Search results for ""Spinifex Press""
Spinifex Press Making Trouble (Tongued with Fire): An Imagined History of Harriet Elphinstone Dick and Alice C Moon
In the cold winter of 1875, two rebellious spirits travel from the pale sunlight of England to the raw heat of Australia. Harriet Rowell (age 22) and Alice Moon (age 18), were champion swimmers in a time when women didn’t go into the sea; they were athletic and strong in a time when women believed men who told them if they didn’t bind their bodies in whalebone corsets they would fall over or ruin their childbearing purpose; and they were in love in a time when many women were in love with each other but held such love secretly, for fear of retribution. In Australia, they will achieve their freedom and create a path for others to follow! With Alice’s wealth, they open a Women’s Gymnasium and begin to teach mothers and daughters how to be strong; daring them to throw off the shackles of fashion and social laws that bind their natural female bodies and minds. With courageous defiance and rebellious natures, Harriet and Alice take on the world at a dangerous time for women’s freedom of expression.
£17.31
Spinifex Press Dark Matter: New Poems
In this major new book of poems, her seventh, Robin Morgan rewards us with the award-winning mastery we've come to expect from her poetry. Her gaze is unflinching, her craft sharp, her mature voice rich with wry wit, survived pain, and her signature chord: an indomitable celebration of life.
£11.14
Spinifex Press This Intimate War Gallipoli/Canakkale 1915: ICLI Disli Bir Savas: Gelibolu/Canakkale 1915
‘Very few collections bring home so powerfully the vulnerability of individuals in the face of history’ writes Lisa Gorton of Robyn Rowland’s powerful poems recording the experiences of soldiers, nurses and doctors, women munitions workers, wives, mothers, composers, painters and poets during the Gallipolli War, 1915. It began with the Battle of Çanakkale and the defeat of the British navy. The land battle was hand-to-hand killing, the physical closeness of its soldiers unmasking the depersonalisation of the propaganda of war. Importantly, the book finishes with a poem on women’s friendship 100 years after the war, and the healing nature of love.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Remember the Tarantella
Remember The Tarantella is a remarkable work. It's learned and frivolous, female not feminine, silly and serious. Written in several strands of narrative, the many characters create a space as if reading were a dance party. Story is not the main objective. Private conversations and thoughts are always within earshot of the rhythm of others, like the stamping of feet and the beat of the music. This is concerto-like poetry; many instruments of different tones assist the reader to know who is who.
£15.25
Spinifex Press Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Porn Industry
Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography.
£18.69
Spinifex Press The Idea of Prostitution
Sheila Jeffreys explodes the distinction between “forced” and “free” prostitution, and documents the expanding international traffic in women. She examines the claims of the prostitutes’ rights movement and the sex industry, while supporting prostituted women. Her argument is threefold: the sex of prostitution is not just sex; the work of prostitution is not ordinary work; and prostitution is a ‘choice’ not for the prostituted women, but for the men who abuse them.
£17.31
Spinifex Press Evil: A Novel
“Sex, silence and sin”, this is what newly appointed professor, Dee P. Scrutari, writes in her notebook as she turns her anthropological gaze on the tribe of “non-reproducing males” who dominate St Jude's, a prestigious Catholic liberal arts college. Evil is in the air. Something is awry. What happened to the previous occupant of her newly-painted office? Professor Scrutari's fieldwork begins. Her notebooks fill. And the mystery mounts: disturbing odours that no air cleanser will disperse, turbulent faculty meetings, tenure politics, intrigue around women's bodies, and a strange ginger cat. The mix is complicated by secret student alliances, predatory priests, the end of a marriage and new love, an imperious college president, a lumbering dean, a faction-ridden Religious Studies Department, a radical mass and a dissident feminist liturgy.
£13.88
Spinifex Press The Butterfly Effect
The butterfly effect is a concept from physics in which it is surmised that small actions can have enormous consequences, and that the flutter of a butterfly's wing on one side of the world can cause devastating storms on the other side. Susan Hawthorne explores the impact of the love between lesbians. The butterfly effect is a force that can destroy families and bring down governments, but also a force full of vitality and world changing creativity.
£13.88
Spinifex Press Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution
In this book, Mary Lucille Sullivan asks whether the concept of sex work as ‘a job like any other’ matches the reality. Discussing the practicalities of brothels as regular businesses, the author unearths astounding facts about both the legal and illegal sectors. Covering issues such as violence, organised crime, women’s health, and mainstream businesses’ involvement in the sex trade.
£17.31
Spinifex Press The Wings of Angels: A Memoir of Madness
Not since Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton has anyone written so candidly about madness. Sandy Jeffs' poetry has a stark dignity, capable of conveying "shudders of intense fear". Yet in the midst of her rigours, she can access a voice both wild and funny. Sandy Jeffs' leavening sense of humour peoples her darkness with the sirens of the supermarket, a tinsel paradise and high-tech technicolour Armageddon. After all, God is only a word and angels, although mad, sing the wanderer into paradise.
£13.88
Spinifex Press The Kindness of Strangers: The History of Lort Smith Animal Hospital
The poignant story behind the Lort Smith Animal Hospital, and the women who were its driving force. Based on a desire to alleviate the suffering of animals irrespective of profits, this group of society women established the Animal Welfare League of Victoria, and then the Lort Smith Animal Hospital. Staging fundraisers, fighting battles, and dealing with the intricacies of human relationships along the way, these inspiring women – supported by the kindness of strangers – ensured that the plight of animals was not forgotten during the struggling years of the Depression.
£17.31
Spinifex Press The Falling Woman
A vivid desert odyssey; the falling woman travels through a haunting landscape of memory, myth and mental maps. Told in three voices – Stella, Estella and Estelle – this is an inspiring story drawn from childhood memories, imagined worlds and the pressing realities of daily life. The Falling Woman charts one woman’s journey into the heartland. It is a journey taken across the desert, into the heart of memory, and into the mythic heart, that place to which we return in times of crisis.
£13.88
Spinifex Press All That False Instruction
Growing up in a rural working-class home, Maureen Craig rebels against her angry mother, the privileges of her favoured brother and the relentless conformity of 1950s Australia. University promises a new world both terrifying and exhilarating in its challenges. She explores her sexuality and sets out to make a place for herself in the world. Passionate, funny and heartbreaking, this remarkable novel traces a young woman’s turbulent coming of age.
£13.88
Spinifex Press Song of the Selkies
The Edinburgh Festival brings together artists from all over the world, and Cowrie is among them, telling stories and giving readings. But even Cowrie can’t anticipate the chemistry that will begin when a group of traditional storytellers sets off to the Orkney Islands with Ellen, to stay at her coastal family cottages. For Ellen turns out to be Morrigan, and Morrigan is a selkie, living in the sea and on land. As an ancient mystery unravels, Cowrie and Sasha must turn detective to discover the truth behind Morrigan and the song of the selkies.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Blood Relations
The poems in this collection are an evocative documentation of the harrowing experiences of a child living in a hostile and unhappy home. The reader is shown the pain, the bitterness and the mixed emotions that accompany the experiences of growing up in a family torn apart by domestic violence and alcoholism.
£11.14
Spinifex Press Bird
Thirteen-year-old Avis confronts the limitations imposed on her at school. She has epilepsy and some of the teachers want to stop her participating in the sport she loves most. Susan Hawthorne captures the voice and longings of a child at the edge of self-realisation. This collection draws on the experience of epilepsy mixed with imagination, mythic consciousness and an intense realisation of life.
£13.88
Spinifex Press Summer was a Fast Train without Terminals
To love in a language prised from my wishbone. To sing a landscape where village girls once burst the moon with giggles. To dance through the fattest eye of a rice-grain. To do all these in peace and war is the wish embodied in Merlinda Bobis’ poetry. From her epic poem Cantata of the Warrior Woman: Daragang Magayon to lyric reflections on longing, and finally to an erotic dance-drama, Bobis traces the cartography of desire and its intimacy with death.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior
Cowrie boards a ship bound for Moruroa Atoll during the French nuclear tests. She is in for a rough ride. As international attention is focused on the Pacific and the environment, the stakes rise. She is joined by Sahara, a young peace activist from England and Marie-Louise, a French nuclear physicist. But can they be trusted? Can anyone be trusted? With sensuous writing and a deep knowledge of the traditions, the reader can feel the rock of the sea, taste the food, and fear the attacks on the peace flotilla as it approaches Moruroa Atoll. Dive into a luscious feast of language and imagery.
£13.88
Spinifex Press Darkness More Visible
When Margot Gorman finds a body in the women's toilets a tangle of mysteries opens up. Margot Gorman, ex-cop, is now a free agent, a triathlete and has the equivalent of perfect pitch in the sense of smell and, naturally, is a connoisseur of good wine. From murder and kidnap, drug dealing and gay bashing, to illegal mining and an underground network of cyberfeminists - the Solanacites - there are many skeins to be unravelled. A complex and intriguing novel that deals with the selfhood of women, it ranges from musings on the Amazons to a self-sufficient community in Australia's womenslands. There is mystery and philosophical enquiry in money, madness, motherhood and much more.
£13.88
Spinifex Press The Silicon Tongue
The Silicon Tongue is centred on the life of London-born Alice who was brought to New Zealand as a servant in the 1930s. Tricked by the authorities into believing she was an orphan, Alice tells her story into the tape recorder of a mysterious oral historian and discloses family secrets of rape and adoption. She discovers a kinship with a teenage nethead called Pixel and learns that old women can fly in cyberspace along with the young. Meanwhile, Alice’s daughter Joy finds out that when it comes to family stories there is always more than one version of the truth.
£11.83
Spinifex Press Imago
Molly Rose Moon dreamt of worms the night before she married Jimmy Brown in Tooting Bec. The young couple were on their way to Australia. When Molly agrees to go on a journey across hemispheres she’s looking for an escape from home. Once there she meets Marj. Fat Marj. Imago is a story of love and obsession, of seduction and transformations. The threading together of skins, of bodies. It’s a story of metamorphosis, taking and eating, larvae and pupae, the risks of stagnation. Possibilities of death.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Safe Houses
Set against the escalating violence of the last years of the Apartheid regime, Safe Houses tells the story of three families – the Sibiyas, the Singers, the Sterns – who are inextricably bound by love and hate, hope and betrayal. Ruth and Lola are drawn into the struggle against Apartheid, but feel marginal: it is difficult to find solutions when one is part of the problem. Can love and hope survive an evil political system that indiscriminately devours both the guilty and the innocent?
£11.83
Spinifex Press Wave
I remember how you were, not how you are. We were we until we became you and I. Midori and u Cô are international university students tasting freedom from family for the first time. They discover Melbourne and each other. All is well until the tsunami that swamps their world...
£11.14
Spinifex Press Bibliodiversity: A Manifesto for Independent Publishing
In a globalised world, megacorp publishing is all about numbers, about sameness, about following a formula based on the latest megasuccess. Each book is expected to pay for itself and all the externalities of publishing such as offices and CEO salaries. It means that books which take off slowly but have long lives, the books that change social norms, are less likely to be published. Independent publishers are seeking another way. A way of engagement with society and methods that reflect something important about the locale or the niche they inhabit. Independent and small publishers are like rare plants that pop up among the larger growth but add something different, perhaps they feed the soil, bring colour or scent into the world.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Lupa and Lamb
This collection of imagist poems combines mythology, archaeology and translation. Susan Hawthorne draws on the history and prehistory of Rome and its neighbours to explore how the past is remembered. Under the guidance of Curatrix, Director of the Musæum Matricum, and Latin poet, Sulpicia, travellers Diana and Agnese are led through the mythic archives about wolves and sheep before attending an epoch-breaking party to which they are invited by Empress Livia.
£13.91
Spinifex Press The Coral Battleground
The book documents the fight that was put up by a group of poets, artists and ecologists to save the Great Barrier Reef from oil drilling. It's a remarkable story being re-published in the midst of another attack on the Reef as oil tankers and an increasing number of coal freighters are plying its waters in the newly-built super ports.
£17.31
Spinifex Press Transgender Body Politics
Transgenderism in the twenty-first century is patriarchy emblazoned in imperial form. At a time when supposedly enlightened attitudes are championed by the mainstream, philosopher and activist Heather Brunskell-Evans shows how, in plain view under the guise of liberalism, a regressive men’s rights movement is posing a massive threat to the human rights of women and children everywhere. This movement is transgender politics which, while spouting platitudes about equality, is in reality colonising and erasing the bodies, agency and autonomy of women and children, while asserting men’s rights to bodily intrusion into every social and personal space. The transgender agenda redefines diversity and inclusion utilising the language of victimhood. In a complete reversal of feminist gender critical analyses, sex and gender are redefined: identity is now called ‘innate’ (a ‘feeling’ located somewhere in the body) and biological sex is said to be socially constructed (and hence changeable). This ensures a lifetime of drug dependency for transitioners, thereby delivering vast profits for Big Pharma in a capitalist dream. Everyone, including every trans person, has the right to live freely without discrimination. But the transgender movement has been hijacked by misogynists who are appropriating and inverting the struggles of feminism to deliver an agenda devoid of feminist principles. In a chilling twist, when feminists critique the patriarchal status quo it is now they who are alleged to be extremists for not allowing men’s interests to control the political narrative. Institutions whose purpose is to defend human rights now interpret truth speech as hate speech, and endorse the no-platforming of women as ethical. This brave, truthful and eye-opening book does not shirk from the challenge of meeting the politics of liberalism and transgender rights head on. Everyone who cares about the future of women’s and children’s rights must read it.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Poems from the Madhouse
Poems from the Madhouse invites readers into the paradoxical world of insanity: the confusion and clarity, the courage and fear, the bleak despair and the black comedy. Only a poet could make us hear the thundering whisper of insanity, the endless circling of the revolving door, the sheer practicality of whatever gets you through the night. Here are portraits of other people in wards filled with restless wanderers. In the end, it is humour, a thesaurus of monickers that enable the reader to emerge sadder, wiser, but not hopeless.
£10.45
Spinifex Press September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives
After September 11, feminists around the world spoke out, wrote for newspapers, for email lists and for the Internet. But in the male-dominated mass media, it was hard to find feminist perspectives. This collection brings together women who discuss the connections between war, terrorism, fundamentalism, racism, global capitalism and male violence. From the USA to Afghanistan, from Pakistan to Palestine, from Australia to Europe they have deconstructed this story and retold it from a feminist perspective in a powerful indictment of current global politics. Contributors include Barbara Kingsolver and Ani DiFranco, Naomi Klein.
£17.31
Spinifex Press Haifa Fragments
Jewellery designer, Maisoon, wants an ordinary extraordinary life, which isn’t easy for a tradition-defying, activist, Palestinian citizen of Israel who refuses to be crushed by the feeling that she is an unwelcome guest in the land of her ancestors. Maisoon volunteers for Machsom Watch, a movement of peace activists who conduct daily observations of the Israel Defence Forces checkpoints. Frustrated by the apathy of her boyfriend Ziyad and her father Majid—who want her to get on with her life and forget those in the Occupied Territories—she lashes out, only to discover her father isn’t the man she thought he was.
£15.25
Spinifex Press Car Maintenance, Explosives and Love
£18.98
Spinifex Press Grace and Marigold
£17.31
Spinifex Press Valence: Considering War through Poetry and Theory
Valence. Considering war through poetry and theory is a powerful rage against the brutality and greed of war; against the particular suffering of women in war; against our indifference but more importantly, our sense of powerless in the face of wars most of us neither support nor would ever instigate. Here is a poet of moral conscience in the fine tradition of Adrienne Rich; a poet writing across boundaries; striving with each form to elucidate, illuminate, change.
£8.39
Spinifex Press Unmaking War Remaking Men
£17.31
Spinifex Press Far and Beyon'
For Mara, mother of four, and sole provider for her family, life has never been easy. In her community women carry a heavy burden as the world changes around them. In Botswana the tensions are growing as young people attempt to resolve the magicks of tradition with the technologies of now.
£13.88
Spinifex Press Unsettling the Land
£8.39
Spinifex Press The Village and the World: My Life, Our Times
Maria Mies’ achievements include developing groundbreaking praxis and theory around the concept of “housewifisation”, the violence of colonisation and profound writings about ecofeminism. She fights the Multilateral Agreement of Investment, she fights the General Agreement on Trade in Services, she fights against the patenting of life and tackles reproductive and genetic engineering as well as food security, but she never gives up hope that there is an alternative to present day injustice and exploitation; that “the good life” is possible.
£17.31
Spinifex Press A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection
Janice Raymond offers a vision of female friendship that is as exhilarating as it is controversial. In this feminist classic, she explores the many manifestations of friendship between women including the Greek hetairai, the sisterhood of medieval nuns and the marriage resisters of China. Thousands of women have created their own communities and destinies through friendship. She also examines the contemporary women's movement and its networks and friendships – as well as the forces operating against friendship between women. A tough and clear-sighted analysis, and a book to read again and again.
£17.31
Spinifex Press Daughters of the Pacific
Indigenous women from across the Pacific - Hawai'i, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Marianas, Guam, Belau, Fiji, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Te Ao Maohi/Tahiti Polynesia - have a voice in this book. For most of the world, the tiny island nations of the Pacific are barely known, but the events that have taken place in those nations during the twentieth century have global consequences. Without understanding that history, the world will be doomed to repeat those mistakes.
£17.31
Spinifex Press She's Fantastical
The first anthology of Australian women’s speculative fiction, magic realism and fantasy A pregnant spaceman. A witch. A knight-errant princess. The nuns of St Mary Magdalene. A time-traveller. Love and lyrebirds. Dreams and poetry. Philosophy. The creation of the universe. Two very different angels. Were-marsupials...
£10.45
Spinifex Press Harvesting Darkness: New Poems 2019-2023
Robin Morgan’s latest collection is a tour-de force: poetry that thrills the intellect and stirs the emotions. Robin shares her joys and intimacies which take centre stage and laments ‘the ringmaster’s desertion’ as death hovers in the wings and aging unfolds, while "laughing at the pain / through the gridlocked traffic in my brain". Light and shadow, sleep and wakefulness, holding tight and letting go, regret and contentment, order and chaos, battle it out simultaneously through the interplanetary and domestic worlds.
£13.20
Spinifex Press Greek, Actually: Disentannglisng Adoption Deceptions
£17.31
Spinifex Press Chin CHINONGWA: 2023
£17.31
Spinifex Press Africa's Eden
As a young unmarried mother in the 1960s, Maureen faces stifling disapproval and condemnation from mainstream society. Desperate to create a new life for herself and her baby, she rekindles an old romance and moves to South Africa under Apartheid. But her precarious journey to Africa’s Eden is not the paradise she anticipated. Cultures smash against each other, family relationships are strained, there is death and despair, violence and injustice. But there is also humour, fun, family and friendship, as Maureen has to decide where her future lies. Is it in Africa or back home in distant Eden, in her Australian homeland?
£15.94
Spinifex Press Detransition: Beyond Before and After
Many feminists are concerned about the way transgender ideology naturalizes patriarchal views of sex stereotypes, and encourages transition as a way of attempting to escape misogyny. In this brave and thoughtful book, Max Robinson goes beyond the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the transition she underwent and takes us through the processes that led her, first, to transition in an attempt to get relief from her distress, and then to detransition, as she discovered feminist thought and community. The author makes a case for a world in which all medical interventions for the purpose of assimilation are open to criticism. This book is a far-reaching discussion of women’s struggles to survive under patriarchy, which draws upon a legacy of radical and lesbian feminist ideas to arrive at conclusions. Robinson’s bold discussion of both transition and detransition is meant to provoke a much-needed conversation about who benefits from transgender medicine and who has to bear the hidden cost of these interventions.
£13.20
Spinifex Press Born Still: A Memoir of Grief
How did we move so far from love that a mother's grief became the vehicle with which to punish her? Losing a baby during childbirth is one of the most heartbreaking things imaginable. But to then be accused of causing that death is nothing short of soul-destroying. Janet Fraser's story shows what happens when private grief is turned into a public accusation against a woman who dared to exercise choice about how and were she gave birth. This sobering book demonstrates the penalties dished out to women who dare to question medical orthodoxy and to make decisions for themselves about their own bodies. When things go wrong in a hospital, it is seen as unavoidable, and no one is to blame, as the medical institutions are seen as the arbiters of decision-making. The layers of bureaucracy protect insiders. Yet if a baby dies in a home birth, the full weight of the law comes down upon the woman who dared to give birth outside a hospital. Janet Fraser is that woman and this is her story of injustice, loss and grief. This painful yet enlightening book shows that the patriarchy still wrestles for the control of women and their bodies -and punishes them with every tool in the legal handbook when they dare to contest the view that their bodies are public property.
£12.51
Spinifex Press Portrait of the Artist's Mother: Dignity, Creativity and Disability
A memoir and an examination of the politics of disability. Fiona Place describes the pressure from medical institutions to undergo screening during pregnancy and the traumatic nature and assumptions that a child with Trisomy 21 should not live, even though people with Down syndrome do live rich and productive lives. Fiona's son, Fraser, has become an artist and his prize-winning paintings have been exhibited in galleries in Sydney and Canberra. How does a mother get from the grieving silence of the birthing room through the horrified comments of other mothers to the applause at gallery openings? This is a story of courage, love and commitment to the idea that all people, including those who are 'less than perfect', have a right to be welcomed into this increasingly imperfect world.
£15.94
Spinifex Press Dark Matters: A Novel
In a dawn raid, Kate is arrested. She is imprisoned, beaten, kept awake and tortured. She has no idea what has happened to her partner, Mercedes. The uncertainty plagues her. It is as if she has no history. Trying to retain her sense of self in a swirling psychic state, she invents stories. And she remembers stories of her mother, her grandmothers and aunts, the rich mythic traditions of Greece. She rearranges them and writes poems in her head. After Kate’s death, her niece, Desi, is going through boxes of papers, trying to make sense of her aunt’s life. Desi travels to South America and unlocks the history of Mercedes' family: a history of political torture, disappearance and escape. Susan Hawthorne’s dark story uncovers the hidden histories of organised violence against lesbians. She traces fear and uncertainty, and finds a narrative of resilience created through the writing of poems. The author asks: how do we pass on stories hidden by both shame and resistance to shame? A novel that is poetic and terrifying.
£12.51
