The purpose of this creative thesis was to explore the state of exile via the use of the contemporary lyric poem. Written primarily in free verse, with some poems written in the traditional forms of the sonnet, haiku and senryu, the thesis explored exile and its variant themes of colonization, assimilation, familial history, cultural and personal myth. The result was the discovery that the lyric poem is an ideal, productive and fluid medium through which a poet can consider and encounter the liminality of exile identity.

GIVE US THIS DAY is a collection of poetry grounded in the lyrical tradition that speaks to the conflicting need for structure and the inherent desire to be free. It focuses on those moments of rupture, when the structure, whether physical, emotional, psychological or political, is broken. The title poem sets the tone for the collection, capturing the idea that today is all one can truly know. Throughout the five sections of the collection, one comes to understand a complex family story, where right and wrong is blurred in the reality of existence. The sections, representing various parts of the day, are a parallel to the individual stories, speaking to the idea that a single day contains both times of light and darkness, similar to a life. The collection takes place in several cityscapes from Moscow to Delhi, Washington, D.C. to Miami. There are correlations drawn between familial settings and political unrest and tension. Often the political atmosphere is alluded to and drawn into context through the use of intimate personal vignettes. In contrast to the urban noise, there is pervasive natural imagery of gardens and tropical locales which mimic the physical life cycle, climaxing in the blossom.

HALLELUJAH SHOES is a collection of poems, many grounded in the landscape and vernacular of rural and coastal North Florida, and steeped in a sense of place, loss, and the difficulties and mysteries of the human condition. Written mainly in free verse, the collection also contains poems written in traditional and nontraditional forms: abecedarian, haiku, sonnet, noun, and theatrical play. Section one is dominated by the narrator’s relationships with family and culture—their demands, dramas, and allures—and the conflict they create with the narrator’s desire for autonomy. Section two focuses on the narrator as she makes her own way in the world, exercising independence yet still subject to the emotional undertow of childhood experiences. Section three locates the narrator in the present, back in Florida after many years away, with knowledge of the transience of life, but taking joy where she can find it.

Louisiana Saturday Nights is a collection of poetry and accompanying critical introduction written for the doctorate in Literature and Creative Writing.

The Nightgown is a book of poetry.

Though Sandra Beasley is not generally considered a feminist poet, many of her poems in I Was the Jukebox contain feminist undertones. This critical introduction takes into consideration the implications of these feminist undertones and examines Beasley’s cultural critique of masculinity, violence, and how the two are occasionally interchangeable. Because Beasley uses mythic personae to make these cultural critiques, her poems often work to subvert literary norms and patriarchal narratives. Similar to the way Beasley interrogates masculinity, I use a feminist perspective to interrogate both masculinity as perceived from my own lived experiences as well as my heritage as a Southerner.

This is a collection of poems.

A collection of poems by Francesca Chabrier

The following thesis is a creative manuscript.

A chapbook-length collection of poems.