SOURCE: Marlatt, Daphne, and Janice Williamson. “Daphne Marlatt: ‘When We Change Language …’” In Sounding Differences: Conversations with Seventeen Canadian Women Writers, by Janice Williamson, pp. 182-93. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

In the following interview, Marlatt discusses her interest in French feminist theory and Freudian psychoanalysis, the significance of the mother-daughter relationship, the portrayal of the female body and lesbian eroticism in her work, and the way in which her postcolonial upbringing shaped her feminist perspective.

[Williamson]: I want to begin by asking you about your current work. Your project Salvage is a rereading or revisioning of earlier writing in the light of your developing feminist consciousness. Is this a critical consciousness that recalls the feminism implicit in your early writing, or is it a consciousness which looks back and recognizes gaps?

[Marlatt]: It's more looking back and recognizing, not so much gaps, but places where I was...