Poetry in the making: phrenology, creativity and the art of collecting (includes volume of poetry titled Heads: a collection)

Abstract

This Creative Writing thesis consists of two parts: a full collection of poems, and a critical account of what led to their creation and of the topics that arose from the writing. The poems are titled Heads: a collection for two reasons: 1) the volume began as an exploration, through poetry, of a number of nineteenth-century plaster of Paris casts of heads currently owned by Hampshire Cultural Trust and 2) those ‘heads’ were put together as a deliberate collection, just as poems put together are commonly called a ‘collection’ — the term thus used in this case self-consciously and as a kind of pun. In the poems directly about the casts as death- (and occasionally life-) masks and in other sections of the collection, the notion of identity and character and how these are represented persists. Those other sections include poems about Joseph Merrick, the so-called ‘Elephant Man’, a series of poems written in response to George Eliot’s novella The Lifted Veil, some more autobiographical poems, poems written about artefacts or exhibits in various museums, and poems responding to modern technology, specifically the use of smartphones. The critical commentary consists of six chapters. I begin with an Introduction, explaining the genesis of the poetry collection, giving some background to phrenology and its connexion to the collection of plaster casts of heads, and then outlining the various topics the critical commentary covers. A first main chapter covers ‘An Afterlife for Phrenology’. Here I consider how the completely discredited pseudoscience might nevertheless still have some use not just in terms of providing subject matter for poems but also as a source of analogies and metaphors that can help analyse the creative process. Chapter 3 shows how ‘Poetry and Learning’ come together. It takes a mainly analytical-descriptive approach, selecting examples from other poets’ (past and contemporary) work and my own poems, to articulate a threefold pattern that I characterise as ‘fully integrated’, ‘unintegrated or self-conscious’ and ‘via media’, that last where knowledge is overtly present but integrated to the extent that its presence seems natural rather than forced. I discuss allusion, quotation, footnoting and attribution in these contexts. Chapter 4 is about ‘The Relevance of Collection’. I look at parallels between poetry’s and museology’s use of the word “collection” and discuss the new area of poetry criticism called by Neil Fraistat “contexture”, that is, the study of how poetry collections are put together. Looking at various examples of contemporary poetry collections, I show how poets have gone about assembling and ‘displaying’ their poems. I add my own experiences of this process and offer these as a case study. Chapter 5 is about Ekphrasis. Having considered what the dominant mode of writing in Heads: a collection is, I rejected the term ‘elegiac’ in favour of ‘ekphrastic’ as the most accurate description. I discuss the various ways in which ekphrasis has been applied to poetry, and conclude that although my poems often work in these ways, they also broaden the term. My poetry collection, in its treatment of artefacts that would not normally be deemed works of art, adjusts the normal criteria for ekphrasis and broadens its remit. The chapter also raises (but does not attempt to answer) ethical questions about ekphrasis. Finally, in my Conclusion, I revisit some key issues and conclusions. In reconsidering poetry and learning, for instance, I look at how contemporary critics and poets, like Peter Middleton, make ambitious claims for poetry’s epistemological power. I also attempt to locate my own practice within the contemporary poetry scene.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record