Adjunct city: A poetry collection with a critical commentary

Abstract

The thesis combines a poetry collection called Adjunct City with a critical commentary titled “The Poetics of Being Beside.” “Being Beside” names the poems’ way of staying near the city while recognising the limits of what can be fully seen, known, or held. The collection approaches urban life through fragments, where the household and the street come into contact without forming a complete or fixed image of the city. The poems work through brief scenes and passing encounters. Their form follows the scale of attention, staying with a moment only as long as its image or sound can hold. Labour appears as a condition of everyday continuance, while objects carry the marks of use. Language moves between domestic speech, street sound, literary echo, and multilingual expression. The critical commentary examines these formal and thematic choices through close readings of selected poems. It considers how Adjunct City develops a poetics of nearness, restraint, and attention, where the city is encountered through partial moments and the marks everyday life leaves behind.