Creative Writing Commons^™

The Work Of The Dying, Autumn Kasprowicz

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The Work of the Dying is a short collection of poetry inspired by the life of the author and her experiences with love, loss and family. This work explores themes of grief, mental health, home, and death and is influenced by the author's life in the Pacific Northwest. Poems in this project reflect on the death of two individuals close to the author, the start and end of a relationship, growing up with OCD, and learning how to live in the aftermath of these events.

A Hope More Violent Than Any Despair, Elinor Hendricks

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A Hope More Violent Than Any Despair is a book-length poetic sequence inspired by and organized according to the twenty-two cards that constitute the tarot’s major arcana. The work takes its name from a section of The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. As the foundational figures of the tarot, the major arcana are The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Justice, The Hermit, The Wheel of Fortune, Strength, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, and The World. Given …

Inscape: An Anthology, Parker White, Polyna Alexseev, Logan Hattle, Allie Emberson

Featured Student Work

No abstract provided.

Palm (Excerpt From Northern Flicker), Fiona Martinez

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Palm is a poem excerpted from the collection titled Northern Flicker. The collection traces themes of the pressing co-existence of violence and tenderness, entanglement with people and nature, and evolving ideas of home, language, and self.

She Who Seeks The Deep, Laci Bowhay

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In this poetry chapbook, I explore themes of grief, wellness, interdependence, care-giving, and self-harm. The book is dedicated to my father, as many of the poems deal with my active grief of his living with Parkinson's Disease. I also explore selfhood and all the selves contained within one being. Diving into the murkiness of life and emotion, I seek the deep.

Frank Wins A Staring Contest With The Universe, Frank Depalma

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In this full-length poetry chapbook, I explore themes of young adulthood, introspection, identity, and memory through a framework of parallel realities depicted with surrealistic, visceral imagery. In working on this project, I pushed myself to write more vulnerably and to embrace craft elements such as litany, line breaks, and space on the page. The result is a deeply personal collection of poems centering around my headspace in my final year of college as I look toward possible futures and reckon with impossible pasts.

About The Dark Times: Poetry For The Miocene, Nadine Waggoner

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

About the Dark Times is a chapbook of seventeen poems documenting the author's experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically the Omicron wave which affected the Pacific Northwest from January 2022 to February 2022. Themes include the impact of isolation on the author's self-identity, academic success, and mental health. The chapbook is separated into three sections: 'Poetry for the Miocene,' 'Poetry for the Late Cretaceous,' and 'Poetry for the Permian.' Fossilized animals and periods of mass extinction throughout the earth's history are used in metaphor and comparison to the author's personal experience. The poems each include elements of ars poetica and …

Seek Home, Tsigereda Eshete

Uplifting Blackness Collection

This poem is about the author’s experience as an international student in Canada. It analyzes and describes the reasons behind the isolation and aloneness she felt as a foreigner. The piece challenges its audience to open their mentality to a different perspective and alternate versions of reality. The poem also briefly describes the kind of background and culture the author comes from using juxtaposition. Phrases like “the fortitude of our broken ship” and “the bliss of our dark humor” depict the nature of her origin and its complexity. Finally, she seems to demand respect or attention to the relevance of …

Former Mother, Matthew Dawkins

Uplifting Blackness Collection

No abstract provided.

We Wear The Mask, Matthew Dawkins

Uplifting Blackness Collection

No abstract provided.

The Aftermath, Matthew Dawkins

Uplifting Blackness Collection

No abstract provided.

Golden, Matthew Dawkins

Uplifting Blackness Collection

No abstract provided.

He Is Dying And He Is Alive For It, Matthew Dawkins

Uplifting Blackness Collection

No abstract provided.

Something American, Carolina S. Souto

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SOMETHING AMERICAN is a poetry collection written from the perspective of a first-generation American navigating a growing family, a political crisis, and a global pandemic. Influences on this collection include Robert Hass’s THE ESSENTIAL HAIKU and FIELD GUIDE, which attend to nature and the poet-speaker’s immediate surroundings with diligence and precision. Ariel Francisco’s place poems and creative titles in ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE provide important touchstones for Souto’s commitment to here-and-now writing. And Sylvia Plath’s frank and complex writing about motherhood in ARIEL grants the poet permission to probe these subjects as well.

In SOMETHING AMERICAN, experimental poems sprawl …

Haunting This Garden, Anna B. Thomas

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Haunting this Garden is a poetry chapbook containing several poems and illustrations. The final copies were printed and bound with paper, glue, and cloth. Poems in the chapbook were written between 2018 and 2021, though all were heavily revised before being used in the chapbook. The pieces explore themes of love, fear, guilt, and shame. They are all heavily grounded in environmental themes.

Bycatch, Terin Weinberg

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

BYCATCH

by

Terin Weinberg

Florida International University, 2021

Miami, Florida

Professor Denise Duhamel, Major Professor

BYCATCH is a collection of poems that explore the speaker’s relationship with the natural world. The poems utilize a variety of forms, from traditional sestinas and sonnets driven by image, to puzzle-pieced stereoscopes that can be read grammatically in three different ways—left to right, or down one of either columns. Though the collection is rooted in nature, the emotional drive is rooted in the construction and deconstruction of the family and the body. Each section of the book will function as …

Children Of Greatness, Kimberly Douglas

Uplifting Blackness Collection

This poem was written by Kimberly Douglas and performed at Western's Black Student's Association closing ceremonies for Black History Month.

Confessions Of A Dark-Skinned Black Woman, Glenys Obasi

Uplifting Blackness Collection

This poem was written by Glenys Obasi and performed during Western's Black Student Association's Black History Month closing ceremonies.

Et Cetera, 2019-2021, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Banana Bread, Madeleine L. Quinn

Student Publications

This poem describes a young narrators exploration of her grandmother's battle with dementia. Her grandma's unwavering love still finds ways to shine through.

Closure, Madeleine L. Quinn

Student Publications

This poem explores the idea of closure through various lenses of the narrators life.

Growth Theory, Samantha Leon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

GROWTH THEORY reckons with a natural world in distress and imagines what attributes and learnings are needed for the individual to become a more beneficial part of the natural world. What does a person’s interaction with their surroundings say about them, and say about the surroundings? Violence, art, relationships, community are all examined along with the mediums through which we record our reality: speaking, writing, singing, taking photos. Despite covering a breadth of physical places and topics, a central tension that takes place between fear and curiosity colors the manuscript throughout. Poems are ordered by subject or temporal consideration, but …

Switch, Freesia Walsh Mckee

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SWITCH is a collection of post-confessional feminist poems exploring what it means to be a Millennial, a witness, a woman, a daughter, a dissident, and a student and teacher at the same time. Bookended by two long poems, the poetic-narrative heart of this collection dives into experiences of queer self-actualization, violence, community, family, and love. Narratives about simultaneity, empathy, and politics drive home the message of these poems: the dailiness of our lives is both quotidian and profound.

SWITCH is inspired by writers like Ellen Bass, Audre Lorde, Allison Joseph, June Jordan, Judy Grahn, and Marge Piercy, who’ve used intimate, …

Dungeons And Drafting, Talitha Greaver, Paige Doland

Honors Expanded Learning Clubs

No abstract provided.

Nicole Sumida And Alex Yu Interview, Laraib Malik

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Nicole Sumida is a co-founder and co-publisher of Riksha Magazine, an online magazine featuring creative work by and about Asian Americans. Alex Yu is a co-publisher of Riksha and both have been involved in community arts organizing since the 1990s in Chicago.

“Riksha provides a space for capturing the Asian American experience through compelling writing, commentary, and artistic expression. We curate an online magazine that presents poetry, fiction, non-fiction, fine arts, and video and audio pieces. We also comment on and curate the bric-a-brac and ephemera of Asian American life.”

Faculty Book Launch Celebrates Works Of Plath, Theune, Vi Kakaras, '20

News and Events

No abstract provided.

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Casual Myths, David Grandouiller

Creative Writing Minor Portfolios

This portfolio is a multi-genre collection of the best or most representative writing during my three years in the Creative Writing minor at Cedarville University. It includes seven pieces of nonfiction, one short story, and five poems. The most consistent link between these pieces across the genres is an imagist aesthetic, an attempt to live up to W. C. Williams’ adage, “No ideas but in things.” Primary themes the collection explores are my relationship with family, with place, and with God.

Walking On Streets That No Longer Exist Talking About Poetry With Ilya Kaminsky, Philip J. Metres

2017 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Metamorphosis Through Modern Poetry, Emilee D. Kilburn

Senior Honors Projects

I have memories of being in my room with a notebook, scribbling lines and rhymes about cats and fireworks. I have proof of these memories—a staple- bound booklet of poetry, illustrated with clipart and colorful text. I was so proud of the work; it was the project of a third grader’s time, effort, imagination, and mind. Even in my movement from that childhood room to the campus at the University of Rhode Island; and my maturity from nursery rhymes to Chaucer and Shakespeare, I have always carried a passion for language and creativity.

For the Honors Project, I wanted to …