Booty

Prairie oysters, hen frigates, surf and turf. Scallop, trollop, galleon, hellion. Warning: Booty contains language. In disjunctive treatments of popular slang and unpopular attitudes, Calgary collaborators Brea Burton and Jill Hartman take on gendered sexuality, reconsidering the sensual, the physical, and the feminine in colloquial language. Riding the wave of burlesque and piracy, this sexually-charged poetry is booty call—and response. Typhoon Mary sails the seas of salty dogs and lady pirates. Burtonés poetry demands a sensual enjoyment of the body—fluid on the tongue, the figurehead come to life makes waves and breaks ice—the formless, the formidable. Crossing the waterline, Typhoon Mary searches for whatés been plundered, from sunken chests to ravished booty, and recasts the erotic in language. Protest literature in pasties, puss in boots—the violence inherent in sexual slang rubs up against the bloodless “feminine” of popular culture to rediscover the feminist potential in sex and reclaim the sexual potential in femininity. Hurricane Jane sashays into the culturally charged territory of burlesque and its roots in Middle Eastern dance. Hartmanés poetry is an assay, spaced with milestones whose names describe dance styles and steps in “Belly” dance. Following the trajectory of “that old hoochy koochy, ” Hurricane Jane dances the form and from there, improvises: in her circling and repetition, she partners language with moving bodies to define a space for empowered femininity in language, pulling the Persian carpet out from under to subvert the exotic in erotic. Like a dance, the text is experiential—Hurricane Jane will have you reeling. Where Hurricane Jane and Typhoon Mary meet? Booty: the plunder and whatés under, a doubloon, a two-backed beastess. Jane and Mary play woman as force of nature until it is played out—encountering gendered slang and violently sexualized language, Hartman and Burton dance around it then run it through with a very pretty cutlass. Finally: a feminist poetics that playfully questions the language we use and the language we desire.