Practicing place in Newfoundland poetry Mary Dalton, John Steffler, and Michael Crummey

Abstract

Practicing Place in Newfoundland Poetry: Mary Dalton, John Steffler, and Michael Crummey is an M. A. thesis that synthesizes the poetry of three poets with Michel de Certeau's cultural theory and interview material. This thesis offers a digest of existing scholarship on these poets as well as some of the existing work theorizing the uses of poetry. There is one chapter written on each poet drawing substantively on the poet's work, an interview conducted with the poet and other related scholarship. Dalton, Steffler and Crummey represent specific and energetic spaces within Newfoundland. They conduct this energy into language using metaphorical thinking. Mary Dalton conducts the energy of dialect into her poetry. John Steffler is transmitting the energy of the natural world into poetry. Michael Crummey's poetry conducts energy to his readers from the emotional landscape of the Newfoundland his parents grew up in.