Fatal light: Poetry, theory and the Holocaust

Fatal Light: Poetry, Theory and the Holocaust is a creative and critical thesis examining issues of narrative and representation concerning the Holocaust. James E. Young's idea that the historicity of the Holocaust is inextricably tied to its narrations becomes the springboard in which to launch an argument for a critical analysis of emotive responses and poetic narrations as methods of inquiry. Raymond Williams's structure of feeling theory provides a theoretical framework for exploration into how emotive articulation shapes and is shaped by the lived experience of trauma. The works of Imre Kertész and Jean Améry are cited to highlight the necessity of seeing the connection between daily life and the extremity of genocide.

The poems, entitled Hollow Articulations, enact the trauma of disjunction and the impact of Holocaust memory on the psyche of two people born years after the war as they navigate the reality of an “after-Auschwitz” existence.