I’m not as stupid I look. I know that many will have to
re-visit what I’ve just spoken but, at least, these demonstrably written words are on my blog, Pages. But I find I can’t say it any
other way. (I may leave it out: it's too much, probably.) It isn’t poetics exactly, but it’s a teasing document for my poetics
which has an important question for myself: what is the relationship between my
critical writing, which provoked it, and the poetics which provokes my own
creative practice? It’s not one I know how to answer, but there is a ‘bleed’
between the two, quite interesting for myself alone, I’d guess, but it opens up
a general question for the subject of Creative Writing: what is the
relationship between literary criticism and poetics? For our undergraduate
students this becomes: what is the relationship between their ‘reading as a
writer’ exercises and their ‘commentaries’ or ‘reflection’? To this (since I am
going to conclude not with answers, but questions) I’ll add: How much of a
literary critical perspective do we expect postgraduate candidates to have,
when they sometimes find themselves examined with the intellectual instruments
of a subject they haven’t sometimes studied, i.e. English Literature? Can
poetics suffice?
I interrupted Blogpost 1 some minutes back, because I wanted
to delay its transmission until the end, because it transpired to become a list
of similar questions. Ones which have washed around my head for some time and
in the busy-ness of modern academic life (I am no ‘slow professor’, to be sure)
I had no time to ask. I have time to ask them now, at least.
Blogpost 1 resumed:
Please find the post here and the
second part of it where it begins: ‘I was one of the only poets I knew in say 1980
who had studied Creative Writing. But now, it’s almost a given and there are
problems I think; are they building individual careers rather than communities
of writers? Do they only read each other?’ Etc. See what I mean: it’s a barrage
of questions!
Of course, I will tidy this up, refine discriminations, hone the language, en-wave its rhythms and perhaps sharpen its arguments... Or dump the lot and start again. As I've said before.
Of course, I will tidy this up, refine discriminations, hone the language, en-wave its rhythms and perhaps sharpen its arguments... Or dump the lot and start again. As I've said before.
Read all parts of this draft of a keynote (or is it a Key
Chord?):
Keynote Part one here:
Keynote Part two here:
Keynote Part three:
Keynote Part four:
