Writing the Goddess.

Abstract

This thesis comprises a creative work, the manuscript of a book of poems, Goddess of Mercy, and an exegesis, A Further Existence, which explores the creative, aesthetic, philosophical and other ideas and inputs that went into writing the poems. Goddess is a collection of idylls of the electronic age, narratives, dramas, fictions and meditations. The poems are various in style and subject matter. The exegesis begins with the author's earliest remembered experiences of poetry, considers a wide range of poetries and goes some way to proposing an open poetic that allows a writer versatility in approach to subject matter and writing style. Poems can transcend their time and place to create a 'further existence' where temporality is irrelevant. A diverse range of poems are examined -- from ancient Babylonian to contemporary Australian -- to determine the aspects of a poem that take it beyond daily speech. The usefulness and limitations of theory are considered. The art's mystical dimensions are not easy to analyse but are still worth thinking about: the mysterious spark or talent for poetry, how and where a poem occurs, epiphanies, 'being in the zone' and when all the words come rushing at once. The persistence of poetry is noted: poetry still manifests itself in public life through newspapers, sport, pop music, radio commentary, television, and politics, as well as in everyday living. Poetry adapts to new environments like the internet. Conversely, events in the 'real world' influence poetic thought and writing as evidenced by the barrage of poems and publishing in response to the US invasion of Iraq. Some recent Australian poems are explored with regard to establishing contexts and areas of interest for the practice of poetry in the opening years of the twenty-first century, with a view to establishing the contexts in which the poems in Goddess exist and the world they address.