Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed November 19, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-241).

In classical Japanese poetry (waka), one often equates the poetic persona with the historical poet, perhaps in part due to the fact that waka was very often used for communicative purposes as elevated dialogue. This dissertation deconstructs such a notion of the poetic persona to reveal the various factors that work in tandem to create a textual persona that is in fact rarely a straightforward representation of the poetic author. I show that the poetic persona is the contested ground upon which different actors lay their claims, that waka is a highly performative genre, and that the poet was almost always performing a specific role in front of an audience. As such, the expectations of that audience become a major factor in the “self-portrayal” of the poet, where expressions of emotions, sensations, and ideas are manifested through a complex layering of tropes and conventions that depend on audience expectations (as well as the poet’s own assumption of what these expectations may be). To further complicate matters, the transmission of waka poetry to a wider audience frequently involves the work of compilers of poetry collections, scribes, as well as commentators. To unpack these various factors, I focus on the private poetry collection of the female poet Ise (c. 875 – c. 938), who was well-respected among her early Heian contemporaries. Very little information is known about Ise, so traditionally, her private poetry collection, the Ise shū (Ise Collection), has been used as the primary source of information on this elusive poet. However, as I demonstrate, Ise did not have full control over the construction of her poetic persona; on the one hand, she was often responding to what her audience expected of her, and on the other hand, the Ise shū as we have it today is most likely the work of a compiler who had other motives. Thus, this repository of Ise’s poetry serves not only as an important representation of how Ise’s persona was constructed by both Ise herself and the compiler of her poetry collection, but also as a case study in waka textuality and manuscript culture. In doing so, I highlight the performative and participatory nature of waka—two important characteristics that exemplify the unique qualities of the poetic genre that is waka. This dissertation is organized along two major axes: synchronous and diachronous. Along the synchronous axis, I show how the poet was constantly responding to the expectations of her contemporary audience, both in poetic exchanges, which has a clearly designated audience and specific conventions, and solo compositions, which is often regarded as a freer venue of expression with fewer restrictions. As I argue, the act of composing poetry is inherently performative and more often than not, the poetic persona is an amalgamation of well-established roles within the tradition of waka, catering to what the audience desired of her. Along the diachronous axis, I look at the role of compilers, scribes, and commentators in further constructing the poetic persona through the use of paratexts, including the headnotes to poems explaining their circumstances of composition, the arrangement of poems in a specific sequence, and the framing of a poem. A comparison with other works of various genres shows that there was a great deal of experimentation with the process in which prose headnotes were combined with poetry to create narratives and construct characters. Finally, this dissertation compares various iterations of the same Ise poems in different collections to demonstrate the degree to which the interpretation of a poem and, by extension, the perception of the poetic persona depends on the intermediary roles of the compilers, scribes, and commentators of poetry collections. In short, I show that the poetic persona is the joint product of the multiple authors who work within the performative and participatory milieu of waka. The appendix contains the first full translation in English of the Ise shū, with close to five hundred poems.

This Statement of Purpose does not give a history of hip-hop or hip-hop poetry but rather how this particular poet fits into the current phase of hip-hop and performance poetry. In it, I discuss and explain the new pro-working class hip-hop performance poetic. This includes extensive discussion of how rap poetry conveys meaning through sound. Also discussed is the socioeconomic context for the suburban southwestern topics found in the manuscript. This statement is a parallel piece to the manuscript itself in that it explains a brown kid from San Bernardino’s journey of connecting words and music for purposes of personal expression and potentially the betterment of his community. This statement also discusses my aesthetic beliefs and preferences as a sound poet with a background in performance and music.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2005. / "March 2002". Bibliography: p. 324-344.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 11, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-196).

"March 2002". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2005. / Bibliography: p. 324-344. / Introduction: framing the texts -- Subversive voices -- Formulating a theoretical position -- Performance: a complete process -- On second thoughts: rewriting contemporary culture -- Performing On second thoghts -- Dialogic voices: Amanda Stewart and # -- Performing # -- Voices of desire: Ania Walwicz and Soft -- Performing Soft -- Marginal voices: Hazel Smith and Poet without language -- Performing Poet without language -- Conclusions: interpreting subversive voices. / This study considers the text and performance of four Australian experimental poets, Chris Mann, Amanda Stewart, Ania Walwicz and Hazel Smith. My aim is to demonstrate how the genre of experimental poetry uses language and performance in such a way as to rewrite existing dominant discourses. The challenge as an analyst is to find ways into such reflexive texts that use intertextual resources of critical theory as their subject matter. The perspective employed here engages with the theories posited by the texts and allows for a theoretical position removed from the structure and theories informing them. -- The study is organised in two parts. First, I consider the subversiveness of the genre drawing on Raymond Williams' notion of the emergent, followed by a discussion of important predecessors in the field of experimentation. I then outline the particular method of enquiry and theoretical framework used here to analyse the meaning potential of such works. Systemic Functional Grammar and Multimodal Discourse theory are discussed and their particular application in this study. The second part of the thesis applies these theories to the experimental works. -- I begin explaining my theoretical position by considering the weakness of the commonly used theories of Kristeva's 'semiotic' to analyse such works. I found Systemic Functional Grammar, as developed by Michael Halliday and then Terry Threadgold, to be a useful tool for elucidating the meaning potential behind the fractured grammars in the texts. It also provided a way of conceptualising enunciative positions and the way intertextual resources might be rewritten. From within this linguistic framework I was able to discern subversive messages from the intertwined theories ranging across the texts from Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism and multiculturalism. -- The performance posed another challenge as the improvised spoken texts, uniquely performed by these artists, create a subversive listening position for the audience, which engages with both the words and sounds for their sonic and semantic qualities. I consider many ways of addressing the role and behaviour of the performer and listener as well as the performance as a creative process, emerging from the two. I engage the model put forward by Kress and Van Leeuwen for analysis of multimodal texts which provides a functional approach to meaning potential in the performance and its varying layers. Within this model, I found prosody most useful for its ability to notate intonation, key, disjuncture and stress, exposing the dialogic voices and the relationship between semantics and sound in the performances. This form of communication is equivalent to the indexical entailment of sound and music which forms the basis for communication between performers, and between performer and audience. The dialogic situation is enhanced by both prosody and indexical entailment providing possible meanings. I use some traditional musicological analysis but my aim is to move away from such formalistic descriptions to consider culturally inscribed sounds and their interpretation using a functional model. -- Throughout, the complexity of experimental performance is evident but the theoretical frame used here might be applied to other works of this nature as a means of further understanding the semiotic web in subversive texts. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 344 p., music

Spoken Word poetry in South Africa is understood as a genre of poetry which encompasses elements of textuality, musicality and performance, and is currently produced and frequented predominantly by a young, black public, according to Molebatsi and D’Abdon (2007). By means of ethnography, content analysis, and interviews with thirteen poets, this study demonstrates that the genre is used for expressing the life experiences of artists and their communities (Sole, 2008), as well as narrating social ills and concerns, including political, religious and other social experiences. In this sense, it is argued that Spoken Word may be termed as being a contemporary form of liberation politics (Judge, 1993) that is employed to serve a social function beyond directly political aims. This is made visible through the narratives, styles and identifications that distinguish members of this movement. This study provides a description of the scene in Pretoria and Johannesburg, drawing out various features of the movement. The social and political significance of the movement is presented by emphasising the poets’ perspectives on the Spoken Word movement, and engaging in a thematic content analysis of poems under the themes race and politics, gender and sexuality, and religion. International literature is engaged to demonstrate differences and similarities between South Africa’s Spoken Word scene and that of the USA by consulting works of scholars such as Weber (1999), Bruce & Davis (2000) and Hoffman (2001). It is demonstrated that similar to the genre in the USA, South African Spoken Word stresses performance to be an important distinguisher of this type of poetry. Also, in both contexts this art form has links to identity politics of previously marginalized groups. The study presents a similar finding to D’Abdon’s (2014) argument that the narratives presented in the post-apartheid Spoken Word movement greatly reflect Black Consciousness ideology, yet also importantly stresses that the movement also presents discontinuities with this discourse, allowing for a much broader array of narrative to permeate the performance poetry scene. This study makes an additional contribution to the existing literature through its key findings. Firstly, the study argues that although there has been a significant increase of women into the scene, Spoken Word remains a gendered space. Secondly, this study demonstrates that narratives produced by this movement contribute to experiences of community, but also play an exclusionary role to certain groups. Finally, the study illustrates that poets of the present day Spoken Word scene have begun a move towards commercialisation of the art form, subsequently also aiming for the valuation of African literature. In essence, it is argued that the present day Spoken Word poetry movement has great social and cultural value, and presents great potential of being a vehicle through which political and social consciousness can be both created and sustained. Key words: Spoken Word, poetry, South Africa, oral literature, slam, open mic, post-apartheid, literature, narratives, Black Consciousness, politics, social change, art, liberation poetry, liberation politics, culture, hip-hop, conscious art, resistant political art / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Sociology / Unrestricted

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis, I undertake an extensive overview of a range of language activities that foreground the materiality of language, and that require an active reader oriented towards the text as a producer, rather than a consumer, of meaning. To this end, performance, as a function of both orality and print texts, forms an important focus for my argument. I am particularly interested in the effect that the disruption of language has on the position of the subject in language, especially in terms of the dialogic exchange between local and global subject positions. Poetry is a language activity that requires a particular attention to form and meaning, and that is licensed to activate and exploit the materiality of language. For this reason, I have focused on the work of a selection of North American poets, the Language poets. These poets are primarily concerned with the performative possibilities of language as it appears in print media. I juxtapose these language activities with those of a selection of contemporary South African poets whose work is marked by the influence of oral forms, and reveals telling interplays between media. All these poets are preoccupied with the ways in which the sign might be disrupted. In my discussion of the work of the Language poets, I consider how examples of their print poetics present the reader with language fragments, arranged according to non-syntactic principles. Confronted by the lack of an individuated lyric subject around whom these fragments might cohere, the reader is obliged to make his/her own connections between words, sounds and phrases. Similarly, in the work of the performance poets, I identify several aspects in the poetry that trouble a transparent transmission of expression, and instead require the poetry to be read as an interrogation of the constitution of the subject. Here, the ―I‖ fleetingly occupies multiple, shifting subject positions, and the poetic interplay between media and language tends towards a continuous destabilising of the poetic self. Poets and performers are, to some extent, licensed to experiment with language in ways that render it opaque. Because the language activities of poets and performers are generally accommodated within the order of symbolic or metaphoric language, their experimentation with non-communicative excesses can be understood as part of their framework. However, in situations where ―communicative‖ language is expected, the order of literal or forensic language cannot accommodate seemingly non-communicative excesses that appear to render the text opaque. Ultimately, I am concerned with exploring the manner in which attention to the materiality of language might open up alternative understandings of language, subjectivity and representation in South African public discourse. My conclusion therefore considers the consequences when the issues opened up by the poetry – questions of self and subject, authority and representation – are translated into forensic frameworks and testimonial discourse. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: My proefskrif bied ‘n breedvoerige oorsig van ‘n reeks taal-aktiwiteite wat die materialiteit van taal sigbaar maak. Hierdie taal-aktiwiteite skep tekste wat die leser/kyker noop om as vervaardiger, eerder as verbruiker, van betekenis in ‘n aktiewe verhouding met die teks te tree. Die performatiewe funksie van beide gesproke sowel as gedrukte taal vorm dus die hooffokus van my argument. Ek stel veral belang in die effek wat onderbrekings en versteurings in taal op die subjek van taal uitoefen, en hoe hierdie prosesse die die dialogiese verhouding tussen lokale en globale subjek-posisies beïnvloed. Poëtiese taal-aktiwiteite word gekenmerk deur ‘n fokus op vorm en die verhouding tussen vorm en inhoud. Terwyl die meeste taalpraktyke taaldeursigtigheid vereis ter wille van direkte kommunikasie, het poëtiese taal tot ‘n mate die vryheid om die materaliteit van taal te gebruik en te ontgin. Om hierdie rede fokus ek selektief op die werk van ‘n groep Noord-Amerikaanse digters, die sogenaamde ―Language poets‖. Hierdie digters is hoofsaaklik met die performatiewe moontlikhede van gedrukte taal bemoeid. Voorts word hierdie taal-aktiwiteite met ‘n seleksie kontemporêre Suid-Afrikaanse digters se werk vergelyk, wat gekenmerk word deur die invloed van gesproke taalvorms wat met ‘n verskeidenhed media in wisselwerking gestel word. Al hierdie digters is geïnteresseerd in die maniere waarop die inherente onstabiliteit van linguistiese aanduiers ontgin kan word. In my bespreking van die werk van die Language poets ondersoek ek voorbeelde van hul gedrukte digkuns wat die leser voor taalfragmente te staan bring wat nie volgens die gewone reëls van sintaks georganiseer is nie. Die gebrek aan ‘n geïndividualiseerde liriese subjek, waarom hierdie fragmente ‘n samehangendheid sou kon kry, noop die leser om haar eie verbindings tussen woorde, klanke en frases te maak. Op ‘n soortgelyke wyse identifiseer ek verskeie aspekte wat die deursigtige versending van taaluitinge in die werk van sekere Suid-Afrikanse performance poets belemmer. Hierdie gedigte kan eerder gelees word as ‘n interrogasie van die proses waardeur die samestelling van die subjek in taal geskied. In hierdie gedigte bewoon die ―ek‖ vlietend ‘n verskeidenheid verskuiwende subjek-posisies. Die wisselwerking van verskillende media dra ook by tot die vermenigvuldiging van subjek-posisies, en loop uit op ‘n performatiewe uitbeelding van die destabilisering van die digterlike ―self.‖ Digters en performers is tot ‘n mate vry om met die vertroebelingsmoontlikhede van taal te eksperimenteer. Omdat die taal-aktiwiteite van digters en performers gewoonlik binne die orde van simboliese of metaforiese taal val, kan hul eksperimentering met die nie-kommunikatiewe oormaat van taal binne hierdie raamwerk verstaan word. Hierdie oormaat kan egter nie binne die orde van letterlike of forensiese taal geakkommodeer word nie. Ten slotte voer ek aan dat ‘n fokus op die materialiteit van taal alternatiewe verstaansraamwerke moontlik maak, waardeur ons begrip van die verhouding tussen taal, subjektiwiteit en representasie in die Suid-Afrikaanse publieke diskoers verbreed kan word. In my slothoofstuk oorweeg ek wat gebeur as die kwessies wat deur die bogenoemde performatiewe taal-aktiwiteite opgeroep word – vrae rondom die self en die subjek, outoriteit en representasie – binne ‘n forensiese raamwerk na die diskoers van getuienis oorgedra word

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010. / Title from screen (viewed on July 19, 2010). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Karen Kovacik, Peggy Zeglin Brand, Ronda C. Henry. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-83).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / My thesis examines the ways in which female performance poets deliver their messages and how those messages inspire, affirm, and encourage their audiences. From the traditions of outsider art—Beat poetry, feminist poetry, jazz, folk, punk, and rap—feminist performance poets choose the public sphere as a platform to witness to social injustices. In naming inequality, these poets challenge patriarchal foundations of gender roles, question academia’s criteria as to what constitutes “good” poetry, and expose social injustices. In this thesis, I examine the work of feminist performance poets Ani Difranco, Alix Olson, Andrea Gibson, Ursula Rucker, and Jessica Care Moore as examples of a new way of reading. Their work is significant in that they continue the tradition of feminist poetry by challenging the patriarchal status quo through a re-socializing and accessible style. Their work allows audiences to commune together in shared experience and promotes social change by demystifying cultural norms and gender codes in order to expose the exclusivity in patriarchal ideologies. These poets draw on a woman-centered spirituality, subvert misogynistic feminine archetypes, pay homage to ancestors and foremothers, and address issues of the body—naming oppression yet making room for pleasure.