White Space as Mpanelanelana: Developing the Poetics of Liminality

A mpanelanelana (from the Malagasy word anelanelana, meaning 'between') is a go-between, catalyst or spiritual medium in Madagascar. Liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning 'threshold') is a term emerging from anthropological discourse, but now used across disciplines when discussing in-between states or spaces. Through creative practice, teaching practice and critical analysis in an intercultural and interlinguistic context, this project explores the significance of liminality in our apprehension of the 'poetic' and in the writing, reading and criticism of poetry. Research time will be divided between spells in the UK and in Madagascar, both outside and inside the Academy (in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and in the English Department at the University of Antananarivo).

The creative thesis offers a lyric voice of fragments, traces and 'code-switching' between the English and Malagasy languages; inspired by techniques in contemporary Western painting and poetry - and by a form of communication via negative space that is omnipresent in Madagascar. There is an exploration of liminal poetics at a technical level, therefore, through experimentation with poetic form. At the same time, this component takes liminality in its myriad forms as a central concern thematically: how an atmosphere of 'low-intensity conflict' may be experienced with the senses; the role of silk in mediating relations between the living and the dead in Madagascar; ways of loving and expressing anger in different cultural contexts; the colouring of chameleons and camouflage as a concept; the behaviour of birds inside the eye of a cyclone; trespass, land tenure and notions of otherness on an island where most people never see the sea, etc.

The critical component engages with the work of Western critics and theorists like Craig Dworkin, Glyn Maxwell and Gaston Bachelard - and with the work of Malagasy critics and theorists like Elie Rajaonarison, Serge Henri Rodin and Hemerson Andrianetrazafy. It examines the creative work of Western poets from Sappho to Larry Eigner and Thomas A. Clark - and Malagasy literature from oral traditions like the Hainteny, to the work of contemporary writers like Michèle Rakotoson and members of the Faribolana Sandratra. It asks how far a heightened awareness of liminality might help in theoretical discussions of the poetics of place and, in particular, of 'radical landscape poetry'. For practical insights, it also looks to lessons from the teaching of creative writing at the University of Antananarivo and at UEA. This sets the thesis up for a re-examination of the poetics of in-betweenness and for advancing a new theory in the field of liminal poetics. It argues that white space may be used as a poetic technique not just for 'arbitrary' aesthetic effect as in the formal experimentalist tradition but, when rooted in a concrete socio-anthropological context, as a tool that offers us unique assistance across everyday boundaries: in the making of meaning, in our dialogue with sense and emotion; in voicing what could otherwise not be said.