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Date Available
12-1-2080
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
MFA in Creative Writing
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
English
Faculty
Crystal Wilkinson
Faculty
Andrew Milward
Abstract
Common Wealth is a collection of poetry that examines inheritance, labor, and survival through the lens of Appalachian, queer, and working‑class experience. The work interrogates competing definitions of wealth, while resisting narratives shaped by extraction and scarcity. These poems move between public crisis and intimate witness, guiding the reader from collective reckoning toward relational care and artistic responsibility. Formal strategies include contrapuntal structures, visual poetics, ars poeticas, and digital elements, all of which enact fragmentation, pressure, and the struggle toward true connection. Recurring metaphors of jars, preservation, canning, and excavation frame art‑making as an act of ethical attention: a practice of holding, naming, and sustaining.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.185
Archival?
Archival
Recommended Citation
Ratcliffe, Samantha, "Common Wealth" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--English. 206.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/206
Included in
Appalachian Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Poetry Commons, Queer Studies Commons
