SOURCE: Mix, Deborah M. “An Erotics of Collaboration: Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland's Double Negative.” Contemporary Literature 41, no. 2 (summer 2000): 291-322.

In the following essay, Mix examines the collaborative lesbian feminist writing of Marlatt and Betsy Warland in Double Negative. Mix draws attention to the way in which their overlapping contributions defy binary conceptions of power and subvert patriarchal linguistic conventions, especially those of traditional love poetry and notions of authorship by linking “sexuality and textuality.”

Lifting belly. How are you. Lifting belly how are you lifting belly. We like a fire and we don't mind if it smokes. Do you. 

Gertrude Stein, Lifting Belly

“it's Not Words / It's in Words”

Canadian poets Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland have long been at the forefront of Canadian feminist writing. During her very influential career, Marlatt has published over fifteen books of poetry, beginning in 1968 with Frames of a Story, as...