Abstract
My creative component explores my father’s journal, reports and photographs from 1966-1967, during which time he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. Some of the poems move back in time, as I study my family history as it relates to masculinity, violence, American militarism, patriotism and coming of age. These poems consider the role of art in wartime as well as the female body, the male gaze and violence against women.The critical component analyses Ciaran Carson’s Forward Prize-winning book, Breaking News. In the introduction, I ground my study in the theory of intertextuality, the relationship between war reportage and poetry, and Carson’s approaches to translation. I invent the term ‘fused poem’ and apply it to Carson’s use of William Howard Russell’s war reportage. In the first chapter, I explore stylistic fusion in ‘The War Correspondent’ and ‘The Indian Mutiny’, analyzing rhyme and the lyric ‘I’ in order to show the antiphonal relationship between Carson and Russell. In the second chapter, I investigate cultural and contextual fusion in Breaking News, highlighting the Belfast-Crimea relationship. In the appendices, I attempt a word-for-word comparison between Carson’s poems and key passages by Russell, which allows me to perform close readings and will be a resource for future scholars.
Thesis embargoed until 31st July 2028
| Date of Award | Jul 2023 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Sponsors | Queen's University Belfast & Oberlin College |
| Supervisor | Gail McConnell (Supervisor), Fran Brearton (Supervisor) & Stephen Sexton (Supervisor) |
Keywords
- Intertextuality
- Fused Poem
- Archival Poetics
- War Reportage
- Conscientious Objection
- American Poetry
- Irish Poetry
- Ciaran Carson
- Breaking News
- Feminism
- Archive
- Ekphrasis
- Documentary Poetics
- Docupoetics
- War Poetry