Revnan / Rakontèr

This dissertation represents a critical and creative undertaking: a collection of poems composed between 2021 and 2025 accompanied by a critical examination of where poems like these fit in the broader literary imaginary. The title of the manuscript is written in Louisiana Creole, sometimes called Kouri-Vini, and means “Ghost / Storyteller.” I followed my curiosity about my Louisiana Creole identity into the poems of this collection, our close communion with our ancestors, and the ghosts that haunt us. Amidst this personal and creative exploration, I stumbled into scholarship. My ongoing scholarship, as investigated in the critical introduction to Revnan / Rakontèr, considers Creolization, the Gothic, the role of the storyteller, protest, and the connection between Louisiana and the Wider Caribbean.