What You Brought with You: A collection of poems accompanied by a contextualising exegesis

What You Brought with You is a collection of free verse poems accompanied by a contextualising exegesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of English (Creative Writing) at the University of Leicester. The poems in the collection seek to examine familiar subjects through a humorous, sideways glance at the situation. They aim to approach the material with a light touch. Each poem attempts to reveal quirky and interesting elements in ordinariness. Employing quotidian subject matter, content and speech results in accessible, relevant poetry that attempts to examine social mores, behaviour and ideas. Following on from the collection the exegesis is divided into four chapters. The guiding democratic principles of accessibility and specificity permeate the entire text. The first chapter examines the technical role of poetic closure in the successful delivery of a poem. By likening the poem to a joke, the chapter argues that the all-important poetic payoff is achieved through careful setup. The second chapter focuses on content within the poems and looks at on the role of ekphrasis both as an inspiration for particular poems within the collection and in the development of the wider poetic. Building on the tradition of utilising life experience as art material, this chapter examines the fundamental importance of one’s personal involvement in reality in the process of shaping poetic intentions. The third chapter explores the particular use of tangible objects within the poems, and examines the disposable and ordinary nature of these articles and finds a triangular link between ideas, people and objects. The fourth chapter looks at quotidian speech and notes how the poems are structured along familiar speech patterns and how these patterns influence the content, sound and visual appearance of the poems. The exegesis concludes that these technical and content-based decisions are fundamental ingredients in the creation of a culturally relevant dialogical poetry.