Tuesday Poem: “Female nude” by Joanna Preston
Female nude
The things we prize. Innocence,
that sleeping fire that speaks
through the long white flower
of her spine, the curve
of her hips the rim of a slow
turning wheel
on which to break a man.
.
© Joanna Preston
Featured here with permission.
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As I noted in March 26th’s Tuesday Poem post, I am currently running a series of poems in response to works of art (ie “ekphrastic” poems), which will include a note from the poet. This week’s poem and note is from Joanna Preston.
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Poet’s Note from Joanna Preston
This poem was triggered by Man Ray’s “Ingres’ Violin” – itself triggered by another painting (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s “La Grande Baigneuse”). The phrase ‘Ingre’s Violin’ has come to mean something a person does as a hobby, but does so well that it could easily be what they were famous for. (In Ingres’ case, he was a famous painter who also played the violin to an extremely high standard.)
Both artworks show a semi nude woman with her back to the viewer. In both cases the woman is curvaceous, and adult. Which made me start thinking about the whole issue of the depiction of women’s bodies in art. How male nudity is usually presented as strength (think of Michelangelo’s ‘David’) but female nudity is often presented as clandestine, with viewer as voyeur, or else as sexually provocative. As though the idea that a female could just be unselfconsciously naked – not teasing, not challenging, not provoking, not hiding, just ‘not wearing clothes’ – is somehow unthinkable.
The saying goes that a gun you don’t know how to use may as well be in your enemy’s hands. The female body is that kind of instrument. This poem doesn’t try to offer an answer to the problem. But hopefully it makes people think.
About the Poet:
Joanna Preston is an Australian-born poet, editor and freelance writing tutor who lives in a small rural town in Canterbury, New Zealand. In 2008 she won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry. Her first collection, The Summer King, was published by Otago University Press in July 2009, and won the Mary Gilmore Award for the best first poetry collection by an Australian author in 2010.
She has an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan (Wales). She worked for three years as a part-time tutor in Creative Writing at Christchurch Polytech, and and was co-editor of Kokako magazine from 2009 to 2012.
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Thanks for this Joanna and Helen. A very thought provoking poem and comment.
I agree, Helen. “Deceptively simple” is a truism, but I feel it was probably secretly coined for this poem. 😉
Excellent poem and every word working. No fat in this lean, mean poem. Female representation has always been a contentious subject.
Glad you enjoyed, Andrew.:)