Wedding Underwear For Mermaids

by Linda Ann Strang

Overview

Linda Ann Strang's first poetry collection skilfully entwines fairy tales, womanhood, African culture, and the female psyche. The warrior mother, the spurned lover, the maltreated bride: they are all here, expertly drawn in lush, original language that you'll want to wallow in from beginning to end.

This heady mix of fairy tales, African culture, pagan myth, and feminist thought carries the reader on a wave to the surreal and the enchanting.

Like the siren's call, this mind-expanding trip through the female psyche pulls readers in with beautifully crafted language that is bold, intimate, provocative, and sensual.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780956665843
Publisher:	Honest Publishing
Publication date:	03/03/2011
Pages:	90
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.22(d)

About the Author

Linda Ann Strang was born in 1966. She lives in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where she has worked as a university lecturer and as an academic writing consultant. Her poems and short stories have been published internationally. In 2007, Poetry Kanto nominated her poetry for a Pushcart Prize. She sometimes volunteers as an editor for Sharp!, Port Elizabeth's literary journal. Linda's interests, sometimes echoed in her poetry, include surrealism, ekphrasis, and the feminist revision of fairy tales.

Read an Excerpt

Marriage through the Looking Glass

Right after I tasted the magic mushrooms

I fell into him and other nightmares.

He tied me up for twenty years

and made me view horror movies, starring,

of course in Technicolor, myself.

I played a supporting role.

Always killed off before the final girl

ran around shrieking in her torn T-shirt,

I wore my gore like an evening dress -

tanzanite, rubies, and blueberry pearls

from the heart's oozing oyster.

I didn't mind too much:

the pawns on the pornography chessboard

fawned over me; the Cheshire cat

with the preview eyes and the toupee

lent me his fake smile on Tuesdays;

and I could have my way with opium smoking

caterpillars - if I wore stilettos

and let my husband watch.

I remember my wedding day.

Do you take this —, began the axe murderer

in his dog collar, reaching for the chain saw.

Yes, I take it, I take it, and I'll take it some more.

The baby's breath in my bouquet

burst into flames. The entire congregation

kissed my slit throat.

I gave my groom a flamingo golf club

and a wedding ring. He aimed the remote.

Editorial Reviews

"Crafted with startling images & deft twirlings of language, [Strang's fabulous women] are as diverse as a bruised wife who wears her 'gore like an evening dress' and a grandmother who 'beats her demons into frothy submission."

- Moira Richards The Cape Times



"If poets would have us fall for them, this is a poet to fall for."

- Alan Botsford Editor of Poetry Kanto

From the Publisher