The 20th annual Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

“Shadow on the Horizon”: An Original Poetry Collection
Towsley Lecture Hall/Norris 101, 1:45 PM

Melissa  Bailey,   '09 30
   Major: English (Creative Writing)
   Hometown: Beaver Island, MI

Sponsor(s): Scott Hendrix
Support:  

Abstract: 
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main. —John Donne

No man is an island. But what if you were born and raised an only child on Beaver Island, a remote island community in northern Lake Michigan? My Honors thesis is a collection of original poetry that grapples with what it means to be a native “Islander” and with the definition of “island” itself. My poetry is not so much an explanation of island life as much as it is an exploration of the effects of isolation. Because, after all, if one has lived eighteen out of twenty-one years separated from the mainland by more than thirty-two miles of Great Lake, cut off from paved roads, fast food, convenient stores, and hospitals, it can be difficult to render the experience with any sort of believable objectivity. Objectivity forsaken then, my thesis attempts to reveal the way islands can swell beyond their geographical definitions and push their coastlines into our emotions and psyches. In meditating on the multiplicity of the meaning of “island(s),” we are left no choice but to question the personal borders we create to both protect ourselves and draw us close to each other.

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