Date of Award

Spring 2023

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

English Language and Literatures

First Advisor

Liz Countryman

Abstract

Nothing Overlaps was born out of an interest in how I experience and interact with memory, namely as an overwhelming force. Thinking about memory led to thinking about the other themes of this book including inherited memory, things being out of place, the power of looking, and, because of the speaker’s inability to escape memory, relooking.

As I was writing these poems, I found I was having a hard time letting go of truth for honestly, that my poems took themselves very seriously. Collage became a way for me to loosen up and let the moment of composition into the poem. Collage also allowed me to challenge my tone and became a way for me to find distance from my speaker— allowing me to be both the speaker and looking at the speaker—which allowed me a new level of honestly, particularly around topics to do with the body and illness, topics which I then began to investigate more directly in other poems. It also allowed me to look at language as object, as something accumulated, as similar to how I accumulated other objects. As I was putting the manuscript together, I became aware of how much doubling had entered my work, both in forms—you’ll notice an abundance of couplets—as well as in my images, but it feels appropriate that things should show up again and again, and that the reader should re-experience, should hear resonances, as they move through the book.

Rights

© 2023, Samantha Hope Liming

Available for download on Thursday, May 15, 2025

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