published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Notre Dame, 2006. / Poems. Thesis directed by Orlando Menes for the Graduate Program in Creative Writing. "April 2006."

This paper includes a 62-page book of original poems, 19 pages of which are visual poetry, and a 29-page preface which discusses visual poetry.

Accompanying materials housed with archival copy. / Using an animation program on a Macintosh computer, I have animated poems, song lyrics and expressions in an experimental way to investigate alternatives to the restrictive poetics of the static medium of paper. Animated Writing is thus the process of enacting, in a visually rich and compelling fashion, the various semantic possibilities of text presented on a screen. While a CD-ROM or Web site would flawlessly display the pristine digital content of the animations which comprise the Creative Writing Master's Thesis, for ease of distribution the thesis is presented on analog VHS videotape. An animated text offers many subtle nuances, doubling of meaning and delicate complexity which are wholly impossible to achieve on paper. This technique of animating words provides for an exciting and intriguing enrichment of both original poetry created specifically for the form, and prose, lyrics or other found text adapted for use.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Amy Lixl-Purcell; submitted to Dept. of Art. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Aug. 27, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 10).

Accompanying materials housed with archival copy.

This project explores visually experimental poetry as a particular trend in Caribbean poetry since the 1970's. Although visual experimentation in Caribbean poetry is immediately recognizable ??? for example, its play with font styles and sizes, its jagged margins, its division of the page into multiple discourse spaces, its use of images ??? little critical attention has been paid to the visual qualities of Caribbean poetry. Instead, definitions of Caribbean poetry have remained focussed upon oral/aural aesthetics, excluding its use of and contribution to late 20th century experimental poetic practice. By focussing on the poetry of Shake Keane, Claire Harris, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, and LeRoy Clarke, I bring post-colonial literary criticism into discussion with contemporary debates regarding visual poetic practice in North America. In so doing, this project values Caribbean visual poetry both for its expression of Caribbean cultural experience and for its contributions to broader experimental poetry movements. I argue that visual experimentation functions to disrupt traditional linear reading processes, which thereby allows poets to perform the flux of time and space in post-colonial contexts. Furthermore, such disruption of linear reading practices, often manifested by the positioning of multiple discourses on one page, serves to create a polyvocal discourse that resists patriarchal and colonialist power structures. Valuing the visual qualities of Caribbean poetry as signifying elements, this dissertation explores the aesthetic and social implications of inscription and visual design in Caribbean poetry.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Omar Khoouri / Banca: Milton sogabe / Resumo: Poesia e design : dois modos distintos de lidar com a linguagem. O design gráfico lida com o desenho, a formatação escrita, dispondo textos e imagens no espaço gráfico. A poesia, quando passa a incorporar elementos advindos dos signos visuais urbanos, da publicidade , da comunicação gráfica, apropria-se das possibilidades semânticas sugeridas pela fusão de texto com imagens A partir da explosão de códigos e meios causada pela Revolução Industrial, poesia e design tendem a aproximar-se já que a escrita poética também começa a operar com ferramentas comuns do design gráfico. As duas artes ocupam-se com diferentes nuanças da mesma prática: a escrita icônica. Com o objetivo de identificar os entrelaçamentos entre a poesia visual e o design gráfico, esta pesquisa expõe os conceitos básicos da poesia visual, aprofundando-se nas explorações gráficas e poéticas através da dimensão visual da escrita; estuda o desenvolvimento das tecnologias de produção gráfica que possibilitaram a hibridação de linguagens bem como a facilidade de produção e distribuição das comunicações gráficas; investiga as relações que a poesia visual e o design gráfico estabelecem com os meios de comunicação e como se inserem e se comportam na cultura amplificada, finalmente, resgata três caos de parcerias notórias entre poetas e designers que resultaram em trabalhos de grande valor estético e histórico. Ao tratar de temas tão carregados de visualidade, naturalmente a pesquisa trouxe muitos achados iconográficos - reproduções de poemas, trabalhos de design, tipografias, etc. Aliando a formação e a prática profissional da mestranda - designer gráfica - com o tema da pesquisa, terminou-se por realizar um projeto gráfico para abrigar o conteúdo da pesquisa, entrelaçando o texto e as imagens do trabalho. / Abstract: Poetry and design: two different ways of working the language. Graphic design deals with the shape and the formatting ofthe writting, it places texts and images within the graphic space. Poetry, as soon as it incorporates sings from the urban scene from advertising, from graphic communications, it takes advantage of the semantic possibilities that are given by the fusion of text and images. Since the booming of new codes and new media, brought by the Industrial Revolution, poetry and design got even closer to each other. Both arts poetry and design practice the iconic writing. Aiming to identify the intercaling between visual poetry and graphic design, this research exposes basic concepts of visual poetry, immerging into the explorations of the visual reality of the writing; it studies the development of graphic production that improved the merging of codes as well the spreading of graphlic communications; it investigates the relations that the visual poetry and graphic design estabilished with and the amplified culture ; finally the research relates three suseccsful encounters between poets and designers. Dealing with themes that are so visually rich this rearch brought up many iconic treasures. Putting the author's profession - graphic designer - and the researche theme together, this work resulted into a graphic project designet to contain and to interlace the text and the images that were born from this research. / Mestre

This project explores visually experimental poetry as a particular trend in Caribbean poetry since the 1970's. Although visual experimentation in Caribbean poetry is immediately recognizable – for example, its play with font styles and sizes, its jagged margins, its division of the page into multiple discourse spaces, its use of images – little critical attention has been paid to the visual qualities of Caribbean poetry. Instead, definitions of Caribbean poetry have remained focussed upon oral/aural aesthetics, excluding its use of and contribution to late 20th century experimental poetic practice. By focussing on the poetry of Shake Keane, Claire Harris, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, and LeRoy Clarke, I bring post-colonial literary criticism into discussion with contemporary debates regarding visual poetic practice in North America. In so doing, this project values Caribbean visual poetry both for its expression of Caribbean cultural experience and for its contributions to broader experimental poetry movements. I argue that visual experimentation functions to disrupt traditional linear reading processes, which thereby allows poets to perform the flux of time and space in post-colonial contexts. Furthermore, such disruption of linear reading practices, often manifested by the positioning of multiple discourses on one page, serves to create a polyvocal discourse that resists patriarchal and colonialist power structures. Valuing the visual qualities of Caribbean poetry as signifying elements, this dissertation explores the aesthetic and social implications of inscription and visual design in Caribbean poetry.

This practice‐based research is a long creative work about Alan Turing. It consists of a series that includes prose, narrative poems and visual poems. An accompanying critical commentary, which is split into three sections, addresses the relationship between narrative and seriality, ways in which scientific notations can be used in visual poetry, and aspects of biographical and civil poetry. A finalsection contains a selection of creative approaches to commentary that reflect on research in a manner that is complementary to the critical commentary. The research was carried out through a process of repeated planning and experimentation that has resulted in a variety of forms and procedures, ranging from the accessible and conventional to the idiosyncratic and experimental. A method of investigating narrative was created by allowing narrative and serial formsto intersect throughout the creative work. A means of bringing science and literature into relation was sought through a process of forceful combination of scientific notations with literary or occult materials. And alternative possibilities for biographical poetry were investigated through resistance to celebration and through experiment with formal propertiesin poetry that could be appropriate to Turing. The creative work and critical commentary find new models for the relationship between narrative and seriality in which the will to create narrative is not denied and seriality is not a mere absence of narrative. They find new means by which science and literature can come into contact through visual poetry. They help to define a unique role for poetry in biographical writing in the way that poetry allows the subject to be embodied formally. And they set up a productive dialogue between experimental andmore established writing strategies.