- Elsa Gidlow
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Elsa Gidlow (29 December 1898 – 8 June 1986) was a poet, who in 1923 published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States: On A Grey Thread. She promoted alternative spiritualities including Buddhism and Goddess Worship. In the 1940s she founded a rural retreat center, The Druid Heights Artists Retreat, in Marin County, California. She lived there until her death in 1986. Other residents at Druid Heights have included well-known figures such as her close friend Alan Watts and feminist theorist Catharine MacKinnon.
Contents
Life and Work
She was born "in Hull, Yorkshire, England on a dark afternoon on December 29, 1898."[1] At a young age she sailed with her family to Montreal, Quebec. She was first employed by a contact of her father's in Montreal, a factory doctor, as assistant editor to Factory Facts, an in-house magazine.[2] She moved to New York in 1920 at the age of 21. There she was employed by Frank Harris of Pearson's, a magazine supportive of poets and unsympathetic to the war and England.[3] Later, in 1927, she moved to San Francisco, and continued to live, write and love in the San Francisco Bay Area for the rest of her life. Her autobiography, Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow gives a personal and detailed account of her life seeking, finding and creating a life with other lesbians at a time when little was recorded on the topic.
Luminary Friendships
As a consequence of Druid Heights and her other activities, Gidlow socialized with many famous artists, radical thinkers, mystics, and political activists, including Ella Young, Alan Watts, Ansel Adams, Gary Snyder, Dizzy Gillespie, Neil Young, Tom Robbins, Catharine MacKinnon, and Margo St. James. [4]
"From the first meeting Elsa enchanted me, a witch casting a spell."[5] -Alan Watts
Her publications include:
- On A Grey Thread (1923)
- Sapphic Songs: Seventeen to Seventy (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1976)
- Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty, the Love Poetry of Elsa Gidlow (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1982)
- Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1986)
Quotations
- Life laid a flaming finger on my heart,
- Gave me an electric golden thread,
- Pointed to a pile of beads and said:
- Link me one more glorious than the rest.
-- Constancy
References
- ^ Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1986, p.1)
- ^ Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1986, p.104-106)
- ^ Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1986, p. 130.
- ^ glbtq >> literature >> Gidlow, Elsa
- ^ Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow (San Francisco: Druid Heights Press, 1986, from the book jacket.)
Sources
External links
Categories:- LGBT writers from the United States
- Lesbian writers
- American poets
- 1898 births
- 1986 deaths
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