Fromwards: wavering between beginnings

Kunial, Zaffar (2019) Fromwards: wavering between beginnings. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

In reflecting on my creative practice I’ve realised how much I search for beginnings, and how I waver before them, and between them, which provides some of the content and energy for my poems. The idea of a poem beginning before its beginning is something which I’ll consider in various ways. I have no set project I’m undertaking as a poet, but I do see that I’m returning to certain subjects, a central one being to find where I am coming from which seems to relate to a secondary concern of what has prompted a poem to begin, and where speech and language begins. I will explore how my poems dwell, often autobiographically, on divided beginnings – such as my parents being from different continents. The difficulty of beginning or of locating a beginning can create a dynamic, hesitant, in-between position, that does not seem adequately summed up in the word ‘liminality’. This PhD thesis will include my poetry as well as prose reflections about that poetry and the various interconnected ways in which the practice of my writing has involved what I call ‘wavering between beginnings’.