Poetry Commons^™

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

Soul Furnace / فرن الأرواح, Isa Ghanayem

Masters Theses

“This is the good washing, this is (the washing) which separates the dirty body from the pure body. This is like silver mixed with lead, it is separated from it by this (process): one makes for it a cupel of bones, which is what is called the “head of the dog” and of which the common name is kūja-which is the crucible—and this must be made of burnt bones. One melts the silver in it, one gives it a strong fire: the cupel will absorb and receive the lead, the fire will make its subtle (part) fly away and extirpate …

Eco-Interoception: What Plants, Fungi And Protista Have Taught My Body, Sara Riley Dotterer

Art Theses and Dissertations

To me, ecology is the relational, full-body awareness that I am made up of and deeply connected to everything around me; and for better or worse, this is reciprocal. I form ecotones, an ecological transitional zone between two ecosystems, with the world around me. I use this ecotonal lens to blur binaries and dissolve boundaries between me and the world “outside my body.” During my Masters of Fine Arts at Southern Methodist University, I have continuously explored and represented the lives of various more-than-human species outside of my body, including plants, fungi and protista through an ecotonal lens. Although these …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Ivy Leaves, Volume 98, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2023 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Lily McNamara, Adam Jobson, Taylor Merner, Emma Miller, Canon Allen, Katelyn Flower, Johnathan Sorce, Zoe Dubiski, Carson Cawthon, Maeve Foote, Taylor Merner, Brianna Elwell, Abbie Vanasse, Lindsay Blumenfield, Knoxie Le Roux, Rebecca Thompson, Jocelin Flora, Caroline Reynolds, Julia Hewitt, Emily Miller, Lindsay Gatlin, Isabella Rigsby, Jennifer Hollifield, Dr. Derek Updegraff, and Tim Speaker.

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

Ivy Leaves, Volume 97, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2022 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Samantha Brooks, Gabrielle Morgan, Lily McNamara, Perry Diamaduros, Rebekah McCallum, Slone Pearce, Jo Randlett, Sharice Somero, Maggie Fitch, Hannah Brown, Sara Pepper, Brianna Elwell, Abbie Vanasse, Alexis Bussey, Rebecca Thompson, Dakota Riemer, Caroline Reynolds, Shelby Parker, Lindsey Gatlin, James Glymph, Wayne Cox, and Tim Speaker.

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen

Theses and Dissertations

Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …

Aztlán Del Sol, Marcus Zúñiga

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

An artistic writing developed from the themes and concepts of an of art installation made by a visual artist of Mexican-American descent from New Mexico. The work references the relationship of Aztec mythology to the American Southwest, art theoretical discourse in object oriented ontology and aesthetics, and key ideas in astronomy. Additionally interwoven is an expanded sense for interpreting ancestry and history under the constructs of multicultural conceptions of time, specifically cultures with notable spiritual rituals of Sun worship and observation.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Ivy Leaves, Volume 96, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2021 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Larisa Crowder, Samantha Windham, Lily McNamara, Samantha Brooks, Kristopher Sutherland, Salvatore Fontana, Gabrielle Morgan, Emma McKay, Carson Long, David Stancil, Hannah Brown, Sara Pepper, Brookelyn Taylor Harrison, Alexis Bussey, Abigail Timms, Dakota Riemer, Taylor Smith, Shelby Parker, Samantha Windham, Morgan Broom, Teresa Jones, and Tim Speaker.

Looking While Reading I, Ii, Iii, Sarah Minor

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This article introduces the term “visual essay” by tracing the genre’s history through the concrete poetry movement and the rise of the lyric essay. In describing the aims of visual essays, Minor distinguishes between “illustrative” and “non-illustrative” shaped texts, and suggests connections between “non-illustrative” examples and the aims of “Intersectional Form,” a term coined by scholar Jen Soriano.

Sweet Fruit, Daa Guy-Vasson

Theses and Dissertations

The writing and images in Sweet Fruit are an exploration of my creative works. In the first section, memory, making, and poetics come together to help the reader feel the nuances of my experience. In the exhibition works section, images allow an extended look at the work. Accompanying text describes the relevance of my childhood and my parent's Caribbean upbringing to my creative practice.

For Those Who Grew Too Fast, Erik Soto-Vasquez, Leonardo Dominguez-Ortega, Kiana Liu, Veronica Gomez, Maria Fernanda Meléndez Miranda, Megan Mcnaughton, Haley Gronski, Quetzali Lopez, Marieann Garzon, Brisa Gutierrez, Saúl Rascón Salazar, Mariel Fuentes, Renato Guzman, Karina Pena, Aviva Schwaiger, Denise Espinoza, Tiana Lockett, Katherine Comasil-Hernandez, Ashley Mccluskey, Brayan Vazquez, Manuel Armendariz Castro, Hannah Agbaroji

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This volume welcomes you amid multiple global epidemics. It welcomes you home, hoping that these words provide visibility, comfort, introspection, and roadmap for pushing boundaries. We know we are tired, we know we are facing uncertainty at every turn, and we know that connection is wearing thin. This collection of words serves as an “I see you,” as an “I am with you,” as an “I love you.” These pieces came together toward end of the Spring 2020, when a group of first-year and transfer students came together to speak their existence. They bring memories and a reminder that together …

Plastic Goes Concrete: "Plasticnic" And "Plasticpoems", Two Animated Poetry Videos About Plastic Pollution, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Nhat Truong, Tisha Deb Pillai

The Goose

The author describes the creation of two short animated video poems about plastic pollution that originated in concrete/visual poems. "Plasticnic" is a humorous and colourful narrated video based on a shaped poem depicting how we enjoy nature while simultaneously harming it through plastic consumption. "Plasticpoems" is a text-based, unnarrated animated video poem about plastic pollution based on two shaped/visual/concrete poems.

Breathe The Machine, Matt S. Roberts, Terri Witek, Teresa Carmody, Dengke Chen

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Breathe the Machine

interspecies morph edition featuring a video conference and solo or synched blow-ins

Teresa Carmody Dengke Chen Matt Roberts Terri Witek

The FaaS were future-oriented. Every day, they contemplated the question: what kind of ancestor will you be?

A collaborative group composed of a prose writer, new media artist, 3-D animator, and poet enter your personal computers and suggest that in this particularly viral moment, individual breaths + machines may be the closest we get to community touch. An animated video conference offers the project's conceptual framework, including questions about invasive species and intimacy in this new world …

Landscapes Of Light And Text And Layer: A Projection Poetry Performance, Jason Nelson Dr.

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

A digital poetry performance in seven locations. This online performance mixes pre-recorded video of projection poetry in seven places/landscapes around SE Queensland, Australia with a live digital poetry reading.

The theme of this performance is landscapes of change, exploring places in SE Queensland impacted by bushfires, deviated by floods, altered by drought, damaged by weapon testing, trees thousands of years old, home of non-human creatures and the revealed geology that roads carve.

Using pico/portable projectors, digital poet Jason Nelson, will add a poetic light-based skin to these landscapes, recording the results, replaying them during the performance. As the projection videos …

The Tenders: Embrasures In The Fort’S Collapse, Judd Morrissey, Abraham Avnisan, Mark Jeffery

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

The Tenders: Embrasures in the Fort's collapse (zoom edition) is an simultaneous multi-channel mixed reality performance that engages with structures of the fort and the home, combining remote live performance and augmented reality poetics with 3d scans of the site of Fort Dearborn, an early American garrison out of which the city of Chicago was incorporated. Juxtaposing excavations of urban monuments with scans of the bedazzled home of self-taught artist, Loy Bowlin, who embodied the persona of "the original rhinestone cowboy", The Tenders seeks to invert and queer colonial narratives lodged deep within the American imaginary.

Glitch Reading: [Re]Mediation And The Protocols Of Reading, Jacob Reber

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

In this paper, I outline a methodology for reading poetic works that operate between media environments, noting the subtle shifts and failures that mark the material changes. The space between mediums and processes of remediation produce residue from the various material substrates and protocols of reading that adhere to works moving through networks. The attention to the residue can be understood as glitches, which proliferate the possibilities of reading and reveal the construction of imbricated reading environments. This is a practice I want to consider through the framework of glitch reading. Drawing on Rosa Menkman's theorization of glitches and Tan …

Encumbered By Stage Fright Or I’M Not Sure Why I Did That, Chris Scott

Graduate School of Art Theses

I hope to be as honest as possible. I’m hoping to be the star of the show. This is a series of onanistic musings, a rambling narrative that oscillates between truth and fabrication. There are instances of earnestness paired with ostentatious exaggeration. The frequent leaps from subject to subject, often seemingly unrelated to one another, reflect the ineluctably scatterbrained headspace that dictates how I operate in the studio, in every facet of life. Through this lens of storytelling I delve into a few artists, like Bruce Nauman, and rock and roll musicians, like Lou Reed, who I have been unable …

The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems exploring gender and trauma in Greek mythology by retelling classical stories in a female voice.

Ivy Leaves, Volume 95, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2020 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Emma Morris, Sarah Grace Hoover, Lucy Kirkpatrick, Alli Kennedy, Genevieve Rice, Hayden Dutschke, Cameron Mason, Larisa Crowder, Kristopher Sutherland, Emily Britton, Savannah Smith, Megan Adams, Terra Baughn, Carson Long, David Stancil, Allie Thompson, Taylor Harrison, Meredith Guio, Austin Rusher, Taylor Smith, Ashley Stone, Abigail Timms, Teresa Jones, and Tim Speaker.

Lawgleaning, Natalie Joelle

The Goose

Poetry by Natalie Joelle

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Ivy Leaves, Volume 94, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2019 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Jacob Cavett, Caleb Flachman, Lucy Kirkpatrick, Logan Carrolll, Aleisse Buck, Alli Kennedy, Matthew Jarrett, Emma Morris, Jessica Jeter, Jayne Small, Lauren Swathwood, Megan Adams, Terra Baughn, Logan Chapman, Allie Thompson, Lizzie Todd, Austin Rusher, Blaire Bellaire, Ashley Stone, Teresa Jones, and Tim Speaker.

Untitled Unknown, Taylor Simone Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

This article is the first of a series exploring domination culture through the ways narrative has been indoctrinated as reality and weaponized as a holding cell for captives. Within this exploration, the narrative of domination is placed in relation to higher dimensional realms of the unknown; this being the before and after of domination culture. This positioning will allow for the reality of a simultaneous existence within the labyrinth of domination and a higher dimensional unknown to be framed. Within this series of articles, I question the roll of the rogue characters shamanistic agents of resisting domination, the fear of …

Hearing Through Walls, Bradley Marshall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses work in “Hearing Through Walls”, a Masters of Fine Arts thesis exhibit held at downtown Tipton Gallery from February 19th through March 2nd, 2018. The exhibition consists of 15 archival inkjet prints and one two-channel video piece, representing the artists three-year exploration into narrative forms in image making. Using non-traditional approaches to photographic portraiture and experimental exhibition layout, the artist forms questions around themes of domesticity, lost youth, and American masculinity. Among these themes is an investigation into photographic issues, including the cultural role that photographs play in perpetuating, miming, and disrupting the facades of everyday life. …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Naming The Nameless: An Exploration Of Queer Poetry And Empowerment, Jesse Yelvington

2018 Award Winners

No abstract provided.