Ruralia

Abstract

Ruralia is a collection of original lyric poetry written to explore the feelings of longing and displacement that underscore my relationship to my prairie home. The collection draws on contemporary poetics and theory related to nostalgia, the lyric, the liminal, and the uncanny to examine the speakers’ continued attempts to define and attain a sense of “home” amid recurring transition and loss. Read as a regionalist work, Ruralia best aligns with the contemporary post-prairie poetic movement, which is characterized, in part, by its urban settings, location-based anxiety, and an absence of pastoral landscapes typical of traditional prairie poetry.