This thesis is situated within the fields of poetry and performance art, aiming at their intersection under the
umbrella term of expanded poetry. With an intention to centre process rather than product, this research focuses upon the experience of poetry, rather than its products. Such focus highlights the emancipating potential of this experience.

Expanding Poetry: Towards a Performance Practice of (Auto) Poiesis aims to devise a performance practice of expanded poetry—that is, a practice that facilitates poetic experience through embodiment. This endeavour stems from identifying a gap between philosophical/conceptual accounts on the experience of poetry and their practical actualisation, proposing to bridge this gap through a tangible and embodied practice. Intersecting knowledge from the fields of poetry and performance art, this embodied practice directly addresses this gap, emerging as the main contribution of this research project.

The performance practice of expanded poetry this research delves into had seen its roots planted prior to my enrolment in the master studies within which this thesis takes place. This research project proposed an ideal opportunity to explore the full scope of this personal practice. The deliberate examination of this personal practice as a matter of practice-as-research allowed me to look back at what had been instinctively established thus far, either grounding or changing these experiences with gained intentionality and
accountability.

From the perspective of expanded poetry, I recognised the practice’s potential to pursue the emancipating experience of poetry through embodiment, bridging the gap from philosophical conceptualisations on the subject to tangible practice. Through a methodology of persistent trial and error paired with phenomenological forms of documentation and evaluation, I arrived at the organisation and systematisation
of a performance practice of expanded poetry. Considering the emancipating potential found in the experience of poetry through the writings of feminist authors and poets (namely Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich), the practice of expanded poetry reflects an underlying urgency for the development of artistic practices that encourage an embodied sense of agency.