Matrescence

Abstract

This thesis is a poetry manuscript that circles around the concept of lexical gaps in our language: words that we should have but currently lack. I am particularly interested in writing into those gaps from the perspective of womanhood and gender. The title of this thesis, Matrescence, refers to a defunct anthropological term for the developmental and psychological process of becoming a mother, a process that happens not instantly at birth but instead over time. The poems explore this idea of naming and describing processes that are assumed to be innate and natural for women. Two sequence poems anchor the manuscript, both written in conversation with important women in literary history: mystic Julian of Norwich, the first woman known to write a book in the English language, and the Bronte sisters. In writing these sequences, I am thinking about questions of access and voice: who speaks, and when, and how—and how the way we are allowed to speak informs what we are able to articulate.