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double is a gothic trope where there is a split in the subject. The affirmation of the self, which is celebrated in the philosophy of gay pride, is empty, or at least not fully recognised in‘ Christabel’. Traditionally, pride has two meanings. There are negative associations when discussing Hubris and positive associations when pride means a sense of belonging within a community. Gay pride is about being proud of one’ s sexuality and gender identity. But in many poetic works the positive and negative aspects of pride converge through exploring the undervalued and overvalued self. Empty or unjustified pride combines the under and overvalued self with the feeling that you should be proud instead of just being, which may heighten the complexity of pride.
My poetry continues with these themes and reacts against the‘ ideal of lesbianism’. It also regards mindscapes rather than Romantic landscapes. Although my poem‘ Birds’ for example provides a landscape, this is metaphorical. The outside becomes the outsider because the bird and the narrator are on a quest for love, yet, ultimately,‘ feel nothing’. The emphasis on the mind enables the everyday to combine with fantasy, not unlike the movement from Still Life to Surrealist art. Although there is some Romanticism of nature, the man-made is always infiltrating my creative work.
Take my poem‘ Inversion’ for example:
Inversion
It was an inverted head that attracted her [ ]. A coffee stain – elongatedover the [ ] high ground of her unified breasts. Like a birth mark over her continental body.
The dusky guillotines are sign-posts that map out the right direction. They have shut up shopclosed for the night.
But when I saw her head, her honey hair, mutilated, disabled Loosened and untightened, I took the basket, it had dropped in, Just in case.
Here, symbols suggest the tone or attitude of the narrator, for, the sign-posts in the poem‘ map out the right direction’ where maps are man-made instructions for the‘ moral’. The pleasure and shame involved in a non-binary identity is projected as an image of horror, of