Dress Rehearsals

by Madison Godfrey

A memoir made of poetry, Dress Rehearsals documents a decade of performing womanhood in a non-binary body.

'Unlike anything else you'll ever read. It's an ode to womanhood, performative feminism and deeply confessional. Godfrey has created a deeply intimate letter to their experience of the everyday through an autobiography of sultry poetry.' InStyle Australia

My femininity is not a survival instinct, it is a song.


In their brilliant new poetry collection, Madison Godfrey documents a decade of performing womanhood, from teenage fangirl to tender femme. Godfrey's poems approach the autobiographical body as a site of the everyday and the surreal: experiencing first crushes, mosh pits, sharpened nails, gender euphoria, and the complicated colours of desire and memory.

Darkly witty and deeply confessional, Dress Rehearsals is a love story to the queer self. This coming-of-age memoir asks, what does it mean to wear femininity into the world, when it constitutes both a bullseye and a ballgown?

'I inhaled this book.' Dylin Hardcastle, author of Below Deck

'Madison Godfrey wields words with exquisite precision and Dress Rehearsals is as taut, seductive and deadly as a femme fatale herself. These are poems to impale yourself on. A work of distilled genius.' Yves Rees, author of All About Yves

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Australia, Transgender

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2023

About the author

Madison Godfrey (they/them) is a writer and poet who has performed poetry at the Sydney Opera House, St Paul's Cathedral and Glastonbury Festival. A recipient of the Kat Muscat Fellowship and the Varuna Poetry Flagship Fellowship, Godfrey was recently awarded a WA Youth Award for their 'Creative Contributions' to the state.

Reviews

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

genuinely one of the best poetry collections that i've ever read.

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. I enjoyed literally every single poem. I could try to be nuanced and write a really thoughtful and intelligent review but honestly, I don't think I can just yet. Just know that this collection left me inspired to write (poetry, not reviews) and is one I can see myself frequently re-reading. 10/10 recommend.

[ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

did i devour this collection or did it devour me? a new favourite and an experience i will never forget, every single one of this poems deserves to be endlessly celebrated and lauded. i have destroyed my copy of this with the amount of annotations i’ve subjected it to. i do not think i could ever write a review that captures the pure genius of this collection.

[Steph Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry isn't always for me but holy shit. Madison Godfrey doesn't lie when they call it a memoir, it was truly captivating and I feel such a connection with the writing and the sense of self that came through with every word.

I often find contemporary poetry (especially Australian) somewhat shallow or trope heavy, but Godfrey balanced realism, artistry and tongue in cheek humour perfectly. I didn't think it was possible for a poem to reference Twilight without it being painfully millennial but I stand corrected. Madison's comments on the femme experience of purpose, life, love and sexuality was faultless, and I genuinely couldn't recommend it enough. Would be a great entry read into poetry as well.

Some of my favourite lines:

"Will my death only be didactic if I'm wearing winged eyeliner?"

"I could've been convinced to write adjacent rooms for your genius"

"i hope they stain my best dress on a dancefloor... pull on inheritance like a baggy shirt the morning after. if i am allowed to have a legacy let it be well worn."

"I've never shared a bed this quiet with someone I wasn't falling into or out of love with. What a pleasure it is...to go to sleep with the same amount of adoration that will stir beside you tomorrow."

and my favourite

"Most people I know have had sex while listening to the Arctic Monkeys"

[Gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really enjoyed the poems and how the struggles with gender were described.

my favorite one was „hand me downs”

[Lisa Collyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Madison Godfrey’s coming of age, ‘Dress Rehearsals’ disrupts the male dominated genre by beginning a girl. The shock is the objectification and violence towards women and the journey is repositioning their gender as non-binary.

Performing femininity as a young woman is about “appearing” sexy as the opening poem suggests, ‘when I grow up I want to be the merch girl’ as she ‘undoes her middle part like a top button’ and being considered desirable by men ‘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.’

This follows the violence of male objectification towards women who are ‘ being murdered for much less than this’ but is rejected by a rebellious speaker who vows ‘to never again shove my shame so deep inside my body, that I cannot salvage it the next morning’ after losing a tampon inside and having to dig deep to remove it.

The repetition of blood and the feminine body as abject is a feature of the first part of this collection and highly relatable. The bridge of the poem is of split selves with the appearance of the femme fatale who teaches the speaker about the performance of femininity beginning with the female nude trope ‘in the bathtub, bent over like a freeze frame of a myth’ and follows a rejection of this “feminine” performance ‘’how boring, to be beautiful forever’.

This is rejected with a screaming rebellion in ‘Trans Mosh’ ‘ I bite back so quick’ to a pervy male and speaks of the same objectification on trans bodies because of their outer appearance as “female”.
There are numerous poems in the final act searching for a definition of their gender in the poem, ‘multiple choice’ ‘my gender can belt a chorus after years of silence’ ‘my gender works at a nail salon’ ‘my gender moisturises your hands like a lover’ but settling on ‘none of the above’ as all being unsatisfactory
and instead finishing with redefining their own positionality, hunger and desire without the supposed binary restrictions or rejection of their bodies ‘I look at myself and flinch, but refuse to retreat. I look at myself again. I look like myself again.’

At last, a coming of age memoir that talks to the construction of femininity and the rejection and restriction of binaries.

Bought from Rabble Books & Games @allenandunwin @joanpress @nakkiahlui Madison Godfrey

[Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 🌟

[Meg Cooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn’t enjoy reading this book especially part 2. The two stars are for the poems I really enjoyed which included the one about the interview with Harry Styles and also the Ode to Knee Caps. Unlike the author of the poem I HAVE been complemented on my knee caps, I was told by an impressed physio that I have quite large, solid knee joints. So perhaps my kneecaps are even more deserving of an Ode.

[Chrystyphyr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unbelievably powerful, brimming with honesty and tenderness and rage and unspeakable pain and so much more in a way that horrifying to imagine having such truth but astonishing to read. The exploration of femme-ness, queerness, bodies and yes, Arctic Monkeys makes this one of the most important and well written poetry collections I’ve ever read.

Also local poet! We love!

[Georgia Hansard · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5

"Womanhood shouldn't be synonymous with survival"

"When I reclaimed pigtails, my hemlines grew teeth"

"Harry Styles sells out a concert in my hometown - that night, the strip clubs are louder than usual"

[JJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolute fucking phenomenon. i felt so seen in my gender identity reading this. more seen than, like, ever before lol. and i feel like i really saw others as well. easy five stars, truly remarkable writing

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“All the good men I know have been bad men to someone else.”

[Flicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

“All the good men I know have been bad men to someone else.”

3.5

[Emily Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first picked this up in the bookstore I skipped through and the first one I read had me in tears. Some of the best poetry I’ve ever read.

[Allie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll admit I've gotten a bit carried away with non-fiction recently and forgot that I notoriously despise poetry in all forms so my opinion is knowingly very biased.

I found one poem about chronic illness quite good so that's a positive!

I think the general concept was intriguing about performing femininity but I don't think I personally felt the ideas sink in. I obviously can't really comment on the gender-y stuff much more than being socialised female so I will focus on the me-specific problem which is: I still don't like poems :(

I never got the hang of poems throwing language features at you. Like WHAM metaphor WHAM rhetorical question. And this in an order I often find baffling. I just don't understand it at all and my brain can't fathom someone putting genuine effort into crafting poems because all of the metaphors read quite funny usually. I KNOW POETRY IS A BEAUTIFUL AND REAL ART FORM. I am just maybe too STEM-brained or stupid in the head. By the time I figure out what a poem is about it's usually already over and something about me is I hate rereading things.

Here's my attempt at demonstrating what I mean:
You're the lipstick stain I left on the mirror this morning / I walk to the grocery store alone / What do I desire? / My body encircles itself and turns itself inside out / I buy three red apples

That was of course complete nonsense I just made up but that is what it feels like to read most poetry for me - especially prose poetry unfortunately! I found the prose poem ABOUT prose poetry very amusing as a result.

I wish I was a cottagecore light academia vintage cutesy girl who likes poems but I am just overwhelmingly anti pretty much every poem I've ever read.

I'm sorry I'm sorry it was a 2 star FOR ME and I should have known it would be that all along and not read it at all I'M SORRY!!!

[Digit · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jess Blaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

i loved this so so so much

[Lizzy]

This was good but poetry's not really my thing

[Zali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Belated review but I adored this collection/memoir & am going to be gifting it to every femme enby friend I possibly can, the only thing I can liken it to is listening to Pure Heroine for the first time? Amazing incredible outstanding prose, also.

[nosophiesallowed · Rating 5 out of 5]

ughhhh this is so good. i read it slowly, rereading each poem over and over until they fully sunk in. it was accessible yet still so intricately crafted and resonated with me in a way i rarely feel. i just loved it.

[Madi Porter · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I was eighteen when you measured my worth with your hands. Like a band shirt, I squeezed my entire identity inside, adults dressed like teenage dreams."

This was something alright. Personally, I can't stand contemporary poetry. It's such bad, lazy, and bland writing; but I still try to give it to the opportunity to surprise me. So when I saw this at the book store, I liked the cover and the title so I thought I'd give it a try. I should have trusted my gut. This was just the weirdest collection of poetry. It felt like some of the worst song lyrics you have ever heard jammed in to this little book and then titled a poetry collection. It was basic, uninspiring and conventional- just like everything else. The few poems I liked weren't even for there entirety. A couple lines here and there that could actually end up being something like the line in 'The Femme Fatale Hides Her Hands', "I wonder if Mary daydreamed different ways to be holy forever". Like that is beautiful but then they go to write, "I wonder if Norma Jean got premenstrual pimples,"...like what? It just wasn't for me. The only poem I liked pretty much for its entirety was 'Girlhood as Joke: Cycle', but only really because I could relate to it. Other than that, I definitely won't be picking this up again.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌟

From 'Child of the Hurricane '

'... There's no place like here, right here. We give human names to hurricanes because they are capable of change.'

From 'The Femme Fatale Forgoes The Public Bathroom. '

'Women have a habit of making confession booths out of bathroom stalls: somewhere to be lonely aloud.'

From 'Pretty Sick'

'Last week I answered a work call while wearing a surgical gown, my underwear bloodying a plastic bag. Mimicking filmic femininity, I recited a dialogue of betterment; poured wellness down the plastic pores of the phone, as if my womb could simply unscar itself. '

[Ashleigh]

A memoir told through poetry, Dress Rehearsal illustrates the performance of femininity in a non-binary body.

Prose poetry is an impactful medium and I believe the entirely correct one for a memoir such as this one. Madison Godfrey writes about femininity as a celebration rather than dysmorphic, something I have not seen expressed so potently before. Part coming of age, the expression of Godfrey's growth in these chapters has a tenderness to it. Sharp and raw, Godfrey has a unique voice that I will continue to follow whatever they publish next.

[G Batts · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think memoir is too grand a subtitle for a collection that is quite one-note. Perhaps a more accurate subtitle would be ‘a poetic memoir of my orifices’. There wasn’t enough substance to sustain my interest for 100 pages. I found the repeated mouth imagery made this strongly reminiscent of Throat by EvN, especially given the thematic similarities of the collections in regards to gender expression and frank sexuality.

The writing was elegant and clever, and so I will keep an eye out for what Madison does next.

[Wes]

More reviews on insta: @books.coffee.plants

My first foray into reading poetry… and what a place to start.

I was lucky enough to see Madison perform some of their poetry and discuss “The Queer Self” at the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival and was compelled to buy their memoir.

I enjoyed the turns of phrase, as they shifted between whimsy and gut punching. I found relatability in the unpacking of relationships, examinations of identity and the reflections of performing gender for the comfort of others and that of your developing self.

What a book to begin my “poetry era” with.

[Cesc]

I wouldn’t usually consider myself a poetry fan. Actually, I almost always think modern poetry is asinine or pretentious (I blame Rupi Kaur), but this collection was so clever and thoughtful. Reading it, I was struck with Godfrey’s talent and perspective. They write about their identity, and female bodies with such grace, humour, and truth.

Highly recommend listening to the audiobook, as poetry should be experienced, not merely skimmed on a page.

[April Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Generally I’m not one for prose poems but this ended up being the most emotionally jarring/connecting collection I’ve ever read. I mean that in the best possible way - I cannot stop thinking about it.

If you like the following I HIGHLY recommend picking up this collection:

Queerness
Non-binary rep
Raw vulnerability

A huge thank you to Allen and Unwin for providing a review copy.

[Lily Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems to re-read when in need of Gut Punch:

Longing Every Time I Buy Fruit
Crystalline
Child of the Hurricane

Also, I sent Ode to my Kneecaps to my sister because she was always complaining about having 'ugly knees', and I always thought that was an odd thing to fixate on. She replied 'hahahahaha'.

[casper · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seemed like Godfrey was constantly on the verge of saying something interesting and almost every time chose not to. They discuss gender in a way that is so on the nose it became annoying. There were handful of images and individual lines that I liked, but ultimately I found every poem at least slightly underwhelming.