'A genre-defying, collaborative marvel that brings the absurdity of motherhood to the page.
'After sharing their artistic frustrations at the school gate, Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell decide to take a risk- to co-write a book about early motherhood. Off-colour, offbeat, off their heads, they begin - but then, what is motherhood if not messy, non-linear, multi-authored and potty mouthed?
'What results is songs, memoir, fiction, drama, poetry, letters, pregnant and lactating AI assistants texting each other. Together, Dovey and Bell create a collage of absurd mothering, failing mothering and moving mothering. They salvage the scraps of each other's lives to imagine themselves into a future where women don't always have to choose between Art and Motherhood.
'After all- these mothers are tired. They are busy. They are lucky. They talk. Perform. Categorise. Clown. They do sad dinner cabaret. They do heroic odyssey. They do motherhood the musical. They do it badly, they do it well, they do it and they do it, and they keep on doing it as women do- comically, communally, creatively. No bells and whistles, no false cheer. Motherhood as a fever-dream fantasia, a poker-faced, tragic extravaganza.
'Funny, thoughtful, vulnerable and disturbingly familiar, Mothertongues up-ends a genre and speaks motherhood anew.' (Publication summary)
Selected as one of the ABC Arts best books of 2022
'A book that reflects the messy, surreal realities of motherhood.'
Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell on the Absurdity of Motherhood
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2022
24663228
2022
single work
podcast
interview
'Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell collaborated to create a genre-defying work about motherhood.'
'At the beginning of 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write (2014), author, mother, and playwright Sarah Ruhl notes: ‘At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.’ Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell’s Mothertongues embraces, embodies even, this collapse of the boundaries between living and writing. Rather than extolling the proverbial ‘room of her own’, Bell and Dovey are asking us to heed the kinds of knowledge that come from being embedded in the everyday. A hybrid, genre-defying book about contemporary motherhood, Mothertongues is woven from fragments based on the authors’ own lives, from texts both historical and literary, from imagined conversations and family histories, from the act of friendship itself. It is intimate, moving from levity to depth, the corporeal to the cerebral, in the space of a page, a paragraph, a breath. It is a collection of ephemera – a stray thought, the contents of a handbag, breastfeeding diary excerpts, book lists, text message exchanges – that, taken together, form a living archive of twenty-first-century motherhood.' (Introduction)
'Almost the first thing you find in Mothertongues is a QR code to the soundtrack that singer–songwriter Keppie Coutts created to be part of the reading experience. This work, co-written by Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell, is in a category all its own, exploring the living concept of motherhood across a multitude of forms that move from whisper to cacophony, from tragedy to hysteria. It’s sweet and sour. Ivory tower academic meets music hall meets melody.' (Introduction)
'In their abstract weaving of genres, the writers attempt to relay the chaos, wonder and grief of motherhood. It doesn’t always work – but when it does, it’s a triumph'
'Mothertongues creatively responds to the question: what kind of genre and form could possibly describe a human experience that resists language? Is it possible to capture the inexpressible complexity and absurdity of motherhood?'
'At the beginning of 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write (2014), author, mother, and playwright Sarah Ruhl notes: ‘At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.’ Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell’s Mothertongues embraces, embodies even, this collapse of the boundaries between living and writing. Rather than extolling the proverbial ‘room of her own’, Bell and Dovey are asking us to heed the kinds of knowledge that come from being embedded in the everyday. A hybrid, genre-defying book about contemporary motherhood, Mothertongues is woven from fragments based on the authors’ own lives, from texts both historical and literary, from imagined conversations and family histories, from the act of friendship itself. It is intimate, moving from levity to depth, the corporeal to the cerebral, in the space of a page, a paragraph, a breath. It is a collection of ephemera – a stray thought, the contents of a handbag, breastfeeding diary excerpts, book lists, text message exchanges – that, taken together, form a living archive of twenty-first-century motherhood.' (Introduction)
Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell on the Absurdity of Motherhood
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2022
24663228
2022
single work
podcast
interview
'Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell collaborated to create a genre-defying work about motherhood.'
