The Widening Smile: Beginnings of Investigating Voice from the Clefted Perspective

Guildhall School of Music and Drama Master’s Dissertation 2024

Full PDF Available Upon Request

Excerpt:

To be clefted

To be halved

To be split, fissured, rifted

“We might surprise ourselves by cracking open further than we believe we can.”

I was never split (verb), I was simply never formed. This is an inherent openness to the world, all tides flow in and out. Rip Tide: B. 1998 in Southern California, not even babies can escape the patriarchal, cock sucking obsession with perfect mouths and lips.

To be seen
and heard.

To be misunderstood (aurally).
A cleft pronoun is a dummy cleft.