Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, academic, critic, and activist. She is the Newman Fellow in Creativity at University College Dublin. Her debut collection Where, the mile end (2019) is published by Book*hug (Canada) and tall-lighthouse (UK). She is a recipient of the ‘Next Generation’ Artist Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Morrissy holds separate degrees in Law, Creative Writing, and Literature. From 2015-2018 she was Vice-Chancellor Research Scholar at Ulster Universit y, where she earned her PhD by practice.

Her website is www.juliemorrissy.com

From rhetorical poetries to people power

Modes of persuasion in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American lyric (2014)
Abstract

This essay explores a notable trend toward issues of social justice and civic engagement in 21st-century book-length poetries, exemplifying Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American lyric (2014) as a text that creates links between socially oriented poetries and forms of civic action and dissent. Using modernist rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s modes of persuasion, attention is given to the specific ways in which Citizen as socially-oriented poetry can encourage readers towards forms of civic engagement. Specifically in relation to linguistic frameworks, this essay also assesses the impact of Citizen in the public sphere, building on scholarship on rhetorical poetries by Rachel Galvin, Dale M Smith, Jeffrey St Onge and Jennifer Moore.

Keywords: Poetry – poetics – rhetoric – social change