Threshold moves : a ritual poetry practice

Davies, N

Abstract

This thesis identifies and explores a practice of ritual poetry. Drawing on creative writing and embodied ritual practice, as well as theory from poetry, performance and anthropology, I form new theoretical and practical understandings of a field of ritual poetry. The thesis is driven by and composed of original creative works of ritual poetry in text, performance and poetics. I make a contextual-historical survey and readings of a selection of contemporary poets, particularly the works of Jerome Rothenberg, Maggie O’Sullivan and several other poets who experiment with ritual, as well as performance theorists and practitioners. I draw on this field and my creative experiments to form a novel methodology of practice-based research in poetry and poetics. The thesis includes a poetics, a culminating text oriented towards the making of future works of ritual poetry. Through this research, I propose that ritual poetry, as a dynamically embodied practice, re-vitalises the compositional and performative acts of poetic creation. Ritual poetry consists of compositional rites and manifestations of poems enacted amongst a community; poets also use ritual to intervene in the ethical-political sphere and as part of ongoing cycles of writing practice. In this process, a poet, and potentially their reader-listeners, undergo techniques of the material to explore, push at and move across thresholds. These techniques and processes heighten corporeal awareness and change the way readers, listeners and poetry practitioners experience the material world. In the liminal experience which ritual poetry opens up, a poet-ritualist becomes sensitised and newly aware of their embodied ecologies and relationships, so that emergence and poesis are possible. This thesis is a discovery of the transformation possible in the join between embodied ritual practice and poetic art and writing.

Citation

Davies, N. (2021). Threshold moves : a ritual poetry practice. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 9, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 5, 2025
• Award Date: Jun 4, 2021