Project Proposal

Before reading Tarfia Faizullah’s Seam, I had the idea of interviewing people to collect their stories and craft poems around them. After reading her work, I am more fascinated by this strategy and would like to introduce it into my own work. I initially had the idea of storytelling on behalf of others in relation to oppressed ethnoreligious minorities, such as the Rohingya, for this project. However, I realized that I couldn’t approach enough understanding of their experience to write about it without first speaking to them personally. So, I decided instead to find a group whose stories I could practice telling through this project: members of the Georgetown community. I plan to interview around a dozen people of various backgrounds.

Through the story collection phase, I would like to improve my interviewing skills and research skills in relation to human subjects. Through each iteration, I will use my notes and writing experience to gain insights on how to better prepare for the next interview. Through the poetry-writing phase, I will experiment with various forms to be determined after I interview community members. I would like to try focusing more on how the structure of the poem relates to meaning and vary it according to each story.

I have decided to focus on the broad theme of childhood in the story collection process. I will likely approach people a couple of days before collecting their story and ask them to think about a unique story representative of their childhood. As I collect more and more stories, I might select certain recurring or interesting themes about which to ask future interviewees. I plan on anonymizing the poems and potentially adding my own story on one of the major themes.