{"id":20164,"date":"2013-04-30T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T20:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=20164"},"modified":"2013-04-30T09:21:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T21:21:05","slug":"tuesday-poem-female-nude-by-joanna-preston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/04\/30\/tuesday-poem-female-nude-by-joanna-preston\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Female nude” by Joanna Preston"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Female nude
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The things we prize. Innocence,
\nthat sleeping fire that speaks<\/p>\n

through the long white flower
\nof her spine, the curve<\/p>\n

of her hips the rim of a slow
\nturning wheel<\/p>\n

on which to break a man.
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a9 Joanna Preston<\/p>\n

Featured here with permission.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

As I noted in March 26th\u2019s Tuesday Poem post<\/a>, 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\u2019s poem and note is from Joanna Preston<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Poet’s Note from<\/em> Joanna Preston<\/h3>\n

This poem was triggered\u00a0by Man Ray\u2019s \u201cIngres\u2019 Violin<\/a>\u201d \u2013 itself triggered by another painting (Jean-Auguste-Dominique\u00a0Ingres’s<\/em>\u00a0\u201cLa Grande Baigneuse<\/a>\u201d). The phrase \u2018Ingre\u2019s Violin\u2019 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\u2019 case, he was a famous painter who also played the violin to an extremely high standard.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s bodies in art. How male nudity is usually presented as strength (think of Michelangelo\u2019s \u2018David\u2019) 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 \u2013 not teasing, not challenging, not provoking, not hiding, just \u2018not wearing clothes\u2019 \u2013 is somehow unthinkable.<\/p>\n

The saying goes that a gun you don\u2019t know how to use may as well be in your enemy\u2019s hands. The female body is that kind of instrument. This poem doesn\u2019t try to offer an answer to the problem. But hopefully it makes people think.<\/p>\n

—<\/div>\n

About the Poet:<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>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<\/a>. Her first collection, The Summer King<\/em>, was published by Otago University Press<\/a> in July 2009, and won the Mary Gilmore Award<\/a> for the best first poetry collection by an Australian author in 2010.<\/p>\n

She has an MPhil in Creative Writing<\/a> from the University of Glamorgan<\/a> (Wales). She worked for three years as a part-time tutor in Creative Writing at Christchurch Polytech<\/a>, and and was co-editor of Kokako<\/em> magazine from 2009 to 2012.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon<\/strong> in the sidebar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. . \u00a9 Joanna Preston Featured here with permission. — As I noted in March 26th\u2019s Tuesday Poem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20164"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20215,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20164\/revisions\/20215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}