CREATIVE APPLICATIONS

Here I have included several pieces from my creative writing coursework, each of which appeared in chapbooks in some capacity. "Butter Tendons" was inspired by Gertrude Stein's "Objects" in Tender Buttons, which we read in Introduction to Creative Writing. "11,842" is the number of lakes in Minnesota that are at least 10 square acres in area, and also came out of the Intro class. The other four works were submitted in the Poetry as Art, Poetry as Politic(s) class, and were influenced by prompts applied to my experiences. "A lone     hike," in response to an assignment to experiment with spatial poems, seeks to capture the observations of several hikes I did by myself. "Sun-Daze" really has no deeper inspiration than the literal sun and the desire to capture the duality of science and art that I see in it. The Elegy piece was a reaction to a squirrel that drowned in my neighbor's pool, an event that troubled me much more deeply than I would expect - I had spent a lot of time observing the squirrels around my apartment from my porch. Finally, "Istilahi za Paje na Jambiani" was inspired by a prompt to experiment with dictionary form/ definitions in a poem - I focused on different aspects of my time doing research in Zanzibar.

Click on the image to view a pdf of each work.