Creative Writing Commons^™

Art Therapy, Valli Jo Porter

English Theses & Dissertations

The five stories in this thesis explore how people comprehend identity, especially in the context of geographical region, religion, relationships, and genetics. Each story's suburban setting plays largely into the characters' crises of identity, even though the protagonists range in age from teen to middle-aged father of four. Through the action of each story, the five protagonists awaken to new facets of their own characters.

In "Love Your Neighbor," college student Julianne debates whether she can take revenge after a neighbor invades her privacy. Jacob Ritter, in "1-90," contemplates whether he understands his children now that they are grown and …

Court Green: Dossier: Political Poetry, Columbia College Chicago

Court Green

An annual poetry magazine with a different theme for each issue; printed from 2004 to 2015.

Ka Lawai‘A, Ku‘Ualoha Ho‘Omanawanui

Pacific Studies

This poem uses the extended metaphor of traditional Hawaiian fishing to portray emotional manipulation and betrayal. The speaker likens their relationship to being hunted—baited with false promises and pierced by deception. Imagery of kukui nuts, sharp spears, and the soft body of the he‘e (octopus) evokes both cultural specificity and visceral vulnerability. Ultimately, the poem critiques how some cling to age-old tactics of control and harm, choosing cunning and tradition over transparency or change.

Silauni‘I, Jacinta Galea‘I

Pacific Studies

This poignant story follows the narrator’s friendship with Silauni‘i, the daughter of a village minister in Samoa. Silauni‘i is quiet, unconventional, and full of subtle resilience—her zig-zag pigtails, uncombed hair, and luminous smile defy rigid expectations placed on minister’s children. Together, the girls navigate school, village gossip, and the burdens of being “examples” in their community. As they study Samoan grammar at A‘oga Samoa, the story builds to a heartbreaking moment when Silauni‘i is publicly beaten after failing a quiz, a punishment that reflects the weight of expectations and the cruelty of discipline cloaked in righteousness. Through intimate details and …

Shadows Dance In My Head, Cresantia F. Koya Vaka'uta

Pacific Studies

This emotionally charged poem captures the fragmentation of memory, longing, and betrayal through rich sensory imagery and stream-of-consciousness form. The speaker grapples with a haunting relationship marked by absence, desire, and spiritual dissonance. Religious symbols like rosaries and puja sit beside visceral images of movement, scent, and violence, evoking a clash between sacred ritual and raw human emotion. A mysterious woman—sensual, spectral, unattainable—symbolizes the speaker’s loss and powerlessness. The poem loops, returning to “shadows” and “silence,” suggesting the persistent echo of emotional trauma and unresolved yearning.

The Lotus Flower, Julie Gerdes

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Mauri, Alice Te Punga Somerville

Pacific Studies

This evocative poem is a quiet meditation on memory, mourning, and the enduring presence of a loved one. The white wreath becomes a sacred object—part keepsake, part spirit vessel—tied to a deeply personal moment of loss. As the speaker reflects on the wreath’s gentle movement, what might be dismissed as mere wind becomes, for them, a sign of something more: a whisper from beyond, a connection that lingers even in silence.

Sarong/‘Ie Lavalava, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

These paired poems—one traditional and one contemporary—celebrate love, desire, and cultural identity through the evocative imagery of clothing and voyage. The first, a traditional Samoan poem, uses the lavalava (sarong), siapo (tapa cloth), and the metaphor of anchoring a canoe to express admiration, intimacy, and the quiet finality of choosing a beloved. The second, more modern, mirrors this sentiment with lyrical imagery: a sarong as a flowing connection between nature, memory, and union. Together, they link personal affection with cultural heritage, honoring both bodily adornment and emotional anchorage.

Village Princess, Tusiata Avia

Pacific Studies

This poem reflects on the tension between traditional cultural roles and personal freedom, using the figure of a taupou—an honored ceremonial title in Samoan culture—as a lens. The speaker contrasts their sister’s symbolic beauty and status with her eventual rejection of expectations, choosing instead a life of independence and reinvention in America. The shift from reverence to silence around titles suggests a broader commentary on changing values and the cost of self-determination.

Living Small, Kim Meredith

Pacific Studies

This story traces Luisa’s quiet reflections during a bus ride through the city and into the suburbs, blending present experiences with vivid memories of a full, familial past. As she recalls life with her husband in her grandparents’ home and her grandmother’s moving speech at her university graduation, we see Luisa grappling with the contrast between her youthful dreams and her current life. Her grandmother once called her “a dreamer” and supported her late-night intellectual curiosity, forging a bond that shaped Luisa’s path. When a coworker sits beside her on the bus, Luisa is drawn back into the present, revealing …

Manōwai, Victoria Nālani Kneubuhl

Pacific Studies

This story follows Kanoe, a woman who retreats to rural Kona to recover from an emotionally abusive relationship with Frank, a manipulative academic. Through journal-like reflections and quiet moments in the heat-soaked coastal town, Kanoe processes her heartbreak and rediscovers herself. Her interactions with locals—particularly the wise and warm-hearted Luisa—reveal a rhythm of life grounded in history, resilience, and a subtle but profound sense of healing. As Kanoe begins writing again and exploring her surroundings, her journey shifts from escape to restoration, where stories, memory, and new connections light the path forward.

It Began With A Question, Konai Helu Thaman

Pacific Studies

This poem reflects a quiet, profound moment of surrender and trust. Rooted in timelessness and uncertainty, the speaker is called into action not by clarity, but by faith. Despite feeling disconnected from place and time, they answer a rare question with a brave "yes," grounding themselves in something enduring—a rock that "noticed" them. It’s a meditation on belonging, voice, and hope whispered into a weary world.

The Night Woman, Sia Figiel

Pacific Studies

This evocative poem honors the resilience, knowledge, and sacred power of the “Night Woman”—a symbolic figure who endures judgment and violence from the dominant “Day People.” Though wounded, she hides her pain behind silence and laughter, carrying ancient wisdom of the natural and cosmic world. In a transformative act at the ocean’s edge, she sheds societal expectations (“Day Skin”) to embrace her true self, birthing new generations whose identities are written in the stars. It’s a lyrical celebration of hidden strength, ancestral legacy, and feminine sovereignty.

Diagnosis, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

This poem captures a moment of tense uncertainty, likely surrounding a medical diagnosis revealed by ultrasound. The natural imagery—sea of shadows, swaying grass, warring rain and wind—mirrors the speaker’s emotional turbulence. Faced with a 50/50 prognosis, they turn inward, preparing for struggle or protection by invoking ancestral strength, symbolized by “ancient arrows” and a tightened bowstring. It’s a poetic meditation on fear, resilience, and readiness in the face of potential loss.

Waimanalo Litany, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

This elegiac poem, “Waimanalo Litany,” written in memory of Mahealani Dudoit, is a lyrical meditation on loss, healing, and the sacred presence of place. With vivid imagery of ocean, land, and ancestral spirits, the poet weaves a prayerful plea for mercy and peace across beloved Pacific landscapes. The repeated invocations to the spirits of moana, Koʻolau, Makapuʻu, and Waimānalo evoke a sense of cultural rootedness and spiritual continuity, even amid physical pain and environmental disruption. It is both a personal tribute and a collective chant of remembrance.

My Pigeon, From The Samoan, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

This poem is a lyrical elegy expressing love, longing, and loss through the metaphor of a pigeon in flight. Rooted in Samoan tradition, it evokes a deep emotional landscape where nature mirrors the ache of separation. The forest becomes both a literal and symbolic space of mystery and mourning, as the speaker watches and waits in vain for a beloved who has disappeared. Through its gentle cadence and sensory imagery, the poem captures the enduring ache of absence and the hope—however faint—that love might return on silent wings.

Not Exotic, Lisa Kahaleole Hall

Pacific Studies

This sensual poem explores desire and self-discovery through the metaphor of mangoes—ripe, tart, messy, and irresistible. The speaker recalls the intense flavors and sensations of mango eating, paralleling them with a complex, bold woman who resists sweetness in favor of spice. It captures the tension between sharp edges and tender longing in a relationship that ripens slowly, but promises depth and heat in time.

Niudity (I-Iv), Teresia Teaiwa

Pacific Studies

The "Niudity" poem sequence by Teresia Teaiwa explores the layered metaphor of the coconut (niu) to reflect on identity, vulnerability, and postcolonial femininity in Oceania. The poems interweave bodily imagery with cultural symbolism—where the coconut’s husk, shell, and flesh represent stages of exposure, resilience, and inner worth. In playful yet poignant verse, Teaiwa deconstructs the idea of nudity into niudity—a state shaped not just by nakedness, but by misrecognition, resistance, and cultural disguise. Her fictional dictionary entries parody colonial linguistic authority while empowering indigenous reinterpretation. The final poem subverts expectations with sharp commentary on exploitation, voice, and …

Woven Worlds, Konai Helu Thaman

Pacific Studies

This poem beautifully portrays the act of weaving—both literal and metaphorical—as a shared practice of memory, creativity, and cultural continuity. The speaker reflects on how hands, once weaving traditional materials like voivoi (pandanus), now craft art through movement and color. Together, the weavers form a collective bond, connecting generations and geographies in a creative act that honors ancestral legacy and reimagines the world through shared expression.

2nd Stanza, "Samoa," From Meet You In Hawaiki, Rosanna Raymond

Pacific Studies

An image of a woman with a poem.

Muffin 2007, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Muffin was a newsletter produced in the early aughts by RISD’s Queer Student Union as a student guide to queer culture. The 2007 issue features articles on the Translating Identity Conference (TIC), sexual consent, the integration of rival lesbian groups on campus, lesbian films, and Brokeback Mountain, along with creative writing, a list of gay bars, and a list of queer resources.

Vol. Xliv, No. 1: Textual Healing: Giving Voice To Historical And Personal Experience In The Collective Works Of Edwidge Danticat, Denise R. Shaw

The Hollins Critic

No abstract provided.

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

Dream Driving, Don Russ

KSU Press Legacy Project

In Don Russ's collection of poetry, Dream Driving, life is a journey. It has dream-like stages, apparitions, visions, and revelations. The journey itself is in some ways a dream, a sleep-wandering among the labyrinths of the mind, of the imagined world, of even the "real" world. What can we finally know for sure? Do we not at least partly create what we see in the act of seeing it?

Section I includes the poems:

• Here
• In the Driveway
• At the End of the Woods
• Fauns
• Metamorphosis
• Easter Biddies
• Walk on Water
• A Little Visit
• The Bachelor Tells a Family Story …

Fractures, Elizabeth Hastings

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A stoplight at night. A dim bedroom. The smell of smoke and loss in summer. In winter, the crackle of snow underfoot, the city cold as a lavender planet. These are the settings within Fractures, and it is to these backdrops that the conflicts of the poems' speakers bare themselves. In the glow of these places, the truth of fractures, the gaps and slivers within us all, are illuminated. Below the visible wholeness of life lies a masked truth, the truth of a world that exists as a collection of fragments, of lives, of stories that connect, intersect, and sometimes …

Inscape 2007, Morehead State University

Inscape: Art & Literary Magazine Archive

The 2007 edition of the Inscape: Literary and Art Magazine.

Moonflowers And Other Stories, Sarah Bethany Prevatt-Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Moonflowers and Other Stories is a collection of short stories focusing on complex relationships among characters who are estranged from their families and their pasts; some seek to reestablish connections, while others decide to simply walk away. All of the stories are set in Florida. In "Stained Glass," Abby returns home after seventeen years to help care for the father who disowned her. In "Blue Green Red," Melaney is compelled to find her brother after years of lying about his existence. Selina, the protagonist of "Fatty Walsh" is so embarrassed by her family she will not tell her friend Alucia …

Sequoya Review, University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga

Sequoya Review

No abstract provided.

Volume 39 (2007), C. V. Davis

The Broad River Review

The 2007 edition of The Broad River Review was edited by C. V. Davis. The publication contains fiction, non-fiction, art, poetry, and photography. The covers, "Color Canyon" and "Slot Canyon," were photographed by Randy McNeilly. The winner of the J. Calvin Koontz Poetry Award, given annually for a portfolio of poetry to a senior English major, is Eric Proctor. The Broad River Review Editor's Prizes in Fiction and Poetry are chosen among all submissions from Gardner-Webb University students.The Editor's Prize in Poetry was awarded to Jess Snyder for her peom titled, "The Buzzards Circle Home." The Editor's Prize in Fiction …

Uniquely Alike: A Review Of Great With Child: On Becoming A Mother, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Considering my own insecurities, I began reading Debra Rienstra's Great with Child: On Becoming a Mother with some caution, as the book promised to take its readers on "the fascinating journey of understanding the power and meaning of birth." An acquaintance at a professional conference had highly recommended the book upon discovering I was the mother of two small children -- but then, she had not known my boys were adopted. And thus, the first few pages of Rienstra's text set me on edge: here was another woman sharing her pregnancy woes and describing the "harrowing intensity of birth." …