The Sapphic Gardens of Elsa Gidlow
Queer Nature in On a Grey Thread
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/asis.v58i1.7797Keywords:
Elsa Gidlow, On a Grey Thread, Druid Heights, queer ecology, sapphic modernities, queer gardens, LGBTQ+ communities, queer modernismAbstract
In 1923, Elsa Gidlow published what has been hailed as the first lesbian poetry collection in the US by an openly queer woman: On a Grey Thread. This understudied collection weaves together images of nature and queerness, and the garden becomes a site that fosters sapphic love. In this article I use a queer ecological framework to show how On a Grey Thread responds to the “nature paradox” of the modern era, which simultaneously constructed lesbians as wild predators (i.e., too natural) and as sinners who committed crimes against nature (i.e., too unnatural). Through close readings of her poems and an analysis of the collection’s structure, I argue that Gidlow’s poetry disrupts these paradoxical accusations and reclaims the role of nature in the lives of modern sapphic women. Her poetry anticipates the philosophy of Gidlow’s queer community Druid Heights, established three decades later: that poetry is a pathway to connection between the human and the more-than-human.
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