Poetry Commons^™

A Flower's Farewell, Fragile Stillness, Days That "Stay", Sophia S. Chesner

Student Publications

Creative writing set of three poetry pieces

Poetry And Empowerment In Islam, Stephanie Kerr

Journal of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression

Project Mentor(s): Katharine Whitcomb

In this collection I hope to express the abundance of empowerment my religion, Islam, has given me. Before my conversion I, like many, believed some misconceptions about women in Islam but now I have gained confidence and discovered I am capable of more than I ever thought. In this community I have also met many Muslim women who feel the same sense of empowerment. Presentation recording available in the SOURCE 2025 playlist: https://www.youtube.com/@cwusource5518

A Not-Quite-Assessment Of Assessing Autoethnography: Ekphrastic Compositions On Quality, Clarity, And (Un)Certainty In Autoethnography, Aaron Hoy

The Qualitative Report

Taking an ekphrastic approach, this essay responds to and reflects on my reading of Assessing Autoethnography: Notes on Analysis, Evaluation, and Craft by Andrew F. Herrmann and Tony E. Adams. It has three parts. First, I summarize the book’s central chapters and discuss their practical uses, especially as prompts for in-progress autoethnographies. Second, using clarity as a point of entry, I explore a tension I felt while reading the book—between the comforting utility of specific criteria and the marginalizing power of criteria themselves. Finally, I share a found poem composed in response to the book and reflect on the impermanent …

Fishing The Trout Pond At Dusk, Hilary Russell

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

I Went Climbing Today, Chris Kalman

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

Song Of Air, Todd Davis

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

April, Noah Davis

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

Just Description, Elizabeth Bradfield

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

Loon Lake Hex Hatch, Michael Garrigan

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

Hey You, Grant Clauser

Appalachia

No abstract provided.

The Meadow Is A Teacher, Hannah Dewey

The Cicadian

This poem invites the reader into a layered experience of nature through the eyes of a mindful observer. From a single wildflower to a grove of aspens, the poet gathers impressions from the meadow and its inhabitants: birds, trees, water, fish. The speaker’s act of closing their eyes and listening becomes a moment of learning—not through books or instruction, but through quiet immersion in the living world. Written in free verse, this poem uses short lines that mimic the motion of breeze, birds, and water. There is no punctuation, creating a seamless flow. The structure echoes the gentle, undemanding way …

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sj: Master Architect Of The Company Of Poets, Timothy J. Wesley

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

It has been 107 years since the first collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ were published by the poet-scholar’s friend and confidant Robert Seymour Bridges. Literary commentators, historians, and theologians have sought to understand the great poet of the Jesuits since the posthumous release of the poetry to the wide world in 1918. Of the many angles on Hopkins’s life that have been analyzed and examined, we could name a few: his sublimated sexuality, his identity as a religious priest, the poet’s placement within The Victorian Period, a voice of apologetic theology within Modernity, a political eco-centric voice, and …

The Years Of Blood [Excerpt], Adedayo Agarau

Poetry

Winner of the 2023-24 Poetic Justice Institute Editors Prize for a BIPOC Writer

ISELE MAGAZINE | EDITOR'S CHOICE: 25 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025 THE MODACULTURE | 10 ANTICIPATED AFRICAN BOOKS OF 2025 OPEN COUNTRY MAGAZINE | ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025

In this unflinching debut collection, Adedayo Agarau confronts the harrowing reality of ritual killings and child abductions that have terrorized Nigeria from the turbulent pre-democratic era to the present day. Set against the backdrop of rural Ibadan, The Years of Blood plunges readers into the depths of collective trauma where "memory forsakes the body at the point where fear …

A Winter Triangle [Excerpt], Marcella Durand

Poetry

Winner of the 2023–24 Poetic Justice Institute Prize, Selected by Srikanth Reddy

A poetic exploration that reimagines form and language through celestial patterns

Informed by mystery, chaos, order and writing as container, A Winter Triangle explores poetic space and form amid the infinite possibilities of composition and change. Composed of three parts, or “points,” like its namesake asterism, this collection is inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s idea of composing poetry from the “senseless splendor” of the skies, as well as the designs for automata by twelfth-century inventor and engineer Ismail al-Jazari, and mythological depictions of Sirius, the dog/wolf star, as both …

In Tensile // In Between, Corinna Di Niro

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

"In Tensile // In Between" operates as both artistic artefact and theoretical critique, demonstrating how creative practice can embody and extend academic discourse. This creative-critical work examines shifting perceptions of course delivery within creative tertiary education, arguing that project-based learning enables the seamless embedding of socio-cultural discourse and theories within practical making processes.

The poem interrogates how educational environments can cultivate critical thinking through what I term "tensile pedagogy"—an approach that maintains productive charge between opposing forces rather than seeking synthesis or resolution. This concept builds upon King's (2017) work on pedagogy as tension, which argues that "tension and incompleteness …

Contributors

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Mythic Circle #47

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Editors' Introductions

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Tree That Would Not Fall: An Educator’S Autoethnographic Journey Of Healing Through Words, Raeanna Marie Carlson

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

To say the world has changed since the 2020 COVID-19 shut down is to minimize the micro and macro social changes that infiltrated the school system. In the wake of it all, we find a landscape marred by a both rising teacher attrition and struggling student motivation. This autoethnographic dissertation explores the deeply personal experience tethered to a deeply problematic system that contributes to not only teacher burnout but what I came to know as teacher demoralization. Personal traumas of teachers profoundly impact their experience in the classroom, and as I examined my own near departure from the classroom, I …

My Achilles Years., Ash William Bittner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a historically and rhetorically grounded creative project exploring the traumas of war. This project is divided into three broad chapters, each using a different (and relevant) approach to cover the content contained within that chapter. The first chapter relies on that historical grounding, exploring the history of PTSD as it is currently understood, before exploring ancient Greek poetry and theater and both the historical and military contexts for each, before finally discussing modern warfare and the “Forever War” of the American War on Terror that lasted for nineteen years. With the historical grounding set, it moves into …