This PhD thesis is divided into two sections. The first section is comprised of a
reflective essay (of approximately 20,000 words) that seeks to explore the process of
creative practice which culminated in the second section, a collection of forty-four
poems titled Ark Shell.
The reflective essay aims to explore the manner in which poetry can interact
with and draw inspiration from archives; these archives come in many forms
including physical ruins, the UK census archive, the BBC archive and family
archives (both documentary and anecdotal). It also investigates the link between
poetic sequences and timelines, extrapolating from this to discuss ‘collection as
sequence’. Finally, it questions the manner in which a poem or poetry collection
itself can give a ‘second life’ to forgotten or marginalised archival material.
The collection of poems themselves contains two short narrative sequences
and two miscellanies. These miscellanies in turn contain sequences and groupings of
their own which I have consciously curated and encouraged.