‘Dress Rehearsals’ by Madison Godfrey

Non-fiction – memoir/poetry; JOAN; 128 pages; 2023. 

Madison Godfrey’s Dress Rehearsals is a book that defies easy categorisation.

It’s a brash and bold memoir told in prose poetry, unafraid of exploring the deepest, darkest places of what it is to be human and trying to find your (safe) place in the world.

The author, who identifies as non-binary and whose pronouns are they/them, embraces radical and inclusive storytelling. Their book focuses largely on womanhood and femininity and explores desire, sex and sexuality; music, fandom and the mosh pit; domesticity and home life; the femme fatale; and gender and gender euphoria (not dysphoria).

It’s a compelling and often deeply confessional read. Godfrey exposes deeply held thoughts, opinions and ways of being in a frank and forthright style.

It’s often revelatory, and the poems totter between joyful self-expression and an openness to vulnerability. Yet many of the poems dispel the notion of feminity as something vulnerable or ill-protected and transform it into a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Feminine force

The middle section, “The Femme Fatale Goes Home,” for instance, examines all the different ways being a “deadly woman” could be represented, from not knowing what to wear to chaperoning a Tinder date.

But for all their seriousness and big themes, the poems are not without humour, as this one entitled “The Femme Fatale Spreads her Wings but they’re Crooked”, about applying eyeliner, demonstrates:

I come home and catch the femme fatale tracing a wing where her eyelid once was. With a mirror balancing on her lap, she sits crosslegged staring at creases. She keeps sighing and starting over, each time spitting on her finger and wiping away wet ink, leaving a patch without foundation. I have never understood the precision of women who can trace new edges onto their eyes with ease. I wonder what it must be like, to define yourself so easily, that you can stay steady even in a passenger seat. As a teenager, I emerged from the bathroom before gigs and closed my eyes in front of my father, asking are they straight? My mother always said yes too quickly. But the men in my life have mostly looked at me with a closeness I chose to interpret as respect. I wonder what trope the femme fatale would prefer I lean towards today. Am I a protector, or a protractor stroking her cheek? She shushes my footsteps for the ripples they make from the space that surrounds her. I kneel in front of her and instruct close your eyes, knowing that I am nobody’s beautician, but it’s easier to appreciate the brushstrokes of an apparatus you weren’t permitted to hold. (page 55)

Dress Rehearsals is published by Joan Press, an imprint of Allen & Unwin. It was established in 2020 for “stories and storytellers who are redefining the mainstream in a way that is radical, inclusive and bold”.

Madison Godfrey is a writer, editor and educator who lives on Whadjuk Noongar land. I read this as part of my ongoing #FocusOnWestAustralianWriters project, which you can find out more about here. You can see all the books I’ve reviewed from this part of the world on my Focus on West Australian writers page.