Breathing in Stormy Seasons

Abstract

• Research Background Kevin Brophy uses T. S. Eliot’s account of translating a prose poem (Eliot 1975 qtd in Brophy 2002) to make a case for the form as a medium for creative inquiry. He elaborates its cultural and literary historiography, describing it as ‘a brief and brilliant aphoristic flare in the general darkness’, akin to philosophy (2002). While Eliot observes that the prose poem’s ‘arrangement of imagery requires just as much fundamental brainwork as the arrangement of an argument’ (1975), Brophy sets out to show how the writing of a prose poem ‘moves by feel’ (2002). His work underpins a new generation of investigators interested in the form, including the members of the International Prose Poetry project (Atherton, Bullock, Crawford, Munden, Shane Strange, Webb, 2015).

• Research Contribution The claims of this work lie in the realm of engagement with the elusivity and viscera of being, and the interplay between them: an act of ‘bearing witness’ (Webb 2012, 8). I argue for the prose poem as way of capturing the momentary experience of being in time and space: the confrontation between the shock of materiality and imaginative or emotional apprehension. Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is the point of reference for everything we experience (1945/2012). As I show, this is doubly so for the female body, which, as Franks points out, remains ‘a contested space’ (2016).

• Research Significance Developed from an IPS Institute research project (UCan). Some poems were previously published in anthologies: Pulse (2016) and Tract (2017), and Special Issue 46, Text Journal (2017).

• Works Cited Brophy, K. 2002. The prose poem. TEXT Journal 6.1 April 2002. Eliot, T. S. 1975. Selected Prose. Faber and Faber. Franks, R. 2016. A woman’s place. TEXT Journal Special Issue 34: Writing and illustrating interdisciplinary research. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945/2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge. Webb, J. 2012. Seeing, doing, knowing. TEXT Journal Issue 13.