ORCID
- Tristan Verran: 0000-0002-1205-153X
Abstract
This research project is a comprehensive investigation into the practical applications of a theoretical place of creative intuition I have called ‘the mesotopia’. A mesotopia is a place between conceptual and physical terrains in which inter-object experiential encounters are turned into communicative events. Mesotopian thinking unsettles purely anthropocentric utopian or dystopian future visions, as well as romantic images of Arcadian pasts. I have been attending to the material present of our coastal regions while attempting to intuit, rather than imagine, concealed aspects of these compositional sites. This thesis argues that attending to local environments using a more embodied form of poetic intuition, as opposed to purely anthropic speculative devices of imagination, may offer insight into how environmental encounters can be better interpreted and expressed. I argue that this form of lyrical composition can be developed into a form of lyrical inquiry. Lyrical inquiry is based upon mesotopian logic and uses intuitive strategies to attempt to demystify concealed (meta)physical interactions that occur within a compositional environment. To explore this, I have experimented with attempts to lyrically render different coastal locations using the Kernewek and English languages. I have then evaluated the extent to which grammatical and lexical forms of these distinct languages express alternative attunements to the compositional environment. This mode of research emerges from three fields of interest: firstly, the object-oriented ontologies of Graham Harman and Timothy Morton which have encouraged me to significantly re-think my relation to a compositional environment; secondly, an incorporation of our Kernewek language into my lyrical compositions; finally, my experiments to develop a mode of evaluating the extent to which (meta)physical encounters can be detected in the grammar and lexis of lyrical arrangements.
Awarding Institution(s)
University of Plymouth
Supervisor
Phil Smith, Sarah Blissett, Arun Sood
Keywords
Poetry, Site-specific Art, Kernewek Language, Lyrical Inquiry, Performance Art, Creative Practice, Practice as Research, Philosophical Practice, Ecocriticism, Ecopoetics, Environmental Research, Ecolinguistics, Cornwall
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Date
2025
Embargo Period
2025-07-18
Deposit Date
July 2025
Additional Links
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Verran, T. (2025) Mesotopia: Towards a Place of Lyrical Inquiry. Thesis. University of Plymouth. Available at: https://doi.org/10.24382/nv45-pk79
