Essay as Ars Poetica and Writerly Autobiography

I’m interested in how belonging involves processes of making meaning. Attention to those processes can enliven opportunities for writing into belonging. This conference paper considers how university teachers can help students frame their possible relationships to their own writing. In this framing, students might not only discern the kind of meaning they can get from the writing process but also control that meaning by understanding how they are active in shaping it. Because I teach writing courses and literature courses, I use my understanding of self-aware poetry to bolster my thinking about self-awareness in the essay writing process.

Bio: Dale Tracy is a faculty member in the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, where she teaches poetry, drama, life writing, and first-year writing. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection Derelict Bicycles (Anvil Press, 2022); several chapbooks, including Gnomics (above/ground press, 2024) and Lines That Open (Surrey Art Gallery, 2023); and the scholarly monograph With the Witnesses (McGill-Queen’s, 2017).