Abstract
This thesis charts the development of my poetics through the writing of a prose poetry collection on the theme of the North. The practice-led research has as its focus the role of prose poetry in responding to place. It seeks to challenge my prior understanding of more traditional, poetic forms by creating work that sits between poetry and prose, in a hybrid space suited to exploring ‘northernness’. In terms of poetics, this thesis aims to extend the reach of the prose poetry form by using ekphrasis and cross-art form practice to represent place and space. My work draws on the disciplines of architecture, cartography and photography to enable me to formulate a multi-disciplinary approach to creative practice and develop a richer understanding of how to represent place in prose poetry. I argue that the prose poetry form, with its qualities of hybridity and indeterminacy, is an ideal vehicle for exploring the instability of place and I explore whether the form itself has helped shape the way that the North is portrayed in my writing. By using the methodology of walking, the research moves away from initial ideas of place as being rooted to particular location, placing prose poetry within the context of new developments in psychogeography and and the idea of the female writer as a flâneuse. I demonstrate how I have contextualised my prose poetry at the cutting edge of contemporary eco-poetics, and explore whether it is possible to forge a new understanding of a poetic relationship with the environment, appropriate to the Anthropocene age, where the human and more than-human are in a state of balanced reciprocity.