"Endlings"

Author:
Lawson, Emily, Creative Writing - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia
Advisors:
Spaar, Lisa, AS-Creative Writing, University of Virginia
Dove, Rita, AS-Creative Writing, University of Virginia
Orr, Gregory, University of Virginia
Abstract:

Our current moment, marked by mass extinction and apocalyptic imagination, demands poetic response. Adrienne Rich writes: “In a time of frontal assaults both on language and on human solidarity, poetry can remind us of all we are in danger of losing—disturb us, embolden us out of resignation.” What does it mean to witness the last of a kind? How should we approach daily life while, elsewhere, destruction is constant and imminent? These concerns with ephemerality and simultaneity meet in "Endlings," which juxtaposes spectral voices and environmental elegies. The project is situated between the ethereal and the real; it sets oneiric journeys alongside attempts to construct a secular interpretation of the notion of “afterlife” through phenomenology, dreams, and memory.

Degree:
MFA (Master of Fine Arts)
Keywords:
Poetry, Lyric, Ghosts, Extinction, Thylacine, Sonnet, Emily Lawson, Endangered, Lawson, Lyric Essay, Rooms, Collection, Elegy, Environmental
Language:
English
Rights:
All rights reserved (no additional license for public reuse)
Issued Date:
2020/04/14