Date of Award
2022-05-01
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Creative Writing
Advisor(s)
Andrea Cote Botero
Abstract
The city as a distancing of people, a coming together of people, a coming apart and together of self, a series of spaces, a series of possibilities, a space of repairing, of disrupting, of disasters shared, of paths leading there and away, of always getting there but never arriving, of traveling through, of remaining in, of layers of beings and times and experiences, an imagined destination that never materializes fully, that keeps me moving towards it. Writing disaster is rupturing, tearing, digging past, speaking into, misunderstanding voices, losing, losing. Writing the quotidian is writing a desire for a life of tranquil repetition, familiar faces and spaces, coherent language, continuation and the comfort to begin again, a desire for the opposites of disaster, calamity, undoing. Writing cities for me is writing both disaster and daily. Writing cities for me is exploring belonging and asking if it is nearness, distance. If it is speaking, silence, language(s). If it is time with a person. If it is time in a place. If it is a daily comfort, routine. If it is a place claiming me, me claiming a place. If it is ways of moving in and through a crowd, a place. If it is people recognizing me and me recognizing them. A city is neighbors, strangers and near strangers, and my people, my ecosystem, in this exploration of city ranges from poets and writers to performance artists and theorists. They are Sara Uribe, Charles Baudelaire, and Renee Gladman. Also important are Gabrielle Civil, Cecilia Vicuña, CA Conrad, Eileen Myles, Margo Glantz, and Joe Brainard. Finally, I include Michel de Certeau, Italo Calvino, and Claudia Rankine.
Language
en
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Copyright Date
2022-05
File Size
92 p.
File Format
application/pdf
Rights Holder
Heidi Zeigler
Recommended Citation
Zeigler, Heidi, "A City Is How You Get There" (2022). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 3567.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/3567