Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2036. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 294-308).

Using a hybrid of poetry, creative prose, and critical prose, this thesis demonstrates a way in which we can rethink the natural world. Through a series of analyses and original verse and prose, using a reading premise derived from Zen Buddhist philosophy, it presents a vision of animal life and the natural world as philosophically nuanced and psychologically complex. It attempts to reposition the philosophical dominance over the natural world that humans have often considered their monopoly. All the poetry of the thesis engages and illustrates the main critical points outlined here. After an introduction setting out the basic aims and concepts of the thesis, the opening essay quotes David Attenborough. The philosophy espoused in his text, evolutionary theory, cannot be sustained if an animal s psychology is given greater importance. Secondly, from The Life of Birds, I present a critique that suggests that a bird s psychology is complicated to the point of mysticism. The third essay looks at Nietzsche. This piece suggests that what blinds us to the complexity of an animal s world is human ego. Next I look at Marc Bekoff, suggesting that the ego s dominant response is to anthropomorphise animals. The next essay gives a brief reading of Hamlet as a character liberated by a philosophy derived from the sparrow s world. Then follows a series of analyses of poems about non-human animals. A reading of an Emily Dickinson poem shows a narrator trapped in the world of a threatened and unstable ego. Next the poet Ted Hughes and his encounter with a hawk are shown as distanced by the human ego s inability to step outside binary oppositions. Then follows a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, where I argue that he draws on the notion of externality, an ego construct. The next poet, Takahashi, writes ego into his poem. His poem fails to speak without it. Finally, I look at D.H. Lawrence. Here the inability of ego to relinquish itself from dominating its encounter with the natural world is critiqued. The discursive parts of the thesis are interwoven with examples of my own creative practice that attempt to put into effect the ideas I am elaborating. In the conclusion, I offer proposals for further thought. Keywords creative writing, poetry, creative-critical, hybrid, psychology, animals, nature, natural world, Zen Buddhism, philosophy.

This thesis comprises a creative work, the manuscript of a book of poems, Goddess of Mercy, and an exegesis, A Further Existence, which explores the creative, aesthetic, philosophical and other ideas and inputs that went into writing the poems. Goddess is a collection of idylls of the electronic age, narratives, dramas, fictions and meditations. The poems are various in style and subject matter. The exegesis begins with the author's earliest remembered experiences of poetry, considers a wide range of poetries and goes some way to proposing an open poetic that allows a writer versatility in approach to subject matter and writing style. Poems can transcend their time and place to create a 'further existence' where temporality is irrelevant. A diverse range of poems are examined -- from ancient Babylonian to contemporary Australian -- to determine the aspects of a poem that take it beyond daily speech. The usefulness and limitations of theory are considered. The art's mystical dimensions are not easy to analyse but are still worth thinking about: the mysterious spark or talent for poetry, how and where a poem occurs, epiphanies, 'being in the zone' and when all the words come rushing at once. The persistence of poetry is noted: poetry still manifests itself in public life through newspapers, sport, pop music, radio commentary, television, and politics, as well as in everyday living. Poetry adapts to new environments like the internet. Conversely, events in the 'real world' influence poetic thought and writing as evidenced by the barrage of poems and publishing in response to the US invasion of Iraq. Some recent Australian poems are explored with regard to establishing contexts and areas of interest for the practice of poetry in the opening years of the twenty-first century, with a view to establishing the contexts in which the poems in Goddess exist and the world they address. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Humanities, 2005.

This thesis comprises a creative work, the manuscript of a book of poems, Goddess of Mercy, and an exegesis, A Further Existence, which explores the creative, aesthetic, philosophical and other ideas and inputs that went into writing the poems. Goddess is a collection of idylls of the electronic age, narratives, dramas, fictions and meditations. The poems are various in style and subject matter. The exegesis begins with the author's earliest remembered experiences of poetry, considers a wide range of poetries and goes some way to proposing an open poetic that allows a writer versatility in approach to subject matter and writing style. Poems can transcend their time and place to create a 'further existence' where temporality is irrelevant. A diverse range of poems are examined -- from ancient Babylonian to contemporary Australian -- to determine the aspects of a poem that take it beyond daily speech. The usefulness and limitations of theory are considered. The art's mystical dimensions are not easy to analyse but are still worth thinking about: the mysterious spark or talent for poetry, how and where a poem occurs, epiphanies, 'being in the zone' and when all the words come rushing at once. The persistence of poetry is noted: poetry still manifests itself in public life through newspapers, sport, pop music, radio commentary, television, and politics, as well as in everyday living. Poetry adapts to new environments like the internet. Conversely, events in the 'real world' influence poetic thought and writing as evidenced by the barrage of poems and publishing in response to the US invasion of Iraq. Some recent Australian poems are explored with regard to establishing contexts and areas of interest for the practice of poetry in the opening years of the twenty-first century, with a view to establishing the contexts in which the poems in Goddess exist and the world they address. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Humanities, 2005.

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration.

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

This collection of poems explores the boundaries between certainty and uncertainty, between the desire for meaning and the destabilisation of meaning. The content encompasses everyday life, love and loss, and the ambiguities are reflected in the forms used, so that, for instance, the linear continuity of narrative and the musicality of the lyric may be juxtaposed with the fragmented and imagistic leaps of the associative poem.

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

This is a collection of village narrative poems mainly set in rural Limpopo that searches into the complexity of the past and how historical events impact on the present. Although the poems are imagined along the Marxist dialectic, they’re fresh imaginative creations featuring a strong element of surprise, spiritual mysticism, experimenting with form, delving into unknown poetic avenues, creating new music, exploring new sounds and taking risks. The long and intense poem, Ancestral wealth, which is a tribute to the poet’s father, reflects on death and its impact through the effective application of various stylistic elements and poetic devices, thus immortalising the life of a rural South African. Overall the poems, including retrospective and experimental ones, condemn the free market economic system and all that it seems to necessitate: the degradation of ecology, indifference to human suffering and the alienation of vulnerable social groups.