Tate Lewis-Carroll Poetry

I am pleased to announce that I have successfully defended my Masters thesis and my incredible committee, Gabriel Gudding & Duriel E Harris have awarded me an MA in English Studies, Creative Writing, from Illinois State University!!

My thesis centers around this 600 foot poem typed onto adding-machine paper I wrote from January 14, 2025–February 26, 2026. For my defense, I exhibited my rolls all over the Publications Unit. There will be more pictures to come & more people to acknowledge, but for now—I did it! PHEW!!

Here my thesis abstract: "This thesis is a poem; it records fourteen consecutive months of the poet's life through rigorous, daily typing habits with nonoptimal tools and material: a typewriter and 600 feet of receipt paper. Through the adoption of these conditions, and through the dailiness of the habit, this thesis crips and deploys a poetics of chronic impediment for accessing constraint and its role in making. This thesis includes a critical preface which explores some of the poet's specific relationships to chronic pain, both physical and emotional; forgetfulness and dissociation; and disruption by remembering a decade-long flare of chronic illness and abuse. With analysis of A.R.
Ammons's Tape for the Turn of the Year, the thesis considers tape-writing practices as opportunities to reconsider one's tools and embodied limitations as ways to inform rather than restrict one's writing. The thesis concludes with two creative chapters, two of the twelve fifty-foot rolls of paper, "Tape 2" and "Tape 5." These sections employ a poetics of chronic impediment as sites of generative constraint in order to make available, then obvious, the poet at work rather than foreground the work of the poet."

A poem in a gem of a journal, ! There are so many incredible poems & poets in this issue & responsible for this issue. I'm so grateful to be included. ➡️➡️ to read it! ♥️

2025 photo dump! Onwards & outwards—

Barely, somehow, crawling, I made it across the finish line! One more semester to go! I'm really looking forward to having time dedicated to my thesis work, which will revolve around the tapes.

The final project for my writing class was to write, design, & bind our own chapbooks. I decided to participate & made one too, & had fun. Hopefully my students did as well. We had a little release & exchange party on our last meeting. It was a terrific semester w/ them, I was so impressed by their eagerness to participate & dedication to their own & each other's writings. I can't wait to do it all again next semester!

I'm pleased to have my first publication from the Tape experiments in this issue of Action, Spectacle. Thank you for your community & to all these fabulous guest editors who've worked hard alongside the entire A,S team to put together this banging summer issue!

So happy too to share the issue w/ wonderful folks including ! Go Pub Unit!!

My contribution comes from tp 6, June 18—& it's a decent sized chunk of poetry! Find the link in my bio by going to my linktree & looking for "other publications" or go to the Action, Spectacle site to read more work from truly incredible artists!

I'm particularly excited about this publication! The more I look into the literary scene in & surrounding Notre Dame, the more I want to be a part of it! So, I'm happy to say a receipt poem of mine made the cut.

TPs 1-8 are in the books! 8 months into this daily writing project & I feel as if I'm still only getting started. I have an exciting feeling for these little roll's future. 🧻🧻🧻🧻🧻🧻🧻🧻