Poetry Commons^™

Grieving And Attentiveness: Perception As Flourishing In Ocean Vuong And Mary Oliver, Madison Smith

Papers

The paper argues that poets Ocean Vuong and Mary Oliver treat grief as something formative to one's life and character rather than purely destructive; through their suffering, the subject has the opportunity to cultivate a sense of attentiveness that transforms perceptions of the self, others, history, and the natural world.

This project was an output for The Belmont Formation Scholars Cohort for Character Research and Writing, which received generous support funding from The Kern Family Foundation.

I gratefully acknowledge peer review feedback on this project, and I am accountable for writing of this product without generative AI and in alignment …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Caladrius: Creating A Playable Game Via A Multimedia Experience, Isabelle Morgan Brookshire

Whittier Scholars Program

Caladrius: Creating a Playable Game via a Multimedia Experience hones in on making an experience through different forms of media to represent a game. If this project was fully funded and done, it would be a video game on Steam with an art exhibition, small poetry book, and novel accompanied with it. It would even have a show, a soundtrack, and merch. But at this level, it was to make an experience for my audience that they could experience whether or not they enjoyed video games as a concept. I wanted them to enjoy 'playing' within a physical exhibition and …

After The Morning Light, Fiona Candland

English Honors Projects

One fall morning, Clarice, a woman in her mid-twenties, is getting ready for the day when she finds a black ground beetle crawling along her bedroom wall. The beetle consumes her, and throughout the day, Clarice undergoes a metamorphosis. Rendered in poetry and prose, After the Morning Light explores the cultivation of a self, questions the boundaries between humans and their environment, and portrays the fragile relationship between women and the act of being seen.

The Illusion Of Absence, Abraham K. Ali

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Illusion of Absence is a collection of thirty poems with a critical introduction that examines the poetic legacy of paternal absence and the reconfiguration of family in Africa and diasporic narratives. I grew up in Nigeria without my father. His absence has shaped my understanding of love, silence, manhood, and home. This manuscript is an exploration of the lasting legacy of my father’s absence and its place within an exploration of masculinity within the broader context of the African and diasporic experience. My mother became the focal point within the home as she brought cohesion and unity within the …

Constellate, Liz Fisher, Elizabeth Fisher

Past Student Achievement Day Conference Posters and Presentations

Chapbook of original poetry and prose, including select translations by Elizabeth Fisher.

Belmont Literary Journal Launch Event, Jason J. Riley Iv, Audrey Blake, Darwin Canales, Claire Carrillo, Abigail Coe, James Derryberry, Istbra Elmi, Bevan Johnson, Ava Lange, Keira Naab, Bailey Passarelli, Ava Rowland, Leticia Schueth, Samuel Shepley, Margaret Simpkins, Owen Tarro

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Join the Belmont Literary Journal in celebrating the launch of their online publication! This presentation will include insights from the journal’s staff, selected readings from the poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction categories, refreshments, and time to connect with Belmont’s diverse creative community.

Poems By Nursing Students, Anonymous, A. Jann Davis, L M. A, Larry Atkins

Documents

A series of four poems presumed to be authored by nursing students in approximately the 1980s on themes related to mortality and grief.

The first poem "Thoughts of a Dying Person" is written by an anonymous author whose speaker questions the things in life they would do differently if they had more time. Its form is more prose like than the others in the document and could be considered flash fiction or prose poetry but seems to fit the poetic category more through the usage of a triangular shaping of the poem.

The second poem, an untitled piece by A. …

Remain: An Exhibit By L. Renee Downtown Library, L. Renée

Artist Residency Exhibit

This PDF includes a portion of 2026 WVU Art in the Library and West Virginia and Regional History Center Mountain Artist in Residence, L. Renée's resulting works.

Remain is an interdisciplinary poetry project by L. Renee, the West Virginia University Libraries' 2.02.6 Mountain Artist in Resident. Developed in collaboration with the West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC), this exhibit serves as a poetic activation of archival records concerning mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. Through the residency, L. Renee accessed the environmental, geological, and community archives. In her work, she examines the endurance of both human and non-human life following …

Totality: An Eclipse, Cassidy E. Haines

Student Publications

The title of this collection, Totality: An Eclipse, and the titles of each of its three sections (“First Contact,” “Second Contact,” and “Third Contact”) combine to help illustrate my experience with grief as a solar eclipse: totality is the maximum phase of a total solar eclipse; first contact is when the sun just begins to disappear in the sky; second contact is when there is complete darkness in the sky; and third contact is when daylight finally returns. I began this project in the months after my father died in December 2024, following a terminal cancer diagnosis. Then, my mother …

Liberty, Madeline Hutchinson

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

No abstract provided.

What Survives, Speaks, Olivia Parmerlee

Honors Projects

Poetry collection and reflective essay that consists of a traumatic event (sexual assault) and shows the healing journey. The emphasized themes are resiliency, processing, and community-building. Healing is not linear, nor is it always beautiful. The reflective essay explains the academic and theoretical context that the collection is built on. From the invisible frameworks of patriarchy and gender roles to Audre Lorde, whose rhetoric served as an incredible inspiration to this project. The poetry collection sits at an intersection of the writers academic, professional, and creative work, with additional inspiration being derived from her volunteer work with sexual assault survivors.

To My Queer Siblings, Finley W. Snyder

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

In the last year or so I've been thinking a lot about the promise of freedom and what it means to live in a "free country" particularly around issues of how freedom of speech is used and often abused in our society. Considering the theme of "voice of freedom" I wanted to explore how speech could both strengthen and weaken freedom. This poem is my attempt to explore the messy realities of freedom and speech and express a glimmer of hope for the future.

Watching The Screen, Sarah Thul

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

Inspired by the news today, hopefully it will inspire people to stand up and fight together.

Queer Okayness & The Modernist Influence: A New Form Of Queer Poetics In Ocean Vuong’S Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Sophia Behnke

Audre Lorde Prize

This paper analyzes poems from Ocean Vuong's 2016 debut collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, as a contemporary evolution of queer modernist poetics from the early twentieth century. Using conceptual frameworks from Sara Ahmed and Audre Lorde, the author argues for the cultural power of poetics as an inherently queer art form which artists are constantly redefining. By studying how prominent lesbian and queer modernists disrupted heteronormative ideals through non-conformist poetic strategies, the author develops a comparison to Vuong's work as a contemporary queer poet who both draws from past forms and develops a more nuanced understanding of queerness …

Profound And Absurd Poems By E. Stewart Saunders, E. Stewart Saunders

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

A collection of poems written between 2020 and 2026

The Survival, Blue Pencil Club

Documents

The Survival Magazine-as stated at the beginning, "Into this magazine was to go something from the pen of each member-something of her own choice..."

Breath Back, Bronte Alston

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Breath Back is a collection of poems written throughout the first 18 months of a doctoral study based in the petro-state of Western Australia. As a Wadjela (non-Indigenous) climate justice activist-researcher, Alston adopts poetic autoethnography as an embodied, intuitive praxis to critically and reflexively examine limitations, positionality, power, privilege, and voice throughout their research process. This collection is deeply intertwined with Alston’s deepening connection to Country, specifically through the seasonal cycles of Wardandi Noongar Boodja (Country) in south-west Western Australia.

Universal Songs: Poems By Darrell Grayson, Darrell Grayson

Darrell Grayson Creative Writings

Collection of poems by Darrell Grayson, with an introduction by Esther Brown.

A Kaleidoscope Of Sentiments, Emily Hartman

English Senior Capstone

This is a Creative Writing portfolio with many different genres and themes.

Poetry Reading: New & Original Poetry From The Craft Of Poetry Class (Section 2), Cara Dees, Luke Bouchard, Holden Cessna, Istabra Elmi, Annie Rose Berndt, Jackie Oram, Hattan Mongtomery, Claire Carillo, Maggie Cleve

SPARK Symposium Presentations

In this luminous poetry reading, students from "English 3420: Craft of Poetry" will perform their own poetry that they have written throughout this semester. They have worked hard to originate, craft, and revise these poignant poems, which provide timeless and timely representations of beauty, love, pain, and hope.

Poetry & Fiction Reading By The Students Of "Introduction To Creative Writing", Cara Dees, Melat Molla, Dani Cox, Ava Armstrong, London Johnson, Evelyn Kelley

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This poetry and fiction reading features several student presenters from "English 2430: Introduction to Creative Writing," many of whom are performing their creative work to a live audience for the first time. Whether through poetry or prose, these students' inventive use of language and storytelling will hook you from beginning to end.

Sky, Atreyee Majumder

Articles

A peer-reviewed ethnographic poem, it is a reflection on the travel of the soul across time and in and out of bodies, a theory that is well regarded in the corpus of Hindu philosophy. Formally, the poem is an attempt to excavate the skeleton of the Indian poet/scholar/translator A K Ramanujan's poem Chicago Zen.

Day In The Life Of A Labor And Delivery Nurse, Jordyn Roel

Honors Projects

"Day in the Life: Labor & Delivery Nurse," explores the profound duality of labor and delivery from a nurse’s perspective. It will honor the sacred role of the labor and delivery (L&D) nurse, whose hands both welcome new life into the world and comfort those facing the unimaginable pain of loss. This piece aims to offer a deeply human and empathetic portrayal of the realities of this field, showcasing both the breathtaking beauty of birth and the profound grief of natal loss.

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

Student Publications

Creative writing set of three poetry pieces

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 …

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 …

Feels Like Home, Qamar Bazar

Publications and Research

Feels Like Home is a personal poem about what home means and how it lives in our memories, culture, and the people we love, even when the physical place feels far or out of reach. With everything happening around the world, especially in places like Gaza and across Palestine, this poem is a reminder that home is something we carry in our language, our food, our traditions, and our stories. It explores themes of identity, belonging, and what it feels like to be rooted in a place you may not always get to return to. I wanted this piece to …