Cutting matters: collage poetics and politics in feminist experimental poetry

Merrydew, Aimee Jade

Abstract

Despite the increasing prevalence of collage experiments by feminist poets since the twenty-first century, the use of such methods to shape feminist politics in poetry has not been widely researched. The limited research on collage aesthetics often prioritises thematic analysis of work by male artists and writers. This thesis expands collage scholarship by focusing on three interconnected feminist poets who occupy marginal(ised) positions in American literary studies: Dodie Bellamy, Anne Waldman, and kari edwards. Applying formalist literary analysis, the thesis examines the compositional strategies through which the poets perform feminist politics in their texts. Each chapter considers the opportunities and challenges that emerge from collage experiments. Chapter One reviews and compares the poets’ oeuvres to establish the significance of collage methods on their creative practices. This comparative analysis reveals not only the similarities and differences between the poets, but also the surprising influence of William S. Burroughs’ cut-up project on their work. The poets develop Burroughs’ cut-up methods for various, yet interrelated, feminist purposes, which are explored in the subsequent chapters. Chapter Two examines Bellamy’s adaptation of Burroughs’ cut-up procedures to disrupt patriarchal boundaries of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in Western literature and society in two cut-up collections. Chapter Three investigates Waldman’s use of Burroughsian inspired montage methods in The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (2011) to subvert linguistic techniques that control perceptions of war. Burroughs’ creative influence reemerges in Chapter Four, which analyses edwards’ use of cut-and-paste techniques in dôNrm’-lä-püsl (2017) to challenge linguistic and material violence against people who transcended gender norms throughout history. My formalist analysis in the chapters is underpinned by feminist, queer, and trans* theories, as well as collage scholarship and my own autotheoretically informed reflections, to offer a foundation for procedurally based examinations of collage methods in feminist experimental poetry.

Citation

Merrydew, A. J. Cutting matters: collage poetics and politics in feminist experimental poetry. (Thesis). Keele University. https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/1109501

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Mar 20, 2025
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/1109501
• Additional Information: Embargo on full text access until 15 July 2030 - The thesis is due for publication, or the author is actively seeking to publish this material.
• Award Date: 2025-03