“Rose of Lima: Some Thoughts on Purity and Penance.” In Through the Devil’s Gateway, edited by Alison Joseph, 60–70. London: SPCK, 1990.
RWB Panel discussion with Michelene Wandor and Anna Fisk. Re-Writing the Bible
symposium, University of Glasgow, June 14, 2010.
SC with Chris Gollon. Stations of the Cross. London: Continuum, 2009.
TPO “Two for the Price of One.” In Fathers: Reflections by Daughters, edited by
Ursula Owen, 32–42. London: Virago, 1986.
TT Telling Tales. London: Journeyman, 1983.
VM with Wendy Mulford. Virtuous Magic: Women Saints and Their Meanings.
London: Continuum, 1998.
VT Virgin Territory. London: Virago, 1984.
WFMW Women Fly When Men Aren’t Watching. London: Virago, 1993.
WR “Ways of Relating.” In Feminist Theology: A Reader, edited by Ann Loades,
148–57. London: SPCK, 1990.
Works by Michèle Roberts
ASW All the Selves I Was: New and Selected Poems. London: Virago, 1995.
BMN The Book of Mrs Noah. London: Vintage, 1987.
DH Daughters of the House. London: Virago, 1992.
ET “Epilogue.” In Tales I Tell My Mother: A Collection of Feminist Short Stories, by
Zoë Fairbairns et al. London: Journeyman, 1978.
FB Flesh and Blood. London: Virago, 1994.
FE Fair Exchange. London: Virago, 1999.
FSG Food, Sex and God: On Inspiration and Writing. London: Virago, 1998.
GCG with Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah F. Sawyer, “‘Getting A/cross God’:
An Interview with Michèle Roberts.” In Reading Spiritualities: Constructing
and Representing the Sacred, edited by Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah F.
Sawyer, 15–25. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
IBR with Patricia Bastida Rodríguez. “On Women, Christianity and History:
An Interview with Michèle Roberts.” Atlantis 25/1 (2003) 93–107.
IGS with María Soraya García Sánchez. “Talking About Women, History and
Writing with Michèle Roberts.” Atlantis 27/2 (2005) 137–47.
IJN with Jenny Newman. “An Interview with Michèle Roberts.” Cercles, 2003.
No pages. Online: http://www.cercles.com/interviews/roberts.html
IS Impossible Saints. London: Virago, 1997.
LG The Looking Glass. London: Virago, 2000.
MC The Mistressclass. London: Virago, 2004.
MMT “Martha and Mary Raise Consciousness from the Dead.” In Tales I Tell My
Mother: A Collection of Feminist Short Stories, by Zoë Fairbairns et al, 71–79.
London: Journeyman, 1978.
MSL Mud: Stories of Sex and Love. London: Virago, 2010.
PH Paper Houses: A Memoir of the ’70s and Beyond. London: Virago, 2008.
PN A Piece of the Night. London: The Women’s Press, 1978.
PS Playing Sardines. London: Virago, 2001.
RMH Reader, I Married Him. London: Virago, 2006.
RK In the Red Kitchen. London: Minerva, 1990.
TV The Visitation. London: The Women’s Press, 1983.
UG “Une Glossaire/A Glossary.” In More Tales I Tell My Mother, by Zoë Fairbairns
et al, 41–80. London: Journeyman, 1987.
WG The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Original edition: The Wild Girl, 1984.
London: Vintage, 2007.
WWH “The Woman Who Wanted to Be a Hero.” In Walking on the Water: Women
Talk About Spirituality, edited by Jo Garcia and Sara Maitland, 50–65. London:
Virago, 1983.
Introduction
“The Beauty of the Bones”
Nobody knew to whom these scrap bones belonged. They had been sorted and classified simply according to shape and appearance, then made into a mosaic . . . constructed of square wooden frames, each packed tight with a particular arrangement of bones, that, placed together formed a precise and repeated abstract pattern of straight lines, rosette, and mandalas. Only on a second glance did you realise that what you were looking at were massed tibias, fibulas, and femurs, with here and there a skull and crossbones for added decoration, or a prayer superimposed in bone letters in a language nobody could understand.
Isabel brought her granddaughter to see it. The child, frowning and black-haired, imagined the architects of this place as busy cooks inventing recipes, sorting and arranging, putting certain bones into the gold cupboards as you’d put joints of meat into larders, and setting some aside, to be boiled down for other uses, soup, perhaps, or glue. They were artists, surely. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, each with a lapful of bones, braiding them together like crochet, rearticulating them into fantastic shapes, making them speak like poetry. Fitting them into the square trays, according to the designs they’d worked out . . .
Bones pictures, arranged row on row, so that your eye could travel over them vertically or horizontally or both at once. You could see all the layers of bones, and you could see each individual bone; the part and the whole. The patterns were severe and mysterious. No one could say what they meant. What you saw was the overall dance of shapes. The beauty of the bones.1
Perhaps due to feminism’s emphasis on theory that is practical and embodied, feminist engagement with literature and with theology has often envisioned its work in terms of material objects. When Adrienne Rich defined “feminist revisioning” as “the act of looking back” in order “not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us,”2 this was given poetic form in “Diving into the Wreck.” The feminist artist becomes an underwater explorer, seeking to find amongst the debris of patriarchy “the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail.”3 Alicia Ostriker reads in women’s poetry a “shared plundering” of the jewels that are worth keeping
