Rosemarie Corlett
PhD English and Creative Writing
Email: rosemariecorlett@plymouth.ac.uk
Supervised by: Dr Miriam Darlington, Dr Min Wild and Professor Angela Smith
Thesis: Scars the Shape of Wings: Flightlessness, Superstition and Violence in the Story of the Great Auk
This practise-based project will investigate and analyse the conceptualisation of flightless birds, using the Great Auk as a framing device. Using both contemporary and traditional understandings of these creatures, the project will attempt to reimagine the flightless bird and its associated narratives through original poetry. In the course of this work I will be offering new and hitherto unconsidered ways to conceptualise the human relationship with flightless birds.
The thesis will seek to elucidate the themes that emerge from the study of flightless birds and to engender a dynamic dialogue between critical and creative work.
The themes that emerge will include flightless birds as commodities, prophets, adornments, mothers, monsters, literal objects of geopolitical