Willo Drummond is a PhD candidate and tutor in creative writing at Macquarie University, and a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. Her 2014 Master of Research thesis examined the ethics of the lyric mode in Australian ecopoetics, a project which included a small suite of original poetry in tandem with a consideration of the work of Robert Adamson. Her current research considers the notebook practices of US poet Denise Levertov from Extended Mind perspectives.
A poetry reader for Overland Literary Journal, Willo has had poetry and short fiction published in Cordite, Meniscus, The Quarry, Australian Poetry Anthology 2015, Mascara Literary Review, Bukker Tillibul and the US based little magazine, Yellowfield. Further publication/research details: www.willodrummond.com Supervisors: Marcelle Freiman and Rebecca Giggs
This Master of Research thesis draws on the recent shift in the understanding of lyric in literar... more This Master of Research thesis draws on the recent shift in the understanding of lyric in literary-ethical discourse to make a claim for lyric poetry as ethical ecopoetry. Representing Milech and Schilo's "research-question model" for the creative thesis, it asks: to what extent is it possible to maintain an ethical, eco-centric poetics whilst writing in the lyric mode? It then explores this question via two research pathways: critical inquiry, including textual analysis of the work of Australian poet Robert Adamson, and creative writing practice, in the form of a collection of lyric poems: 'Propagules for drift and dispersal'.
Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry - with its emphasis on ecocentrism and humility toward the non-human world - has come to hinge on a distancing from a ‘Romantic’, ‘ego-driven’ style of poetry, seen to be unethical. Such positions problematize lyric, given its strong association with both Romanticism and the formal centrality of the textual ‘I’. This thesis contends however, that lyric has become conflated with a reductive view of Romanticism and seeks to uncouple lyric from such views. Instead, framing lyric as a mode rather than a genre, and as performative, this thesis presents lyric poetry as an engaged type of ethical discourse which functions via reader answerability. Drawing on phenomenology, extended mind theory, and ‘innovative’ contemporary poetics, it concludes that the lyric can function as a decidedly ethical ecopoetry, via both its material and dialectic performativity: that indeed the “place” of lyric, can also be the place of the ecopoetic.
TEXT Special Issue Series No. 41, Romanticism and Contemporary Australian Writing: Legacies and Resistances Edited by Stephanie Green and Paul Hetherington
Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry has come to hinge... more Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry has come to hinge on a distancing from a 'Romantic', 'ego-driven' style of poetry, seen to be unethical. Such positions problematize lyric poetry, given its strong association with both Romanticism and the formal centrality of the self. This paper contends that lyric is often conflated with a reductive view of Romanticism and seeks to uncouple the form from such views. Looking to the work of Australian poet Robert Adamson, lyric is framed here as a performative mode rather than a genre, and is presented as an engaged type of ethical discourse which functions via reader answerability. Maintaining a Merleau-Pontean ontology as regards the lyric subject and the dynamic between word and world, and drawing upon Barthes's use of the term 'place', the paper concludes that the lyric can function as a decidedly ethical ecopoetry, in which the place of lyric is also the place of the ecopoetic.
“Moon Wrasse” arises from my PhD research into The Extended Mind and creative writing practice. E... more “Moon Wrasse” arises from my PhD research into The Extended Mind and creative writing practice. Extended mind style arguments frame words as material vehicles with which we engage in bodily acts of manipulation constitutive of cognition. “In constructing a poem” writes Andy Clark, “we do not simply use words to express thoughts. Rather it is often the properties of the words (their structure and cadence) that determine the thoughts that the poem comes to express” (Being There, 208). The poem emerges from an attempt to write the unknowable-unsayable (Hetherington, Sotto, September 2013). Although there is an increasing amount of literature on the Trans* experience, there remains little on the experience of trans-partners, particularly on the experience of lesbian/bi/queer partners who now find their identity redefined, rewritten. In the liminal space of transition, it can take time to find the words to frame the experience of arrival. Attempts are made and abandoned in the notebook: it seems the experience can neither be spoke nor sung. How do you speak your experience of an emerging masculinity that is not your own? Eventually however, lines accrete, ‘meaning’ coheres: words offer up a “language-bridge” (Hetherington), and a poem (like a partner) is born.
This Master of Research thesis draws on the recent shift in the understanding of lyric in literar... more This Master of Research thesis draws on the recent shift in the understanding of lyric in literary-ethical discourse to make a claim for lyric poetry as ethical ecopoetry. Representing Milech and Schilo's "research-question model" for the creative thesis, it asks: to what extent is it possible to maintain an ethical, eco-centric poetics whilst writing in the lyric mode? It then explores this question via two research pathways: critical inquiry, including textual analysis of the work of Australian poet Robert Adamson, and creative writing practice, in the form of a collection of lyric poems: 'Propagules for drift and dispersal'.
Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry - with its emphasis on ecocentrism and humility toward the non-human world - has come to hinge on a distancing from a ‘Romantic’, ‘ego-driven’ style of poetry, seen to be unethical. Such positions problematize lyric, given its strong association with both Romanticism and the formal centrality of the textual ‘I’. This thesis contends however, that lyric has become conflated with a reductive view of Romanticism and seeks to uncouple lyric from such views. Instead, framing lyric as a mode rather than a genre, and as performative, this thesis presents lyric poetry as an engaged type of ethical discourse which functions via reader answerability. Drawing on phenomenology, extended mind theory, and ‘innovative’ contemporary poetics, it concludes that the lyric can function as a decidedly ethical ecopoetry, via both its material and dialectic performativity: that indeed the “place” of lyric, can also be the place of the ecopoetic.
TEXT Special Issue Series No. 41, Romanticism and Contemporary Australian Writing: Legacies and Resistances Edited by Stephanie Green and Paul Hetherington
Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry has come to hinge... more Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry has come to hinge on a distancing from a 'Romantic', 'ego-driven' style of poetry, seen to be unethical. Such positions problematize lyric poetry, given its strong association with both Romanticism and the formal centrality of the self. This paper contends that lyric is often conflated with a reductive view of Romanticism and seeks to uncouple the form from such views. Looking to the work of Australian poet Robert Adamson, lyric is framed here as a performative mode rather than a genre, and is presented as an engaged type of ethical discourse which functions via reader answerability. Maintaining a Merleau-Pontean ontology as regards the lyric subject and the dynamic between word and world, and drawing upon Barthes's use of the term 'place', the paper concludes that the lyric can function as a decidedly ethical ecopoetry, in which the place of lyric is also the place of the ecopoetic.
“Moon Wrasse” arises from my PhD research into The Extended Mind and creative writing practice. E... more “Moon Wrasse” arises from my PhD research into The Extended Mind and creative writing practice. Extended mind style arguments frame words as material vehicles with which we engage in bodily acts of manipulation constitutive of cognition. “In constructing a poem” writes Andy Clark, “we do not simply use words to express thoughts. Rather it is often the properties of the words (their structure and cadence) that determine the thoughts that the poem comes to express” (Being There, 208). The poem emerges from an attempt to write the unknowable-unsayable (Hetherington, Sotto, September 2013). Although there is an increasing amount of literature on the Trans* experience, there remains little on the experience of trans-partners, particularly on the experience of lesbian/bi/queer partners who now find their identity redefined, rewritten. In the liminal space of transition, it can take time to find the words to frame the experience of arrival. Attempts are made and abandoned in the notebook: it seems the experience can neither be spoke nor sung. How do you speak your experience of an emerging masculinity that is not your own? Eventually however, lines accrete, ‘meaning’ coheres: words offer up a “language-bridge” (Hetherington), and a poem (like a partner) is born.
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Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry - with its emphasis on ecocentrism and humility toward the non-human world - has come to hinge on a distancing from a ‘Romantic’, ‘ego-driven’ style of poetry, seen to be unethical. Such positions problematize lyric, given its strong association with both Romanticism and the formal centrality of the textual ‘I’. This thesis contends however, that lyric has become conflated with a reductive view of Romanticism and seeks to uncouple lyric from such views. Instead, framing lyric as a mode rather than a genre, and as performative, this thesis presents lyric poetry as an engaged type of ethical discourse which functions via reader answerability. Drawing on phenomenology, extended mind theory, and ‘innovative’ contemporary poetics, it concludes that the lyric can function as a decidedly ethical ecopoetry, via both its material and dialectic performativity: that indeed the “place” of lyric, can also be the place of the ecopoetic.
The poem emerges from an attempt to write the unknowable-unsayable (Hetherington, Sotto, September 2013). Although there is an increasing amount of literature on the Trans* experience, there remains little on the experience of trans-partners, particularly on the experience of lesbian/bi/queer partners who now find their identity redefined, rewritten. In the liminal space of transition, it can take time to find the words to frame the experience of arrival. Attempts are made and abandoned in the notebook: it seems the experience can neither be spoke nor sung. How do you speak your experience of an emerging masculinity that is not your own? Eventually however, lines accrete, ‘meaning’ coheres: words offer up a “language-bridge” (Hetherington), and a poem (like a partner) is born.
Although ecocriticism has roots in Romanticism, much discourse around ecopoetry - with its emphasis on ecocentrism and humility toward the non-human world - has come to hinge on a distancing from a ‘Romantic’, ‘ego-driven’ style of poetry, seen to be unethical. Such positions problematize lyric, given its strong association with both Romanticism and the formal centrality of the textual ‘I’. This thesis contends however, that lyric has become conflated with a reductive view of Romanticism and seeks to uncouple lyric from such views. Instead, framing lyric as a mode rather than a genre, and as performative, this thesis presents lyric poetry as an engaged type of ethical discourse which functions via reader answerability. Drawing on phenomenology, extended mind theory, and ‘innovative’ contemporary poetics, it concludes that the lyric can function as a decidedly ethical ecopoetry, via both its material and dialectic performativity: that indeed the “place” of lyric, can also be the place of the ecopoetic.
The poem emerges from an attempt to write the unknowable-unsayable (Hetherington, Sotto, September 2013). Although there is an increasing amount of literature on the Trans* experience, there remains little on the experience of trans-partners, particularly on the experience of lesbian/bi/queer partners who now find their identity redefined, rewritten. In the liminal space of transition, it can take time to find the words to frame the experience of arrival. Attempts are made and abandoned in the notebook: it seems the experience can neither be spoke nor sung. How do you speak your experience of an emerging masculinity that is not your own? Eventually however, lines accrete, ‘meaning’ coheres: words offer up a “language-bridge” (Hetherington), and a poem (like a partner) is born.