Fractured journeys : exploring possibilities of fractal verse : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing, Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
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Date
2013
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Massey University
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Abstract
In his book The Song of the Earth, Jonathan Bate acknowledges the question of the
use of poetry in these highly technological times. If, as he asserts, ‘poetry is the
place where we save the earth’, then the problem arises of how best to write poetry
that addresses our most pressing concerns. Contemporary American poet Alice
Fulton is one who does address social and political issues and has developed what
she calls a ‘fractal’ poetic in order to do so. The research essay, titled ‘Fugue or/and
Fugitive: Alice Fulton and the Poetics of Social Change’, examines how effective her
poetics are as an agent of social change, and whether her work may serve as a useful
model to move outwards from the personal concerns of an individual poet to a wider
frame of public relevance.
The first section of the essay looks at the social issues which Fulton raises in
her poetry. These include human and animal rights, the politics of climate change,
and deep-seated gender and racial inequities. Most of the poems examined come
from her 1995 collection Sensual Math, because it is here that she introduces or
employs some of her most characteristic techniques, such as an invented punctuation
mark, word clusters, and syntactic doubling. Some of her more recent poems are also
included in this context. The second section of the essay looks at Fulton’s theory of
poetics and what other critics have said about it. It examines whether her techniques
deliver on their promise to offer a non-didactic platform for activist poetry. The final
section considers how I can apply Fulton’s techniques so that my own work moves
beyond the merely solipsistic.
My attempt to use fractal techniques is demonstrated in Unmooring, the
poetry collection which constitutes the other half of this thesis. The first few poems
are concerned with family history and the beginnings of an interface between poetry
and eco-activism. Unexpected bereavement dictated both the form and the content of
the central lyrical section. The collection concludes with poems which draw those
elements together, applying a fractal poetic to personal engagement.
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Keywords
Alice Fulton, Social change in poetry, Poetics, Poetry, Fractal verse