Creative Writing Commons^™

Honeysuckles & Irises: Effigies Of The Land, Ami` L. Hanna-Huff

English Creative Writing Theses

Here is a memoir of my paternal line through the lens of my Great-Grandmother and myself. A reclamation of the land I hail from and a connection to a history previously felt distant, this examination of race and gender explicitly focused on the African American Southern female experience; I try to make sense of the juxtaposing positions in our lives. The culture built from its creation through Tennessee personified. Here, I integrate history and theory with lyrics and prose to experience the eighty-one years of progress brought between our births and the lingering anxiety of slavery. My great-grandmother, Hazel Irene …

Goddess Of., Megan Childs

Student Research Submissions

My chapbook, “goddess of.”, is a compilation of poems that channel the larger-than-life personalities of the Ancient Greek gods and goddesses. I completed this project over the course of a semester in my ENGL470 course, Seminar in Creative Writing: Poetry. Professor Bylenok, who sponsored this project, was instrumental in the development of my poetry into a fully-fledged collection. My chapbook explores disillusionment, love, loneliness, and fear. At its core, it’s about having to live with yourself – even if it’s embarrassing, ugly, or painful. It’s a chance to feel as powerful as the gods themselves, or as pathetic as their …

Harvest: A Story Of Afropessimism, Briana Williams, Briana Williams

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Afropessimism is the idea that Black people will never be able to truly overcome the centuries of racism and oppression they have faced. A bleak notion, the idea heavily contrasts with Afrofuturism, the ways in which Black people use technology to regain their autonomy and rise from the societal binds they’re placed in. This story focuses on how even in the supposedly more evolved and progressive political landscape of the modern world, Black people still cannot escape the shackles of racism, particularly in the United States. Taking the common themes of and ideologies of Afropessimism, Harvest follows the story of …

Flowerama, Demitri Cullen

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

Wayfinding, Kalani N. Padilla

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

What We Need: A Poetic Study In Struggle And Self-Healing, Grace Anne Calabria

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In many ways, this thesis examines the eternal, repetitive inevitabilities of life. In a collection of poems, these inevitabilities are examined through the eyes of an observant and omniscient narrator: a girl, long in love with a boy, facing the struggles and rewards of learning to be alone in various ways after the 2020 pandemic. Because this thesis provides an examination of struggles and self-healing alongside its creative centerpiece of the collection, the poems are accompanied by a compilation of memoiristic reflections. This thesis contributes to conversations of mental health, love, growth, and finding legitimacy and value in creative work, …

Little Sun: A Poetry Collection, Lillian Aff

Scripps Senior Theses

N/A

Poems And Translations, Rome Hernández Morgan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is separated into two parts, a collection of original poems and a collection of translations of the crônicas of Rubem Braga. The collection of poems, titled, “Because I Never See You,” attempt to parse the complexities of familial and intimate relationships, addiction, and BIPOC experience. The collection of translations attempts to offer a small sample of the crônicas of Rubem Braga (1913-1990), a Brazilian journalist who is known throughout Brazil for “elevating” the form of the crônica from ephemera to the literary.

A Collection For A Better Misunderstanding, Mark Smeltzer

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

What if being understood becomes even more dreadful than being isolated? This collection of poetry stands between two extremes, using form and language to reflect the struggle of living on a continuum between being understood and being alone. By echoing the direct style of poets like Charles Bukowski and Mark Strand, as well as more abstract figures like May Swenson and Sylvia Plath, this collection asserts that the contradictions we carry can coexist, and even complement one another. Part One features original poetry that relies on the senses to recover old memories. A direct style in Part One seeks to …

The First Flowers Of Spring, Gretel Valdes

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis contains a series of poems by Gretel Valdes.

I.

• Pillowtalk
• Autumnal Hues
• Mis Cejas
• Intimacy
• Without You, in San Francisco
• Sundown of Person

II.

• drinking honey with the bees
• The Lady of Crescent Lake
• A Collection of 2 am Thoughts
• Cold Feet
• Another Year of Thankfulness
• My Grandfather’s First Time in the ICU
• For Oregon Where I Have Yet to Fall in Love

III.

• The First Flower of Spring
• A Dandelion Before the Wind
• Weightless
• Aubade to the Other Woman
• To Denica
• Someday Soon

IV.

• Recovery
• Anxiety
• On the first girl I ever kissed
• Drinks I …

Properly Unhinged: A Collection Of Poems, Madison Everett

Honors Projects

This is a collection of poems that explores the identities I possess and am a part of. These identities include being half black and half white, clinically diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalize Anxiety Disorder, pansexual or bisexual or something altogether different (depending on the day), and cis gendered womanhood. I also explore what a poem is and what a poem is not, and how there is very little difference between the two. In a lot of ways, this is an exploration into myself and what it means to be within the world. What does it mean to …

A Father At 1.5 Metres: Poems Of Pandemic And Fatherhood, Edward J. Leeming

Theses : Honours

'A Father at 1.5 Metres: Poems of Pandemic and Fatherhood' is a 36 poem collection with a connecting theme of uncertainty informed by John Keats‟ concept of negative capability. Negative capability, a term introduced by Keats in 1817, suggests that a writer is benefitted by a refusal of the formation of concrete ideas, that being in uncertainty without needlessly chasing after truth allows for a better understanding of the world, and of more perspectives in their writing. The negatively capable writer is more open to possibilities and of exploring new ideas; this allows them to pursue what Keats calls “beauty”, …

Beat The Church Crowd, Evelyn Alston Tyer

Honors Theses

Beat the Church Crowd is a collection of poems that explores a variety of topics and themes, from personal family legacy and natural disasters to bestiary, ekphrastic, and southern locale poems. It is divided into four sections: “Blue Danube,” “Anecdotes,” “Urban Legends,” and “Something Worth Protecting.” While the subject matter and forms of the poems vary, the common thread weaving each poem to the next is the slight touch of the macabre.

The Criterion Collection, Mackenna Finley

Honors Projects

The Criterion Collection is an examination of truth in fiction and poetry. The goal of this project is not to create truth that is absolute, but instead to allow for the experience of its subjectivity. The interplay between fiction and poetry, reader and author illuminates the subtle warping of truth through human experience.

Skin: Stories, Poems, And Essays, Amanda G. Hadlock

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis begins with a critical introduction which analyzes the use of objective correlative and varying points of view in creative writing in order to generate dialogue on cultural issues. I relate theories from Edward T. Hall, T.S. Eliot, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Lubomír Doležel to my own writing. Additionally, I situate my own multi-genre writing with work of contemporaries such as Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine. My hypothesis is that writers can use an objective correlative (Eliot) from the top of the cultural iceberg (Hall) as an entry point to representing deeper, more fraught cultural issues. Additionally, by experimenting with …

Tiny Furious Circles, Ann M. Herrington

Theses

I have had time to live and time to reflect on that living. What I have found is that certain things present themselves, over and over, wearing different skins. And though they look different, there is a certain whiff of familiarity that activates the soul’s hindbrain and pulls you close. That’s how it has been for me. Because of this — my failure to learn the first time; my need to see a thing from all its sides; my constant picking at the half-healed — certain themes repeat. And because they have come to me at different times in many …

Sing, Woman!, Emma Marie Spencer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Let Me Be Myself, Brandon Stettenbenz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Let Me Be Myself is a collection of short stories, essays, oral history, and poems that deals with generational trauma, history, traveling, family, war, oppression, and healing. This project serves to inform, evoke understanding, lend perspective, and inspire others. It aims to help others understand the trauma of being born from a Holocaust surviving family, and its impact on somebody in modern day society. It explores the story of a first, second, and third generation Holocaust refugee. It connects a timeline of eighty years of trauma through violence and oppression, and a pursuit to find healing from Nazi Germany.

Zona, Zachary Williams

Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of poems written between 2011 and 2019. Zona the title of the book, meditates on themes of precarity, loss, imagination, and transformation. Drawing from both the Surrealist and Deep Image traditions, the book comments on life and aesthetic experience under late-stage capitalism.

The Introvert's Guide To The Galaxy: A Reflective Guide Of Solo Travel And Study Abroad, Hope Patterson

Senior Theses

Oringinally meant to be a much longer volume, The Introvert’s Guide to the Galaxy is a creative anthology of works that explores one person’s Study Abroad and solo travel experiences. The main goal is to open a space to talk about unique experiences that cannot be anticipated, but should be learned from later. Topics include culture shock, sexism, alcohol culture, family, freelance tutoring, and risky outdoor activites.

Travel with our trusty guide as she fills you in on the things to know while traveling abroad, including finding perfect outdoor sleeping conditions because you missed all the taxis, dealing with the …

Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the use of memoir, my work centers on how poetry is situated within public education curriculum. I explore the curricular context of poetry through the lenses of my lived experiences in early childhood, as a K-12 student, and as an early career classroom teacher. My dissertation draws upon a wide array of literature, honing in on the poetic perspectives of philosophers (Aristotle, 1996; Heidegger, 1947 & 1971/2013; Plato, 1955/2007), poets (Hall, 2003; Eliot, 1920 & 2009), and curriculum theorists (Leggo, 1997 & 2018; Pinar, 1994; Sameshima, 2007). The foundation of my work is drawn from my own circular experiences, …

Soft Tornado, Zoe Orcutt

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Soft Tornado is the creative senior honors project of Zoe Orcutt. It is the culmination of her creative undergraduate work, including 30 pages of poetry, a critical essay, and a self-reflection.

Red Sea, Yellow Earth, Isabella Clay Martinez

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Baby Fat -- A Legacy, Brandi M. Gard

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Light In Creating Space, Tor Strand

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis contains a series of poems by Tor Strand.

Light

• The Role of Light in Creating Space
• A Light
• 99 and Brumback Street
• Tell Me The Precise Size of That World
• Sunday Creation, Lutheran Church
• Wood Chips
• What Remains
• Audenhaus
• Ex Nihilo, Celebration

Blood

• Burnt Rubber
• little spell with jaw and colosseum
• Recipe Writing on Birch Bark
• Portage Lake, Late March
• The Contents of Fire
• Name Me
• little spell with backbone
• Wash Bay
• My Attic
• Still Life: Grandfather and Saint

Body

• Two Years of Collected Light
• so we were
• Cornucopia
• little spell, little ray
• Distance
• Don't Touch …

The Face Of A Young Girl, Isabel Acevedo

Poetry MFA Theses

This collection of poems grapples with identity. What is home in relation to one's physical surroundings and even personal relationships. "The Face of a Young Girl" is a coming-of-age, not quite grown-up poetry collection.

Food Transitions: How Food Symbolizes Another Chapter, Josiah Peralta

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Through critical self-analysis of my life, I intend to answer the question, “How does food help us transition from one chapter of our life to another?” My purpose is to provide a personal viewpoint about related topics associated with food, like class, origin of food, religion or lack of, culture and tradition, obesity, food choice, and love. Through this viewpoint, I will demonstrate how food associations can encapsulate our past, memories, and identity in a way that moves us from the past to the present, and, hopefully, the future.

Capstone theme: Food, Ethics, and Politics

Mermaid Song: The Notebooks Of The Writing Woman, Gianna T. Ward-Vetrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is built on the model of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, that is, it is a feminist project of holistic integration that does not reject fracturing, ambiguity, or contradiction, but aims to attain a more complex and thus truer portrait of the woman writing. Lessing’s notebooks examine conflicts between communism and capitalism, racial conflict in Africa, conflict between men and women, and the conflict between the protagonist Anna Wulf’s identity as a woman and her identity as a writer, each of which she then attempts to integrate into the singular golden notebook of the title. I propose …

Growing Pains: An Honors Thesis Of Creative Writing, Angelica L. Santiago Gonzalez

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Most of the creative writing included in this thesis are nonfiction pieces; there are only a few that can be classified as fiction. They all connect to my own growth and development as a writer, and also as an individual struggling to find and establish my own identity. In the last four years I tried to make sense of my life and my struggles, especially my personal history of trauma. I can confidently say that I am in a much better place than I was when I first started my adventure at LC. Writing has been an important part of …

Trickling, Marissa Medley

Honors Projects

A collection of poetry and other writings that explore family relationships with a focus on mental illness.