfront sexism know no bounds? We need to take that jump out of its step.

Write in to Kurt Geiger to complain and berate at online.info@kurtgeiger.com.

My Great Grandmother, Constance Lady-Rose Rider

Isn't this cool? I'm going to do it on my back tonight. Toodles!

Does chauvinism know no bounds: Skype is offically sexist

I have just been skyping Emmeline (she's at an opera festival in Armenia) and the following just popped up on my screen:

European and American women are too arrogant for you? Are you looking for a sweet lady that will be caring and understanding? Then you came to the right place- here you can find a Russian lady that will love you with all her heart. Can't find a queen to rule your heart? How about beautiful Russian ladies that have royal blood and royal look? Here you can find hundreds of portfolios of these fine women of any age for every taste. Please excuse us if you are not interested.

Beautiful Russian ladies - http://moscowdatings.ru

Can you believe it? I can't believe sexism can travel this far? No I am NOT interested, and just for your information Russia IS in Europe you misogynistic wart. Needless to say I have initiated anther campaign against these male war mongrels. I have been prank calling them on Skype all afternoon with a voice generated message saying:

Vladamir Putin makes me sick and Lenin had a tiny brain.

If that doesn't get their goat then I don't know what will! Female (European) wit rules supreme once more (and no, I don't want to marry you, internet pervert).

En garde!

I would like to draw your attention to marvellous blog post on Joan of Arc - a key symbol of the American Feminist movement.

"The Suffragette Movement’s Use of Joan of Arc’s Image

Joan had been an important symbol of American patriotism since right after the Revolutionary War, when an Irish immigrant named John Burk wrote a play called “Female Patriotism Or the Death of Joan of Arc.” By 1912, Americans were quite familiar with Joan’s stirring exploits. For any citizen who had missed all the books, plays, and works of art, Ringling Brothers toured that season with a $500,000.00 extravaganza that boasted 1200 actors and sensational special effects.

The following year, Americans marched on Washington, demanding that the Constitution be amended to grant women the right to vote. Suffragette parades in England had been led by a woman dressed as Joan since 1911. United States women happily borrowed the tradition for the Washington march: the Women’s Suffrage Procession featured a progressive attorney named Inez Milholland mounted on a white horse."

Of course they did- I myself have often mounted a white horse to various friends' fancy dress parties. Although arriving on my trusty steed to Melody's nautical themed 21st birthday party was admittedly a little bit tenuous.

The post has actually inspired me to research what symbols my Rider ancestoresses used in their various campaigns against the male race. I plan to psychoanalytically link their favourite animals to their various personality aspects using the Jungian concept of anima.

Of course my psychiatrist friends tell me that the two are totally unrelated - but I shall prove them wrong! x

Women and Kebabs: An Orientalist Perspective

Hail lady readers!

My Aunt Lily once said that theory is like the backbone of fish swimming down the river of life. I quite agree and I, like a strong willed Tench, have vertebrae packed full with the goodness of precocious thought. Indeed the other day I started thinking the prejudice attached to women consuming greasy food. The result was the mistresspiece below, which would make even Baudrillard blush.

I include the hefty essay 'Women and Kebabs: An Orientalist Perspective' below for your viewing pleasure. After reading it I'm sure you'll be puzzled as I was upon discovering that it was rejected by the Feminist Review. Philistines!

Women and Kebabs: An Orientalist Perspective

Although it was dark at the time, the other night I started to see the world in a whole new light. I was out with some friends and after several rounds of very strong lychee martinis and a bop around the Groucho club I felt it was time for my ceremonious Saturday night kebab.

I have always loved kebabs. At university ‘The Kebab King’ van was permanently parked outside my halls of residence, and even when I once found a little piece of blue plastic in the meat, I kept on eating the stuff; just grateful in the knowledge that I hadn’t choked to death. But on said night, and of mildly discombobulated mind, my decision to order a large lamb doner was not met with mutual adoration.

“Are you seriously going to get a kebab? That’s gross!” my male friends preached, (and these are heterosexual alpha male type men). “We’re just going for the burgers.”

I had to ask myself the question: what’s so wrong with women eating kebabs? In fact the more I thought about it kebabs have become a kind of self-defence mechanism for me. I don’t mean in terms of binge eating or bulimia, lord no, but as a weapon to ward off over-enthusiastic males. I often find that an awkward moment at the end of an evening can quickly be distilled with the words “Cor I could murder a kebab!” Men just don’t like it, and quick to follow male dislike comes the rest of society.

Information in the press about the unhealthy properties of kebabs is all too often framed in references to women’s health. Of course they aren’t good for you. They can contain up to 140g of fat, which is twice the maximum daily allowance for women, and the calorific equivalent of a wine glass of cooking oil. Yet women in particular are penalised for eating them. For instance Kerrie Catona was recently lambasted for eating (quote) ‘a mammoth kebab laden with lashings of mayo after a night out with a female pal in Blackpool’. The Daily Mail was disgusted when the ‘mum-of-four happily scoffed down the unhealthy feast, despite vowing to shed weight after unflattering pictures of her on holiday were printed recently’. Similarly when Jacqui Smith was criticized for announcing that she would not feel safe ordering a kebab in Peckham, one has to ask whether she was disliked for her dismal inappropriateness, or for the fact she likes kebabs?

Okay, so kebabs aren’t good for us and that’s why they’re frowned upon, right? Wrong. If Foucault has taught us anything it is that life’s just not that simple. My friends don’t grimace when I order chips or a jumbo box of chicken wings. In fact when I (occasionally) smoke a Vogue cigarette they think I’m the coolest lady in London N1. From Eve onwards a woman’s relationship with food has been riddled with complications and this is just another far too complex rant about what they might be.

Feminists teach us that one reason women are scorned for indulging in unhealthy foods is because piling on the pounds directly interferes with their so called ‘bodily maintenance’. Shows like You Are What You Eat (C4) starring the witch-like

Scot, Dr. Gillian McKeith, are perfect examples of how the media regulate the female body and force subjects to abide by the rules of dietary control. What’s more, these programs are often violent in their regulation and frequently televise white working class mums being shamed by their middle class rivals (think Trinny and Susanna) for their obesity and for pushing the disease upon their children. In short they are blamed for not understanding the basic principles of nutrition. Now I don’t approve of obesity, but I understand that being fat is rarely a straightforward question of ‘choice’. I was lucky enough to have been raised by an Auntie who was a marvellous cook and grew her own vegetables, so from a young age I was taught how to maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle. However, there are some who are just not so fortunate.

In fact ‘make over’ programs such as these are distinctly post-feminist in their outlook, purporting a view of femininity that depends upon women having consumer power, i.e. enough money to buy their organic apples and free range chickens from M&S. In this respect eating bad foods not only demonstrates an inability to regulate ones body, but also implies a lack of education and consumer capital. One could argue that the kind of food you eat symbolizes your degree of social privilege. For instance: Grouse / upper class; Sushi / middle class; Burger / working class. But what of the kebab? It is a dish so badly frowned upon that it must represent more than simply being working class. But what?

In order to understand the stigma of a woman eating a kebab we must first consider its history. The word ‘kebab’ refers to a number of meat dishes in Arabian and Eastern cuisines. Do these eastern origins have something to do with the disdain surrounding its consumption? In his seminal study Orientalism, Edward Siad taught us that images of the east are social constructions that reflect the values of the voyeur as much as the viewed. A long line of feminists have traced links between western concepts of femininity and Orientalism and I believe that understanding the relationship between them could hold the key to unlocking the secrets of Kebab Stigma.

In a fascinating study called Beyond the Frame Deborah Cherry explores the relationship between orientalism and female subjectification in the 19th century. Cherry makes the persuasive argument that the expansion of the British Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria introduced alternate cultures into Britain and this new ‘imperialism’ from overseas provided a physical and refreshing open space for British women to develop alternate modes of femininity. The introduction of Orientalism, Cherry argues, offered 19th century feminists an opportunity to redefine themselves by allowing women to depict their emancipated modernityin contrast to the subservience of ‘native’ women. In fact the occidental trend to dress in Ottoman-inspired clothes became so popular amongst ladies of London that they started stocking them in Liberty's. The juxtaposition between the occidental ‘Other’ and the Western woman allowed feminists to express their independence and defiance. It granted them a social and artistic space within which to act by flouting convention without being improper.

“So what does all this have to do with kebabs?” I hear you ask.

According to my argument, eating a kebab isn’t just about eating a fatty piece of (very tasty) meat in between two slabs of pitta, nor is it’s condemnation based simply upon its high calorie content. Rather the eastern promise of the hearty kebab, which makes it an explicitly non-western food type, means that it acquires a symbolic value that challenges norms within our own society. It is the ‘Other’ of takeaway food types. Yet at the same time the kebab is not only ‘Othered’ simply because it is from abroad, but because, as I have previously mentioned, it is a means of flouting bodily regulation. Scoffing one down also challenges the post-feminist ‘norm’ of the white middle class woman by associating its eater with the working classes. In this respect its condemnation resides in its symbolic status as a food type that functions as a deliberate means of flouting social convention. Think about it: is eating a kebab that different to donning an Ottoman dress and walking round London in the 19th century? They are both foreign and, at times, shocking. But more importantly they are both statements that challenge preconceived notions of western femininity.

It is precisely the foreign Otherness of the kebab, its Orientalism, which makes it the most self-conscious type of fast food. Unlike its American cousins the burger and southern fried chicken, the Otherness of the kebab make its unhealthiness function as a symbolic expression of defiance, as women consciously indulge in corporeal deregulation. Kebabs are self-functioning symbols of her choice to defy these norms. In other words when I get a kebab I am not only associating myself with the malpractice of poor bodily regulation (and subsequently of being working class / poorly educated), but I am positioning myself as a free agent openly ascribing to its means of social defiance. Eating a kebab is like sticking a finger up at society; filming it and then playing it back to society with you in the audience (and if you don’t get post-modernism after that metaphor then you probably never will).

We must take this time to honour the kebab. For it is Othered as women like us are also Othered by the media, by misogyny and even by other women. The kebab represents all of this and more. In eating it we are consciously swallowing down all that is frowned upon. It is the martyr of food types, and so we must show it respect. Go forth, eat, and when you do eat with pride (but don’t have too many because you will die from high cholesterol).

Oh please BBC, if you keep this up I'll delete iplayer from my Favourites

I just ever so quickly wanted to once again critique the ruthless chauvinists at the BBC. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, sexism rears its ugly head once again, this time in the form of a documentary about young feminist activists which seems to think its O.K. to imply that we have some sort of mental problem!

Now, anyone who knows anything will be well aware that I suffer from acute nervosa, i.e mental breakdowns, but this has very little to do with the fact that I tend to hate men, or, more specifically, patriarchy. Indeed, it is a loathing that gives me strength in times of need. For instance, I was once about to buy a kilo of sleeping pills in my local Sainsbury's when I spotted a copy of Nuts! magazine, which sent me into such a steaming rage that I soon forgot my original purpose.

The documentary went oh so much further, however, by suggesting that feminist women have some sort of problem. This was made as obvious as the sea by documentary maker Vanessa Engles, who snooped around asking parents: "And what do you think started these malicious thoughts in your little girl?"

Piss off Vanessa! No one wanted you at their feminist meetings, filming with your nosy camera, they just wanted to be on the telly. PISS OFF!>

The only problem I suffer from is 'seeing too much', just like King Lear.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/01_january/27/women.shtml

Cinderella shall go the prom!

Hail lady readers! Finally those bigoted southern (north) Americans have succumb to the power of sappho (pictured to the right)! The lesbian who wanted to take her girlfriend to her high school prom wearing nothing but a suit and a 'knowing smile' has won her case. It was ruled to day that the evil institution had violated her human rights (note the non-gendered use of 'human', yes).

read about it here

It reminds me of a not too dissimilar affair that occurred my middle school, St Agatha's of the Gaping Bosom's school for Young Ladies, when I wanted to direct a rendition of Macbeth using a lesbian couple to portray the indefatigable relationship between the lady Macbeth and her protagonist war-lord husband. However, apparently it was "too ahead of its times" and "would upset the audience", particularly the dildo scene.

Toodles!

Tristanundisolde! Chapette book of the YEAR

LOOK!

Isn't it lovely? And it's MINE, by ME! Hooray! Many thanks to the chivalrous, man-about-town, Mr. Harry Godwin Esq. of The Arthur Shilling Press for taking a chance on a gal like me. I truly am the happiest gal in town. Pink fizz for all.

Details can be found at The Arthur Shilling Press website - obviously my books have sold out all at once, flying off the shelves like the proverbial 'hot cake', considered to be a cross between a scone and a pain au chocolat, but live in hope, readers who may have missed out. Fingers crossed for a pdf, or get in touch with Hal or I for a sneaky e-look.

Once again I am published!

Women and Pots! Why didn't someone think of it sooner?

Look out for my article in KnockBack magazine!

From Pots to Pot and then back to Pots Again

From Pots to Pot and then back to Pots Again, my third historical endeavour after Persephone: The Musings of a Woman in Perpetual Despair, which won the Britney Spears prize for Creative Writing, and of course my seminal debut, The Suffragettes- Why?, is soon due for publication and I am so excited! Just as I was suffering under the burden of my annualistic offering being delayed I suddenly pulled myself together and said:

"Posie wake up! You need to finish that three thousand page historical pamphlet charting the feminist movement from the the ancient civilization of Ur through to the present day using the medium of pots!"

Of course publishers, labouring under that putred beast we call commercialism, weren't interested in the manuscript, but luckily I have enough money to print 700 copies just for me and my close friends. It's really rather facinating and I have sent an extract to the sublime Knockback magazine.
People often say to me, “Women and Pots? Wow. How could you take on such a grand endeavour?"
Well I tell you now, it wasn’t easy. Being a lady Feminist really does take its toll. Not only do I have to take the occasional call from my bank manager informing me that my notoriously large trust fund has once again trebled in size, but I am often forced to sit around the house all day doing absolutely nothing except trying on all my dresses and then not going out in them, before once again settling down to save womankind using nothing but a a bottle of Martini Rosso and an overactive imagination.

So look out for my latest work and if you would like a free copy just email me! Toodles! xx