"Things remembered, forgotten" : a collection of poetry, memory and poetic practice in selected works of H.D

• Main Author: Ritch, Olive M.
• Published: University of Aberdeen 2014
• Subjects: 811; Memory
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.629408

The primary element of my thesis is the sequence of poems, which engages with the theme of memory in regard to the way remembering and forgetting offers both linguistic possibility and limitation; a sequence focusing on a woman's experience of dementia, and informed by a professional background in social work as well as my reading of H.D.'s major works. In the latter, I trace the significance of memory and its relationship to poetic creativity. Consideration of this relationship is explored in the secondary, critical component with regard to the influence of Sigmund Freud's theories on H.D.'s poetry. In Chapter One I refer to his dream techniques, condensation and displacement, and probe the way in which an understanding of Freud's methodology in relation to the reading of the dream-text also illuminates the reading of H.D.'s imagist poetry in terms of both being condensed versions of something that grows in size when analysed. Thus, I show that H.D.'s poetic practice requires her reader to make associations as well as connections between inner and outer realities as a means of revealing what is concealed. The focus on Freud's influence continues in Chapter Two with reference to H.D.'s long poem, Helen in Egypt, especially in relation to the examination of the way in which the poet engages with his psychoanalytic theories on the recovery of memories. Furthermore, H.D.'s revision of the Helen of Troy myth provides a means of exploring feminine subjectivity as Helen seeks self-knowledge through the discovery of her different selves; her quest, moreover, reflects the gradual process of remembering what had hitherto been forgotten. This paradox is also important to my own creative work and H.D.'s elucidation of the unconscious has informed my sequence of poems, Returns of the Past. In Chapter Three, I trace my own poetic development and practice with regard to inhabiting poetry for many years.