Alchemy in the tower: 1483 and the Plantagenet dynasty

This practice-led PhD consists of two parts. Part One is the creative element, Alchemy in the Tower, a collection of 52 poems. Part Two is the contextualizing thesis. The original contribution to knowledge is deliberately making use of conflicting information relating to Richard III and the Princes in the Tower and utilizing this by creating open endings in my poetry collection. The introduction establishes the study’s focus by examining how newspapers reported the discovery of Richard III’s body underneath the car park in Leicester. The first chapter focusses on the junctions and fault-lines of history, exploring the ways in which poetry can illuminate and populate spaces of uncertainty in the historical record in ways which are akin to – yet different from – non-fiction and prose fiction. It investigates poetics in relation to the interpretation of history, specifically the divergent interpretations of the life of Richard III, and how poetry facilitates a more open approach to historical speculation. The second chapter deals with the contested category of prose poetry, representing a dubious point of paradox at which ostensible literary opposites somehow meet and combine. In investigating the possibilities afforded by the uncertainty, instability, and ‘openness’ (in the sense of Umberto Eco’s idea of ‘the open work’) of the prose poem, it discusses the ways in which the form – and its inherent mystery – particularly lends itself to certain aspects of historical biography. The third chapter argues that ekphrasis and psychogeography are similar in approach, in order to demonstrate how I used both terms, which are usually discussed separately, as research and inspiration for my poems.