POETRY


Ghosts

To tell the truth,
I am tired of waiting in
this sick grey skin.
This wretch I have become.

There was a moment when I
lived in a golden body, a child
blowing dandelion wishes on the wind.

Now just waiting for the therapy bills to come in.

My eyes stolen, my tongue
ripped out, and when I fuck,
I fuck the ghosts of absent rapists.
They were wrong - rage is quiet.
It sits in your stomach like a pilot
directing your puke.

It's funny how when one man steals
your soul, they hand you to another
to stitch you up again.

Roxanna Bennett
Ancaster, Ontario

Throughout Europe we take a very different form. The Northern Europeans-Holland, Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia-have really moved on and used the women's studies courses and departments as windows into the university and aim at deeper transformations of the curriculum. The old idea that if we could actually have gender introduced into every discipline, then we wouldn't need to be here, I think is absolutely true. In countries like Spain and Greece, and Italy too, it is developing very fast, partly because it is new and partly because there has been a tremendous amount of research done on women outside the university. All of a sudden the university is noticing. For the first time in twenty years they are finally taking notice of all this work which has already been done in women's centres outside the institutions. And so they are in the process of bringing in this wonderful stuff which has been happening on the side.

You have to be very careful [with this question]. Women's studies means very different things to different areas. It is also called different things in different countries, from feminist studies, which is what the Danish and the Scandinavians use, to gender studies, which has really had much success, and the more traditional women's studies. To be adequate you would have to be very space and time specific [when asking this question].

I should hope through the European network we are running there is a new impetus coming throughout Europe. If I could have it my way it would be the beginning of a process of change of what universities provide for both men and women.

CCLOW COLUMN

Popularizing the Platform for Action

Fourteen social justice organizations, including CCLOW, have collaborated to produce a popularized version of the Plaform for Action, the United Nations Beijing document. Entitled Take Action for Equality, Development and Peace, the document highlights key paragraphs in the Platform and, using plain language, explains their relevance to Canadian women. It also provides individuals and organizations with strategies to take action at the community and national levels to hold governments accountable to their promises. Publication date is May 1. For information, contact CRIAW at (613) 563-0681 or (613) 563-0682 fax.

The generational issue is extremely important, of course-and again it varies greatly in different countries. Over all, however, I think that institutional women's studies curricula are living memories and data- banks which aim at transmitting a political and intellectual radicalism which is rare and, to my mind, precious, in the 90s. The field of education joins together different generations of women and carries on a project of transformation not only of knowledge, but also of life experiences.

Kathleen O'Grady is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) where she is completing a thesis on theory of metaphor and metonymy in the writings of Bulgarian linguist Julia Kristeva. Blessed with eternal optimism inherited from her grandmother, Kathleen looks forward to the day when there is equality for women in every aspect of life.


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