The poetry sequence as sustained meditation : a critical and creative thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, Albany, Aotearoa New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 8th February 2026

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dc.contributor.authorThorstensen, Nicola Christine
dc.date.accessioned2024-07-17T23:11:35Z
dc.date.available2024-07-17T23:11:35Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.descriptionEmbargoed until 8th February 2026
dc.description.abstractThis thesis examines the poetry sequence as sustained meditation. It uses two investigative methods: a critical essay and a poetry manuscript containing four discrete sequences and an epilogue. It explores, both creatively and critically, how a sequence works, what holds it together. The critical essay (30 percent) examines poetry sequences by two contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand poets: “Reprogramming the heart” from Helen Heath’s collection Are friends electric? and “Tender” from Janet Newman’s collection Unseasoned Campaigner. Each sequence comprises a female speaker’s contemplation of loss and grief, which seemed apt as correlatives to my creative work. I analyse how the poems speak to one another via repeated images and motifs to operate as sequences, creating a whole greater than the constituent poems. Specifically, in both cases, the echoing images and motifs support the development of extended elegies, with an emphasis on a version of the traditional movement from lament to consolation in Heath and an emphasis in Newman on a contemporary version of the elegy’s traditional praise movement, one that declines to idealise. My poetry manuscript (70 percent) explores two connected family tragedies. I use the findings from the critical essay to inform the methodology in the practice of my creative work, notably the recurrence of image and motif. The first sequence, “Fragmented”, tracks my paternal grandmother’s cognitive decline following an undiagnosed head injury sustained after being struck by a car. The second, third and fourth sequences, titled “Intensive Care”, “Valuables” and “Reclamation”, trace the aftermath of my family’s involvement in a fatal car accident which was precipitated by my grandmother’s death. “Intensive Care” is set contemporaneously to the crash, containing aspects of a child’s perspective, whilst in “Valuables” and “Reclamation” the speaker attempts in the present to elucidate the impact of the crash from some measure of critical distance. The epilogue contextualises the subject matter with more recent material. Writing the manuscript has challenged me to shape emotional response to deeply personal experience into an artwork, to seek the universal in the specific.
dc.identifier.urihttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/70218
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherMassey University
dc.rightsThe authoren
dc.subject.anzsrc360201 Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting)en
dc.titleThe poetry sequence as sustained meditation : a critical and creative thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, Albany, Aotearoa New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 8th February 2026
dc.typeThesis
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