Dress Rehearsals by Madison Godfrey
“Femininity wasn’t what made me vulnerable, even though it made me visible / my femininity is not a survival instinct, it is a song.”
~ ‘My Fear and My Femme Share a Suburb’
Dress Rehearsals (2023) is the “memoir as poetry” collection from writer, editor and educator Madison Godfrey which has sat on my shelves for a while but definitely found its way into my hands at precisely the right time.
Hailing from Whadjuk Noongar land, Godfrey’s powerful poetry and personal writing that explores their experiences as a trans person are well known (and loved) by many. This collection does not disappoint in offering the raw, emotionally charged and exacting prose they’re known for.
Split into three parts and stylised as a triptych, Godfrey starts the collection with poems exploring girlhood, belonging, and the painfulness of teenage life. With intriguing titles like ‘Harry Styles is Interviewed on a Beach and the Horizon Aligns With His Sighs’ and ‘The Only Leopard Print I Have Ever Owned Still Hangs in My Childhood Bedroom’, we are introduced to moments and musings from Godfrey’s adolescence.
The icon of the ‘merch girl’ features heavily throughout the section, alluding to this elusive figure and the seemingly subversive power they hold.
“When I grow up, I want a man to ask me to sit behind his pride while he sings about my thighs to a room of girls with black gauze turning their legs into ladders. Blinks with only one of his eyes.”
~ ‘When I Grow Up I Want to Be the Merch Girl’
Later in the section, the merch girl re-emerges in ‘Merch Girl: First Time’, but in this observation, the icon is no longer someone to emulate. Instead, her role is one to be fearful of:
“How expensive would it be, to explain the truth of the teenage girl in his passenger seat? Unless she was useful: an enthusiastic employee, earning an apprenticeship in monetising longing.”
The second part of the collection, enigmatically titled ‘The Femme Fatale Goes Home’, is a series of short vignettes, all hyper-focused on the movements and activities of Godfrey’s ‘femme fatale’.
From breaking a nail to sleeping over, hiding her hands to chaperoning Tinder dates, the femme fatale is someone we are compelled to observe. Godfrey’s femme is effortlessly seductive, wearing her womanhood like a weapon, but in much media, the femme fatale exists only as a product of the male gaze – someone who is sexually alluring and a danger to men for this reason alone.
As the section progresses, the femme fatale is finally asked what she’d like to be called, replying, “Call me menace.”
“What good is a guardian angel if they are always gazing coyly away and clasping their hands in prayer? Give me a guardian in black boots and fishnet stockings, someone well equipped to meet me in the mosh pit.”
~ ‘Femme Menace as Guardian’
‘Menace’ asserts itself as someone to be feared, regardless of gender, and it’s an appropriate new moniker. The repetitive nature of the vignettes throughout this section also serves the idea well that the femme fatale is long overdue for a new approach.
The final part of the collection brings us closer to the present day, with Godfrey musing between the pleasures and complexities of their trans body and queerness. In ‘When Does Your Body Feel Like It Belongs to You?’ they write:
“Queer bodies dance in ordinary ways.
Reaching for tea. Rushing for hands.
My loves: when I am dancing alone
I am dancing beside you.”
One of my favourites from the collection – ‘Womanhood is a Hungry Mirror, Struggling to Swallow Its Own Reflection’ – sits within this final part and explores the theme of female hunger (a theme I have a lot of time for, no matter the literary format!). Deftly playing on the sharpness of this insatiable hunger, Godfrey writes:
“Silver coins cascade out my mouth. A shard of glass carves my silhouette onto a stage. A man who doesn’t know me says he loves me, and I let him. I am a skilful mirror, womanhood taught me this.”
Described as a “love story to the queer self”, Dress Rehearsals is a refreshingly confessional, enlightening and bold collection. I’d hesitate to refer to it entirely as poetry, as the vignette approach for the second part sets it apart, but I loved the unique approach Godfrey has taken here.
As other reviews foretold, this was unlike anything I’ve read before, and it was utterly delicious.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
