Cycling Grief: Repetition as Form in Elegiac Expression & The Rings From Your Fingers

<p dir="ltr">Through analysis of mourning verse and the creation on an original poetry cycle, this Master of Research thesis works to provide comprehensible shape to nebulous and overwhelming grief by examining the role repetition plays in expressing grief in poetic form. The exegesis, ‘Cycling Grief: Repetition as Form in Elegiac Expression’<b>, </b>exposes how repetition is paradoxical and inherently ambiguous, going beyond proffering shape to mourning experience and preserving both shock and the disorientation of sorrow by paralleling a griever’s spiraling mind. Elegiac examples, such as Alfred Tennyson’s <i>In Memoriam</i>, poems by his contemporaries, and modern iterations of elegies, show numerous patterns of repetition providing elegists with tools to best express their grief.</p><p dir="ltr">The creative praxis, <i>The Rings From Your Fingers, </i>is a collection of elegies using tools of repetition to examine my experience at the sudden death of a friend at the hands of her ex-partner. This poetry cycle provides me with both an outlet for cycling grief and a place to mould the expression of that grief. Repetition sits as the central idea in both structure and individual poetic form, demonstrating how repetition lends form to the mental chaos that loss and sorrow bring as well as functioning as a kind of un-form, giving an outlet to the obsessive cycles of the grieving mind.</p><p dir="ltr">* Please note: this thesis discusses both domestic abuse and intimate partner homicide.</p>