Abstract

The lyric essay has emerged from a long tradition of life writing that draws on a changing world to forge new forms and ways of expressing selfhood. This paper explores the trajectory of the lyric essay and the way its bricolage form allows writers to draw from our information-saturated lives to represent unique identity. In the context of care work, my research into and construction of my own extended lyric essay was undertaken to help make sense of parenting, caring for family members with disabilities, and navigating climate anxiety in order to see how the multimodal, complex layering of textual forms and sources could reflect the multilayered, complex responsibilities of my life. Since its inception, the lyric essay has been known for its experimental style and transmutability. This allows my research to not only create new understanding of care work in my creative artifact but to examine the scope and potential of the genre itself, having significant theoretical implications on the field of modern life writing. Through practice led research, my writing echoes the symbiotic relationship that the lyric essay has with the environment it draws from: my experiences shape my writing which influences my research. The fluidity of this connection is reflected in the segmentary form; literary research, social media posts, images, quizzes, and memoir are all incorporated to represent a multifaceted life. Here, we see that exploration with the form allows for experimentation with representation of the self, and the scope of possibility for this representation is broad.