The Anatomical Venus
Published on 23. May 2019
62 pages
978-1-78037-470-3 (ISBN)
Description
An Anatomical Venus - which gives this book its title - was an eighteenth-century anatomical wax sculpture of an idealised woman, a heady mix of eroticism, death and biological verisimilitude. Venus could be opened up and pulled apart by all the men who studied her. She would give up her secrets the first time of asking. Helen Ivory's new collection The Anatomical Venus examines how women have been portrayed as 'other'; as witches; as hysterics with wandering wombs and as beautiful corpses cast in wax, or on mortuary slabs in TV box sets. A hanged woman addresses the author of the Malleus Maleficarum, a woman diagnosed with 'Housewife Psychosis' recounts her dreams to Freud, and a sex robot has the ear of her keeper. The Anatomical Venus imagines the lives of women sketched in asylum notes and pictures others shut inside cabinets of curiosity.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tarset
United Kingdom
File size
0,22 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-470-3 (9781780374703)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears, and is a lecturer for the UEA/National Centre for Writing online creative writing programme. She has published five collections with Bloodaxe Books: The Double Life of Clocks (2002), The Dog in the Sky (2006), The Breakfast Machine (2010), Waiting for Bluebeard (2013) and The Anatomical Venus (2019). Fool's World, a collaborative Tarot with artist Tom de Freston (Gatehouse Press), won the 2016 Saboteur Best Collaborative Work award. A book of collage/ mixed media poems, Hear What the Moon Told Me, was published KFS in 2017, and a chapbook, Maps of the Abandoned City, by SurVision in 2019. She has received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and was awarded Arts Council funding and an Author's Award from the Society of Authors to work on The Anatomical Venus. She lives in Norwich.
Content
- Intro
- Description
- Title Page
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Sorceress to Live
- All the Suckling Imps
- The Kept House
- Curse
- Wunderkammer with Weighing Scales and Hospital Bed
- Beggar Dark
- Wunderkammer with Black Coffee and Ghost Moth
- Wunderkammer with Escher Stairs and Cheshire Cat
- Housewife Psychosis:
- The Fainting Room
- The Little Venus
- Cunning
- Dissecting Venus
- Stripped
- Baba Yaga No Longer Reads the News
- Poppet
- By Water
- Female Casebook 6
- Chair
- The Parlour Maid
- Labourer's Wife
- The Elevation
- Walking Backwards
- Falling
- Farmer's Wife
- Stillborn
- The Boatman's Wife
- The Housekeeper
- Wunderkammer with Needle Girl and Tool Kit
- The Dolls' House Mysteries
- Doll Hospital at the Top of the Hill
- Wunderkammer with St Dymphna Tea Towel
- The Reformed Woman
- Wunderkammer with Homestead and Aeolian Harp
- Ordeal by Water
- Wunderkammer with Ophelia and Hospital Bath
- Wunderkammer with Glass Plate Photograph
- Besom
- Selling the Wind
- The Hanged Woman Addresses The Reverend Heinrich Kramer
- Bitch
- Scold's Bridle
- Hellish Nell
- Six Signs You Might Be a Slattern
- The Goddess Gets Her Close-Up
- Pygmalion
- Anger in Ladies &c
- Vessel
- NOTES
- About the Author
- Copyright
