Full Description
Sugar and Spice and All things nice?
Is that what little girls are made of?
Magazines, lippy and a push-up bra?
Porn star, sex symbol, victim or whore? What does it mean to be a woman in the 21st century? Are we born girls? Or are we the products of what has gone before?
Strip reveals the lives of 50's pin-up Bettie Page, hardcore porn stars and the little girl left behind on the way with stunning beauty and poignancy. The poet is not afraid to go beyond the boundaries of taste, and ask what lies beneath images we both admire and demonise. The strong voice of these sensitive and powerful narratives manages to find a sad beauty within lives. These cinematic poems are political in the most subtle sense as they explore the intimacy of power relations, gender, and unpick notions of glamour to find the tale behind the glossy centrefold. The work is a tapestry of how femininity is created, culturally and individually, exposing how the girl on stage stitches together her personae, and then strips her down layer by layer.
Poems that refuse to shy away from the dark, the grotesque and the taboo, but lead us, through an interplay of beautifully crafted, sensuous language, striking visuals, voice and often devastating observation to bring us face to face with the 'other' in ourselves. The true shock in these haunting narratives is that these lives speak to all of us about family, sex, power and love.
Contents
Poppies
Bodil and the Pigs
Life Of A Porn Star
Tom and Jerry Transaction
Clear Blue Sky
Postcard from Route 66
Dinner With No Name
Laundry Day
There Will Be No Time For Kisses
Blossom
Postcard from Hotel California
Tomatoes
One Thing
Stuff Dad Left Behind
California Parking
Right Before the License Plate Game
Page from a Teenage Diary
Head for the Hills
The Free Ride
Brace
Burlesque
Strip
Postcard to the Photographer
How a Girl Could Do That
Postcard to a Future Husband
How to Make Love Not Like a Porn Star
Postcard from a Porn Set
What the Agent Said
The Porn Star Letters
The Bettie Pages
Momma and the Angels
Sweetheart
Housewife
Irving Klaw
Cheesecake Snaps
Co-habiting
Darling Miss February
The Glass Bottomed Boat
Heavy Petting Doris Day
The Bettie Pages
Six Things You Can Do With a Skin Mag
