Booty: Hurricane Jane and Typhoon Mary

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.

Crossing the waterline, Booty: Typhoon Mary searches for what's 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.

Following the trajectory of “that old hoochy koochy,” Booty: Hurricane Jane dances the form and from there, improvises: in her circling and repetition, Hartman 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.

Finally: a feminist poetics that playfully questions the language we use and the language we desire.