Work/house is a hybrid creative-research project that explores the narratives of Irish workhouse pauper inmates during the Great Famine. The project takes on multiple forms: a chapbook printed by Salem State University, a longer manuscript draft, and a digital story told through the coding platform Twine. Research on Irish workhouses was conducted independently after partaking in a free, audio-visual tour of the former Kilkenny Union Workhouse site in July 2022, the writing happening in conjunction with research. The sixteen poems included in the chapbook (and the roughly forty poems in the manuscript, still a work-in-progress) incorporate Irish poetic forms, Irish mythology, and real narratives of pauper inmates who resided in the South Dublin and Kilkenny Union Workhouses. These inmates include Eliza Dalton, a young woman who arrived in the South Dublin workhouse at age nine, and incited uprisings with other workhouse girls; Jane Kane, who drifted in and out of that same South Dublin workhouse while working at her mother’s brothel; Thomas Kelly, a deaf and blind inmate living in the Kilkenny Union workhouse, whose death circumstances were extensively investigated by workhouse Guardians; and James Heam, who, at fourteen, appealed his unjust corporeal punishment. Other phenomena typical of the time – contraction of venereal diseases, infanticide, poverty and starvation – are referenced throughout the poems. Artistic license (such as the blurring of timelines) has been taken in the creation of themes such as hunger, reclamation of femininity and humanity in oppressive social structures, bodily autonomy, complex relationships to/with land and language, motherhood, and female friendship.

Pisces is a collection of poems that give glimpses into my childhood, adolescent, and adulthood. They are also about learning how to heal, places that gave me serenity, and people that have inspired and molded me into who I am today. The title Pisces is a term that comes from astrology, and what happens to be my astrology sign. There are no poems that include or discuss my astrological sign. However, all my poems represent who I am, where I’ve come from, what inspires me, and events in my life that resonated with me the most. This collection is heavily influenced by some modern poets and their works, making use of some of their techniques to tell personal stories. Wallace Stevens and his selected poems in Sleeping on A Wing made me think about where writers get their inspiration from, and how we can see the world in a different way. In Stevens’s poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Blackbird," he takes an object and looks at it from a variety perspective, exploring how one might encounter or see blackbirds. This collection uses this technique to write about objects that have sentimental value to me, such as my father’s military dog tags. These inspirations and themes represented within my collection not only represent my growth overtime, but my love for dance, my friends, and my family. I hope that my poems can shed light onto topics that are not talked about, and to send a message that you are never alone.