No more leave credits

Date of Publication

8-2019

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Subject Categories

Poetry

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Literature

Thesis Adviser

Ronald R. Baytan

Defense Panel Chair

Dinah T. Roma

Defense Panel Member

David Jonathan Y. Bayot
Ralph Galan

Abstract/Summary

No More Leave Credits, is a collection of thirty poems rooted in the phase of the author's life as a civil servant in the Metropolitan Trial Court of Manila. It is a lyric sequence which loosely narrates the bureaucratic experience of an imagined female clerk in a courthouse, confronted with questions on her purpose of being there, issues of isolation and alienation, poverty and rejection, sadness and hopelessness, acceptance and surrender, punishment and mercy, the struggle towards redemption and liberation, and the very nature of service. In these poems, several courthouse personas speak, unfolding their strained relationships, indifference and hostilities. As the principal persona, the clerk deals with the inner conflict of whether she should stay or leave the service. This conflict is what the collection's narrative line aimed to resolve and eventually achieved, and serves as the collection's major figurative backbone – the irony of being an outcast in a place perceived to be a safe secret space of protection, the irony of never belonging even in a place where the lowliest settle, the irony of resentment over being unwanted by people whose acceptance was not valued in the first place, the irony of paying through days from one's life while being told you have run out of days, and the irony of fleeing from one's escape. The resolution was executed by dividing the collection into arcs, mapping out the arc of emotions the poet felt while going through the same dilemma. The premium is on feeling because as a writer of verse, the poet here believes this is the element of any worthwhile poetic endeavor that lingers strongest on the reader. She hopes the readers of these poems to be feeling through the verses, to experience moments of empathy and vulnerability by hearing out the personas, seeing what they saw, and living through reading the life these voices lived.

Abstract Format

html

Language

English

Format

Electronic

Accession Number

CDTG008191

Keywords

Poetry--Collections; Lyric poetry

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Embargo Period

2-17-2025

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