Susan Hawthorne

In Defence of Separatism is a timely book. When it was first written in 1976, although it was an important subject of conversation among many feminists it was not welcomed by academics or publishers. When a political group wants to strategise so that its members can arrive at agreed-on political tactics and ideas, they call for, and create, separate spaces. These might be in coffee shops, in community centres, in one another's homes or in semi-public...

Valence in chemistry, the number of bonds in an element's atom in linguistics, the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate in psychology, the emotional charge something has In this remarkable annotated poem, Susan Hawthorne commits to words the horrors of war that have been left unspoken. She shatters the conspiracy of silence and dares to draw links between militarism, fundamentalism and the sex industry. She rails against the violence...

When two women and a dog set off on a holiday, they have no inkling of what's to come. They wake to find the river has crept up silently during the night. Trapped by floodwater, they devise escape routes only to be faced with more obstacles at every turn. Only the dog remains calm. This poetic novella grips you with its language, its pace, and its anxieties. The word limen is defined as "a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived." In Susan's...

Do we want to live in a world without birdsong? The pesticides, the coalmines, the clear-felling forestry industry, the industrial farmers are destroying the earth with their insistence on profit. But what point is profit on a dead and silent planet? In this enlightening yet devastating book, Susan Hawthorne writes with clarity and incisiveness on how patriarchy is wreaking destruction on the planet and on communities. The twin mantras of globalization...

Who invented hieroglyphics? Who did Einstein's mathematics? Who led the defence of Viet Nam in 40 AD? Who invented the first computer? Who built the pyramid at Giza? Who developed the merino sheep? Who was the first writer in the world? Who invented the wheel? All were women. When the next person asks: Where are all the famous women artists/inventors/architects/writers/scientists?-this book will make it easy to find their names.

The Muses have been sacked their role in the pantheon sold up for some new real estate venture When the Muses are sacked, what are we to do? The Muses who inspire poetry, astronomy, history and daily living bring their song and dance into present-day political struggles. These Muses are for rebellion. Susan Hawthorne's poems span millennia of resistance by women. The earth itself is implicated. She writes about women's bodies, how they are used, abused...

An intriguing approach to the rewriting of myth, this poetry collection journeys through the history of languages and symbolic traditions. Through main character Queenie, a cow of many abilities, these poems delve into the creation of the universe as Queenie fashions the galaxies and travels through the sky as a herd of stars. Delightful and surprising, this compilation draws on the Greek lyric tradition of Sappho as well as on South India's Sangam...

Unsettling the Land is a relection on the plight of the land in drought-stricken times, conjuring through both text and illustration, the complex relationships that create and sustain our unique Australian landscape in all its majesty, tranquility, and its present suffering.