Project Introduction and Initial Plan
Aims and Objectives:
This self-directed project will explore the emotional impact of transience and human connection through creative storytelling and poetic narrative. My aim is to work using various media.
The objective is to create a multi-format creative piece (possibly combining poetry, reflective essays, and visual elements) that allows me to process lived experience while also offering space for readers to engage with themes of attachment, loss, transformation, and identity. I also want to explore how moments of emotional vulnerability can become sites of creative strength and philosophical reflection.
Starting Point:
The starting point for this work is deeply practical, rooted in the lived experiences I documented during my recent travels. My personal journal and poetic reflections will act as both source material and structure, providing an authentic foundation.
However, it will also require contextual research into other artists who deal with similar topics: those whose works blend narrative, memory, and emotion to tell deeply human stories. This will enable me to broaden my perspective and explore various media and formats for presenting my own work.
Main Research Areas:
Within the context of my practice, I’m focusing on:
- Emotional geography: how places and people become tied to memory and self-worth.
- Narrative honesty and confessional style: with careful attention to tone and form.
- Poetic narrative and visual storytelling: experimenting with how layout and voice shift meaning.
- Sustainable creativity: How to maintain a creative practice during moments of personal turbulence.
From 2.1 Relations, the idea of connection and disconnection in a fragmented world is especially relevant. From a 2.2 Perspective, my practice has been concerned with voice, vulnerability, and perception, exploring how perspective defines both the artist and the audience.
Exploring New Ways of Seeing:
Yes, my work aims to explore a more emotionally open way of seeing the world, where emotional exposure is not a weakness but a point of contact. I aim to demonstrate how profound sensitivity and introspection can yield profound insights and art.
Creative artists who give context to this work include:
- Aesop – Anthropomorphic storytelling and philosophical narrative.
- Homer – especially The Odyssey, as a foundational myth of journey, identity, and return: how a journey shapes your character.
- Stephen Fry – through Mythos, Heroes, and Troy, bringing classical myths into contemporary reflection.
- C.P. Cavafy – especially Ithaca, for poetic philosophy about longing, journey, and internal growth.
- Nikos Kavadias – Greek poet of the sea, longing, exile, and nostalgia; deeply personal influence for your travel and emotional themes.
- Xu Zhimo – particularly Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again, for his lyrical, restrained expression of memory, beauty, and farewell.
- Moniza Alvi – especially The She-Cell, for exploring feminine vulnerability, identity, and quiet power.
Audience:
Beyond my tutor and peers, I hope to reach readers of literary journals, curators of interdisciplinary exhibitions, or publishers interested in hybrid narrative work. I’m especially interested in emotionally attuned audiences who are open to introspective, cross-genre storytelling based on life experiences.
Knowing this audience helps shape the tone: I aim for a measured vulnerability, a poetic honesty that can move and provoke thought without becoming indulgent. This means maintaining clarity of voice and resisting the urge to explain too much, allowing silence and ambiguity to play their role. More than anything, I’m looking for connection and a sense of identification.
Situating My Practice:
My creative practice is deeply intertwined with my perspective as a sensitive observer: someone navigating emotional spaces in real time. I write from the threshold between personal and universal, between silence and speech.
To articulate this clearly, I need to:
- Edit with care, removing excess emotion while retaining depth
- Consider typography and layout as expressive tools
- Use poetic constraints (repetition, negative space, refrains) to emphasise emotional rhythms
- Maintain a reflective journal alongside my creative work to remain grounded in intention
This project is not only a creative output but also a process of self-understanding and refinement. While I hold a vision, I remain open to shifts that will emerge as I deepen the work.
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