Getting to Cardiff for the “Writing Between the Lines” , a post-graduate symposium exploring Creative Writing as research methodology, wasn’t easy, writes PhD student Laura Mc Kenna. Door to door, the trip took ten hours – car-bus-train-bus-plane-bus-taxi. Here she shares her notes on what she found at the other end.
Was it worth it? Yes!
There were three parallel panel sessions on offer at three points in the day reflecting the range of creative writing projects.
I found I could take something from almost every presentation (almost) – ideas, methodologies, references – but, mostly, it seemed that, indirectly, it got me thinking about my own work and seeing it in a different light. I was writing two sets of notes – conference notes and notes to self!
The conference also provided an opportunity for poster presentations. The posters were displayed in the communal coffee area, and in the afternoon the writers gave a very speedy one-minute (timed!) oral presentation on their work.
It was a great pleasure to meet so many others who also are engaged in this odd creative/academic conundrum of a CW PhD. Delegates were interested in each other’s work, and there were lively conversations over coffee and food.
One reassuring theme was evident throughout the conference.
Everyone is struggling with the notion of creative writing as a research methodology – the question of how to frame the critical exegesis rightly formed the basis of much of the enquiry. Why was this reassuring? Because we need to know that while there is no particular “answer”, no “right way”, events like this can fuel discourse and discussion and illuminate alternative methodological possibilities.
The following are my conference notes necessarily abbreviated but hopefully reasonably coherent!
And, reader. . . breakfast and lunch were excellent and. . .I had a direct flight home to Cork.
Key Note Speaker:
Professor Kevin Mills University South Wales used Shakespeare’s Sonnet 108 to discuss the oft-repeated view that there is nothing new in writing. Yet Shakespeare’s very creation of this sonnet despite its allusions and its nod to its predecessors, is new – inserting itself between the lines of its predecessors; finding its form and language in what has already been written. Here was the concept of creativity as blasphemy slandering its forebears.
Ideas which represent the problems of “new”:
- Karl Marx’ observation that people “make their own history but not spontaneously, under conditions they have chosen for themselves”.
- Martin Heidegger’s delineation geworfenheit or throwness: we find ourselves and we interpret our existence in a ready-made world.
- Bakhtin’s insistence that language is a material, social phenomenon which precedes and exceeds us.
- Pierre Macherey’s substitution of creation with production
- Julia Kristeva’s conceptualization of intertextuality
- Derrida’s formulations of trace, dissemination and difference.
“What is expressed is as much a product of external forms, codes and systems as of internal urges ideas and experiences.”
In Rob Pope’s book, “Creativity: Theory, history and practice” (Routledge, 2005) he examines the use of the word “intervention”. Prof Mills has his own neologism: Epomagesis (based on Epomai – from Greek) and modeled on exegesis and eisegesis. Epomagesis “remakes the old”.
According to Oscar Wilde, to create anything, you’re in constant dialogue with the past.
Book: Eamonn Dunne: Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J Hillis Mitter: 2013
Prof Mills finished his fascinating talk with a new sonnet – a response to 108. Self-reflexive, intertextual, funny (and very good!)
Panel 1:
Naomi Kruger: University Central Lancashire – PhD in CW in 2014
Consciousness and the anti-novel: Representing Dementia in Theory and Praxis
The creative part of the thesis was an experimental novel – polyphonic, all 1st person and present tense (after many rewrites and considerations). The critical part was a thesis on “the story of story telling”.
David Lodge talks about how writers interpret their own writing but it’s always retrospective.
Kruger used multiple methodological approaches including reader response theory and cognitive narratology.
According to Steven Goddard. “The exegesis can be as creative, playful and full of conjecture as the creative element.”
So Kruger decided to make her critical as experimental and creative as her novel.
- She placed alternating quotes on opposing blank pages with no explanation eg quotes about dementia from the Daily Mail on one page and a reader response on the other.
- She also included in her critical essay, outline of “three novels I didn’t write about dementia”. Examples given.
- Also creative non-fiction memoir pieces regarding her uncle.
- Spoof book club questions about her novel!!
- An account of her work experience in an Alzheimer’s day care centre
- A short play
But, in the end she also included a more formal critique which, she felt, added the appropriate balance: linguistic and structural research, narrative theory and the struggle with truth, identity and memory
She conceived the critical creative process as a circulating exchange i.e. each one flows into the other round and round.
Susan Morgan: Creative non-fiction PhD looking at Essays as Experiments: writing creatively and critically about anatomy:
The speaker outlined how her original idea was to write a novel about the representation of women’s bodies in anatomy texts (current and historical) but instead is doing creative non-fiction essays on the topic. She was asked for her own view on the status of this concept within creative writing but said there was no clear delineation, even by her own understanding (though the essays were undoubtedly interesting).
Interesting facts!
Two interesting concepts (etymologically speaking!)
Autopsy – implies what is seen with the eye.
Essay – meaning test, trial and experimentation.
And from her anatomy studies: Pudenda – meaning shameful (not a lot of people know that!)
Panel 2: Education
Vanessa Dodd: Auto-ethnography: Creative writing as viable research data in theatre and consciousness studies.
Her thesis “Explores the correspondence between the constellated constituents of “my” waking human consciousness and the elements and language of the contemporary play.”
Book: Patricia Leavy: Method meets Art on narrative inquiry as a methodology. Integrates research and practice.
Narrative autoethnography views the researcher as a viable data source (Leavy 2009;37) and endorses the use of creative forms such as creative writing.
Carolyn Ellis 2004 (quoted in Leavy 2009) says it involves
- Research writing and story that connects autobiographical and personal to the social cultural and political.
- Claims the conventions of literary writing
- Adopts creative forms exercising the creativity of the author
- Stories provide reflecting frames helping us make sense of our experiences.
Disadvantages of this method:
Invites public criticism of your work and your character
Can be self-indulgent at the expense of academic rigour
Julia Kristeva; one technique includes putting the creative work on one page and the critical/process on the opposing page.
Robert Ward:
The REF Guide to Creative Writing Research
According to Graham Harper. there are four modes of creative writing research
Critical understanding
- Reflection, reflexivity, response
- Research about CW (meta CW discourse)
- Research using CW – unearthing knowledge in areas covered by other discipline
According to Ward, a CW PhD must be creative twice.
Anne Mari Rautiainen
To start studies in writing: Enjoyment and hesitation.
Looking at the role of a Learning Journal and response of students to its use.
Written after every module as a personal narrative and a reflection.
- Allows for play with language and ideas.
- A place to increase understanding of oneself and one’s writer self.
Rautiainen’s work examines the connection between personal writing and learning.
- Conceptions of writing: drawn from an examination of 66 journals. (Roz Ivanic, 2004)
Creativity: “There’s a writer in me”.
- Process: “Words bend”.
- Genre: You don’t build with your bare hands” – you rely on tools and techniques
- Social practices: “We were inspired by each other’s texts.”
- Socio-political practices: “Words have power”
Initial responses to the Writing Journal: Enjoyment and hesitation
Enjoyment: One student reported her/his discoveries.
“. . . some texts are linen-thick, coarse and eternally wrinkled. Not everything needs smoothing. . . . some of the texts straighten out by themselves like silk and they spill, spread and shine beautifully.”
Hesitation: Another side of self-expression includes hesitation. Doubt – can I, may I? – permission to step into someone else’s skin and be a first-person narrator.
“The amount of choice is too great: where to start, who to be, what voice, what tense?”
Benefits of a personal journal:
For the student:
- A flexible genre for personal narrative.
- A place to play with language and experience.
- Better understanding about self.
For the teacher:
- To support students with different thoughts and feelings during their studies
It would have been interesting to have had more detail on the individual journals and the requirements i.e. re content, frequency of entries, and primary aim (who are they for?).