Jewel Pereyra
Lannan Seminar
March 14, 2017
Lannan Poetry Proposal
These Lannan seminar poems will build upon
my “Documentary Poetics” project from last semester. I will be choosing three motifs
and poetic styles that will reflect my own personal journey as a Filipina
American Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia. The three braided motifs include:
(1) My personal experiences as a Filipino American Peace Corps volunteer, (2)
the history of Prime Minister Hen Sen and his rise to power, and (3) Kem Ley’s
murder in July 2016 (right before I left the Peace Corps). By interweaving
these motifs, my poems will be in conversation with my witnessed relationships
and understandings of contemporary Cambodian politics, archival memory, and
survival. I am particularly interested Southeast Asian American experiences in
Cambodia and these new poems (integrated within my prior Documentary Poetics
Project) will articulate more of my personal interactions and experiences in Peace
Corps, and how I came question my own identity and place within the Southeast
Asian diaspora.
I am interested in how historical archives
are crafted and destroyed in Cambodia. What remains? What is left to go to
ruin? What is carefully archived and recovered? I want to make use of the
archives that resist and remain in Cambodia, especially through the art and voices
of women I met when I was there. I aim to be in conversation with artists and
Khmer nationals who are preserving memories, art, and culture throughout their
survival and recovery from war and conflict. Many of the poems will have visual
torn pages from my journals alongside photographs that my students captured
(through disposable cameras), and my own personal writing. I will also
implement newspapers, pamphlets, documentaries, statistics, and Khmer artists' poetry/works to unify, visualize, queue the reader in on Kem Ley’s murder in
Cambodia and the history of Hen Sen’s family. Corrupt empires and residues of nation-building,
after decades of wars, emerge in fractured quantities in Cambodia. These
recovering ruptures mirror my own Southeast Asian American diasporic identity.
In addition to the poetry collections we
have read in class, I will be reading:
A Handmade Museum, Brenda Coultas
The Marvelous Bones of Time, Brenda Coultas
Victory and Her Opposites, Amy England
Tocqueville, Khaled Mattawa
Dictee, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Zong!, M. NourbSe Philip
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Whereas,
Layli Long Soldier
After We All Died, Allison Cobb
After We All Died, Allison Cobb
Jewel! I think this concept is really interesting. I love the idea of exploring archival memories. Just something to think about - are you focusing on the Cambodian archival memories or your own archival memories or braiding them together? Since you talk about how the fractures mirror your own diasporic identity, I'm wondering whether you're focusing on your perspective as a Southeast Asian American in Cambodia, or on Cambodian experiences? If you're planning to interweave both, how are you planning to approach this, stylistically?
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