My poetry portfolio is 75 pages long, and consists of single poems as well as two series. The first series includes the ‘Good Work’ poems, which explore different ideas of ‘good work’ based on characters’ occupations, preoccupations and mental perspectives. The second series is the ‘Makar’ poems, depicting an imagined world in which the poet is a guardian angel or guiding force. The style of my poetry varies from lyric to prose poetry, with a few language-focused abstract poems, and more formal styles, like a villanelle. Dreaming and waking are two themes that reflect aspects of reality and perception. Much of my portfolio is rooted in reflections of identity: Identity in terms of work, and the story we tell to the world about what we do; identity in terms of inter-personal relationships and how those connections form who we become; identity in terms of memory, and the story of who we have been; and identity in terms of the stories we tell ourselves about who we think we are. And if none of those stories align, what kind of fragmented self-identity does that reveal? The narrative poems often use different characters and personas in order to enact these lenses of identity. Even with only a few epistles in the collection, my poetry has been influenced by the epistolary ideas of separation and reunion (as critic Altman describes them: ‘bridge’ and ‘distance’). Similarly, the prose poems often riff on the unification and distancing of various themes, in a mediation of together- and apart-ness. I have used letters and diary-entries as addresses to the audience, and also as invitations for the reader to access the poem through different points of entry. My academic thesis focuses on the utilisation of epistles in contemporary American prose poetry. It is 26,000 words, and is divided into three sections: focused on Epistles: Poems by Mark Jarman; Letters to Kelly Clarkson by Julia Bloch, and The Desires of Letters by Linda Brown; and Dear Editor: Poems by Amy Newman. Why are we still writing poems as letters when we don’t habitually write letters for personal correspondence anymore? The poem-as-letter, or epistle, offers the ability to craft complex relationships within the reader/author, writer/recipient, and open/closed dynamics of intimacy in literature. The criticism is framed within the methodology of reader-response theory, and draws upon examples of epistles in history and literature to connect and establish themes.

Light Suite is a collection of the work I produced during my enrollment in the University of New Orleans Low Residency M.F.A. program. The writing, format and length styles reflect my experimentation with my craft. It also provides insight as to what my "poetic voice" is. Light Suite attempts to entwine personal experience with engaged observation and occasional flights of fantasy. The following poems illustrate my attempt at diversifying personal, poetic style. There are travel, prose, and accidental meaning poems. There are poems that feature personal narrative and collaboration. All of my works do share one characteristic and that is the close relationship with visual representation of an oral experience. I employ white space, line breaks, line length, assonance and consonance to create works that are as close to my speaking voice as possible.

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In mainstream literary histories, Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841) is still remembered as the canonical inventor of the prose poem in France. The established classification of Gaspard de la Nuit (1842) within the realm of the prose poem inevitably involves a retrospective appreciation of Bertrand’s work in light of the better-known authors that succeeded him in the history of this genre, such as Baudelaire and Mallarmé. The result is that Bertrand is often viewed as the inventor and/or the precursor of this genre; an important but, ultimately, minor contributor to its development. This hindsight brings with it a risk of critical anachronism against which Bertrand's contribution is often downplayed, especially because his thematic choices are seen to be outmoded, when compared to works by poets writing decades later. This thesis is a re-examination of Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit, incorporating an analysis of the cultural context that contributed to its production. The central argument is that in order to fairly assess Bertrand’s work, it is crucial to consider the poet’s contribution to, as well as his position in, the wider cultural exchange typical of his time. Using this contextual and historical approach, this thesis examines and challenges some of the main traditional considerations of Bertrand, such as his being a petit romantique, his provincialism, his unoriginality, and his role as the precursor and/or inventor of the prose poem. The overall aim is to assess fairly Bertrand’s unique synthesis of contemporary cultural and literary material with his own original work. By emphasising the crucial role of cultural exchange at the time of Gaspard de la Nuit’s production, we are thus able to begin to understand Bertrand in his own terms, rather than those of his successors, ourselves included, challenging commonly-held views and opening up new avenues for research.

This collection of poems concerns contemplative silence, uncertainty, and the relationship between reverence, and constructions of littleness and absence. / Graduate / 10000-01-01

This study aims to compare British war poetry of the First World War with Iraqi poetry from the mid-20th century with special reference to Iraqi war poetry of the 1980’s Iraq-Iran War and the period that followed it. It will also investigate the influence of the designated British war poetry on the chosen body of Iraqi poetry. Through the comparison of sample poems the study presents, firstly, the direct influence of the British poetry of the Great War and its translation which formed the seeds of a more radical movement in Iraqi poetry during the 1980’s Iran/Iraq War and the period that followed it. The study also presents a comparison of the works of British and Iraqi civilian poets during and after the war time and their contribution in setting the ground for the younger generation to create more subversive poetic forms with special reference to women as influential characters and inspirations in their works. The moment of the 1980’s war marks the break with the clear direct influence of British war poetry and starts another phase of the comparison of a universal bond of similar reactions, conscious and unconscious expression reflecting the lives of the combatant group of men first and then of poets sharing a devastating war reality. The study reveals a remarkable, more radical change of poetic forms in Iraqi poetry between the time of the first seeds planted by the influence of translations from European poetry until the time of the Iran/Iraq war and the Gulf War in 1991 and the rise of the new nihilistic generation of the 1990s subverting war, politics and cultural life through their innovation in prose poem writing and its significance as an alternative space for their political and social subversion.

The aim of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive view of the works of Samuel Beckett from the beginning to the novel Molloy. It is based on analysis of individual works and the subsequent attempt to uncover their interconnections. The thesis is divided into three parts: theory, poetry and prose. The first part deals mainly with the concept of incoherent reality which Beckett speaks about for the first time in his essay Proust and then returns to in other texts. In the novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women he makes it the basis of his own aesthetic. Behind the phenomena of the outer world lies chaos and nothingness and the artist's task is to integrate it into his work. The second part discusses the changes in the subject of the poems, his being or not being in particular surroundings, the amount of literary allusions, the themes and the form of the poems, above all the particular techniques Beckett uses and the degree of their regularity and elaboration. The third part raises similar questions about prose. The unquestionable centre of Beckett's poems and prose is the subject of the poems and the main character, characterized by tension between inside and outside. The change in the character is caused by outweighing of the tendency to stay inside. This also results in the reduction in allusions...

Symptoms of a Cosmic Fluke is a book of poems.

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