Madison Griffiths Madison Griffiths i(12230851 works by)
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 3 y separately published work icon Tissue Madison Griffiths , Ultimo : Ultimo Press , 2023 25994576 2023 single work autobiography

'In Tissue, Madison Griffiths turns her keen eye to the topic of abortion in a meditative and personal look at a procedure that is common yet vilified, championed yet sometimes grieved. Tissue looks at the feelings of guilt around choice, exploring the language we use, or don’t, and how the silence shapes the way we think and feel about the act.

'Abortion has many facets. Tissue lays each of them bare, meticulously unravelling how the world-at-large responds to abortion, inviting us into the messy and complex realities imbedded in such a politicised act of agency. At a time when women around the world are losing their right to access safe abortion, this book is needed more than ever.' (Publication summary) 

1 Scripture of the Heaviest Kind Madison Griffiths , 2022 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 41-44) Meanjin Online 2022;
'History begins with someone else's memory of you.' This is how Julia Cohen opens her essay on abortion for the New England Review, and I know this because I have been relentlessly scouring the internet for essays on abortion and for poems, song lyrics and admissions of any kind. History begins with someone else's memory of you, and my mother tells me that, as I pressed steadily on the fleshy walls of her womb 28 years ago while she lay in the rickety restored cubbyhouse she shared with my father, a home brief and unassuming, she knew me. She couldn't possibly have known me, which seems a cruel but necessary diagnosis. I tell myself this because, if history begins with someone else's memory of you, if my mother knew me then, my own child's history began at my kitchen basin as I heaved bile and worry, the smell of my cat's litter fixed in my nostrils like some kind of malignant aura or rotten eggs. The air carrying a thick decay around me, never leaving. Until, of course, it did. Three weeks later, my queasiness departing my body with the same fervour, the same immediacy that my pregnancy did. A moment. A womb the shape of a could-be home. A sort-of child, as in something, someone, brief and unassuming.' (Publication abstract)
1 It Goes, I Had a Dream I Was Your Hero i "Call her dude, pass dude the spiff,", Madison Griffiths , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Going Down Swinging Online 2020;
1 Find a Homophobe, Ask Her How It Tastes i "This love has no name, but it:", Madison Griffiths , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Going Down Swinging Online 2020;
1 Elena Gomez, Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt Madison Griffiths , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 12-18 December 2020;

— Review of Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt Elena Gomez , 2020 selected work poetry

'What does collective action look like at the end of the world? Who will prepare the meals for those hungry for sustenance and liberation? In Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt, her second full-length collection, Elena Gomez demands her readers consider what the body needs as it resists its own oppression. A glorious retort to late-stage capitalism and all the ways it distracts us, this collection spins together a bleak map of what it means to exist today, while forcing us to consider all the parts of ourselves we have already offered to a system that yearns for our surrender.' (Publication summary)

1 Suns & Mothers (Extract) Madison Griffiths , 2019 single work short story
— Appears in: The Suburban Review , September no. 15 2019;
1 What I’m Reading Madison Griffiths , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2019;
1 Piercing Holes in Women : Reclaiming My Own Flesh and Blood in Shopping Mall Chemists Madison Griffiths , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Winter no. 112 2018; (p. 101-105)

'The first time I altered my body was in 2006, when my mother smeared hot wax onto my brow ridge. In retrospect, the two of us didn't know enough about the liquid fabric, the way it would fasten itself to skin, clinging desperately to every last strand of hair. I was 12, and - embarrassingly enough - could hardly tell the time, let alone understand the mechanics of hot wax. My mother was born with no eyebrows or eyelashes, which practically rendered her useless when it came to hair removal practices. Naturally, the wax-strip poked fun at our naivety and took my entire eyebrow hostage, damning me to a three-month eyebrow-less sentence. I was an insecure preteen enjoying the tail end of primary school with half of her face stripped bare.'  (Publication abstract)

1 Open Persons Madison Griffiths , 2018 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , January 2018;

'Nicole politely offered me a swig. Her friends were as handsome as I imagined.

'Afterwards, she quivered beside me outside until my bus arrived. Our breath danced in front of us in the dark, in the cold – just trying to keep up.

'‘You’ll be fine. We’re in Denmark!’ she laughed, waving goodbye as I staggered up the burnished stairs of the empty bus. No WiFi, no SIM card; just a fleeting woman in a pair of laced-up dress shoes, gazing out a window at not much at all. Female, tan, early twenties, slender-build. Travelling alone in a time zone eight hours behind her mother’s. Last seen in a vacant bus after midnight, somewhere just north of Copenhagen.' (Introduction)

X