The research interests most relevant to Anna’s current projects are conceptual metaphor theory, perspectives on the sublime in literature, trauma studies, and creative practice as research. Her broader research interests include cognitive poetics, psychoanalytic approaches to literature, theories of art therapy, disability studies, and literary translation.
She is deeply curious about the paradoxical capacity of literature, especially poetry, to communicate through failures of language, influenced by her experience with a disability that affects her language comprehension. As a result of her neurodivergence, she is also preoccupied with formulas for poetic craft, especially the evolution of traditional subgenres of poetry, modes of contemplation within received forms, and the interplay of narrative and lyric.
Anna’s interdisciplinary background in cognitive linguistics, foreign languages, literature, and creative writing underpin her ongoing inquiry into the mysterious capacities of language as a medium of art. She is also interested in theories of pedagogy and committed to scholarship of best practices in teaching the language arts.
Keats’s meditations on unforeseen events during his 1818 walking tour of Scotland provide a compelling framework for contemporary creative practice of the itinerary poem, featuring accidents as essential, if unanticipated, initiations on the journey to becoming an actualized artist.
If poetic forms reflect ways of human thinking, the sestina embodies our tendency to obsess over potentiality in language and its arrangements. Contemporary practice could benefit from renewed attention to how imaginative anticipation can transform hierarchies of narration. Poets Reetika Vazirani and Deborah Digges engaged these nuances of circling and narration, turning over their own obsessions and adapting these strategies for open forms.