Proper Deafinitions: Collected Theorograms

This is a collection of fifteen prose and poetic prose essays written in Warland’s formative years between 1983 – 1990. Examples of subjects investigated are: issues of race, gender, sexuality, sexism, embodiment and transgression, familial narrative wounds passed down, illness, breaking out of gender and racialized proper English, erotic narrative transgressions, and recreations. Louise H. Forsyth wrote: “Her voice celebrates … the shimmering notion of women as seekers, as thinkers, as creators…” and US author Julie R. Enszer recently wrote, “Warland’s textual innovations on the page were powerful and shattering…seem to imagine what was to come with the advances in hypertext…web browsers and more interactive texts online.”

“Rethinking the Tower of Babel

Variations on this myth found around the world

You may or ay not understand my dialect

i may or may not understand yours

in this, at the least

we admit

how little understanding has been exchanged

when difference is denied

by the illusion

of a shared language 

in naming ourselves

we finally accept

our babbles’ necessity”

1990 Press Gang Publishers