Autobiography of bone : an original cycle of dramatic poems researching the problematics of reconceptualisation of the formal boundaries between the genres of poetry and drama.

Abstract

Autobiography of Bone consists of a cycle of original dramatic poems and short poetic dramas which investigate the problematics of a reconceptualisation of the genre-based distinctions between poetry and drama. The work seeks to extend and then map the new territory revealed to me as a result of my experiments with form, and with the consequences that new forms have for content and meaning. The material in the cycle of poems presents and explores a multi-layered and wide-ranging, rather than unitary, response to issues of the body (specifically disability), memory and language. A concluding scholarly essay, “Orthopaedia” – Understanding the Writing Practice”, researches some of the theoretical and conceptual issues that informed the poems, including the influence of verse drama and the contemporary long poem, in an attempt to construct an archaeology of the writing process and the imagination of the writer.