Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.61_1
Simon Lovat
This article explores the notion of ‘self’ as it pertains to autobiographical writing, and its repercussions for the fact/fiction dichotomy inherent in autobiographical praxis. The mode of articulation is a discussion of the reception of two one-man plays: Memoires of a Confused Man (2016) and Are Strings Attached? (2017). Both plays are written and performed by this writer. Drawing on philosophical, cognitive and spiritual discourses, I show that ‘selfhood’ is not a transparent and unproblematic proposition. I then re-examine the so-called paradox of fiction. I argue that it is common experience to care about notional entities and suggest that this comes about by way of ‘transfictional disavowal’ and ‘affective metalepsis’. Finally, I offer an exemplary text, read first as ‘fiction’, and then as ‘autobiography’. I then propose a new modality of the ‘paradox of fiction’, which offers a satisfactory reading position of autobiographical writings based on a re-evaluation of ‘selfhood’.
{"title":"Whose life is it anyway? Practice-based research into performed fictional-autobiography and the paradox of fiction","authors":"Simon Lovat","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.61_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.61_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the notion of ‘self’ as it pertains to autobiographical writing, and its repercussions for the fact/fiction dichotomy inherent in autobiographical praxis. The mode of articulation is a discussion of the reception of two one-man plays: Memoires of a Confused Man (2016) and Are Strings Attached? (2017). Both plays are written and performed by this writer. Drawing on philosophical, cognitive and spiritual discourses, I show that ‘selfhood’ is not a transparent and unproblematic proposition. I then re-examine the so-called paradox of fiction. I argue that it is common experience to care about notional entities and suggest that this comes about by way of ‘transfictional disavowal’ and ‘affective metalepsis’. Finally, I offer an exemplary text, read first as ‘fiction’, and then as ‘autobiography’. I then propose a new modality of the ‘paradox of fiction’, which offers a satisfactory reading position of autobiographical writings based on a re-evaluation of ‘selfhood’.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47775733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.131_1
G. Byrne
This article is an autoethnographic account of my experience of becoming a working-class academic. I have found that, in addition to overcoming structural inequalities, ‘escaping’ a working-class home to seek a new life in a strange world has required the construction of a new identity that is neither entirely ‘academic’ nor entirely ‘working-class’. I discuss my perspective on class privilege and inequality through my experience of being part of a group of people who tend to exist in academia as invisible individuals. I have written this article as a practical exercise that contributes to increasing this visibility because, by becoming a more visible and collective community, it is possible to challenge existing notions of what it means to be working-class, to be an academic or to be both.
{"title":"Individual weakness to collective strength: (Re)creating the self as a ‘working-class academic’","authors":"G. Byrne","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.131_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.131_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an autoethnographic account of my experience of becoming a working-class academic. I have found that, in addition to overcoming structural inequalities, ‘escaping’ a working-class home to seek a new life in a strange world has required the construction of a new identity that is neither entirely ‘academic’ nor entirely ‘working-class’. I discuss my perspective on class privilege and inequality through my experience of being part of a group of people who tend to exist in academia as invisible individuals. I have written this article as a practical exercise that contributes to increasing this visibility because, by becoming a more visible and collective community, it is possible to challenge existing notions of what it means to be working-class, to be an academic or to be both.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46390612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.29_1
S. Everington
Combining creative writing excerpts from my Ph.D. work-in-progress, ‘The Other Mothers: Exploring adoption, surrogacy and egg donation through life writing’, with reflective commentary, this article will discuss the ways in which writing the lives of others can serve as a process of self-reflection. Inspired by my personal experience as a biological and adoptive mother, my Ph.D. project involves creative practice as research, alongside critical approaches, to culminate in the production of a multi-subject biographical narrative of women who have become mothers through adoption, surrogacy and egg donation, and their silent partners – birth mothers, surrogates and egg donors – whose stories remain largely untold.
{"title":"Through the looking glass: Biographical writing as self-reflection","authors":"S. Everington","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.29_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.29_1","url":null,"abstract":"Combining creative writing excerpts from my Ph.D. work-in-progress, ‘The Other Mothers: Exploring adoption, surrogacy and egg donation through life writing’, with reflective commentary, this article will discuss the ways in which writing the lives of others can serve as a process of self-reflection. Inspired by my personal experience as a biological and adoptive mother, my Ph.D. project involves creative practice as research, alongside critical approaches, to culminate in the production of a multi-subject biographical narrative of women who have become mothers through adoption, surrogacy and egg donation, and their silent partners – birth mothers, surrogates and egg donors – whose stories remain largely untold.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46407928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.237_1
Craig Jordan-Baker
Dr Craig Jordan-Baker is joint course leader for English Literature and Creative Writing BA (Hons) at the University of Brighton. He has a broad academic background, having studied creative writing, English literature and philosophy. He has diverse research interests, including creative writing theory, literary criticism and the history of linguistics. He is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Creative Writing: Reading, Writing and Understanding , which considers how aesthetic cognitivism can be applied to accounts of writing craft. Craig is also a writer and critic, whose plays have been performed widely in the United Kingdom. He has published numerous pieces of short fiction in publications such as New Writing, Epoque, TEXT and Potluck. Abstract Verbatim work places a premium on the invisibility of the artist. This is in tension to Neo-Romantic conceptions of the ‘writer’s voice’, often characterized as the expression of the sovereign individual. Such a tension raises the question of to what extent an expression of self is desirable and what we can learn about artistic voice in verbatim work. This article discusses such questions through the lens of a commission to creatively respond to the National Archive’s material on mental health. This resulted in a piece of ‘contrapuntal radio’ that dramatized the voices of militant suffragettes (c. 1907–14). By consideration of the process of production, the article will argue that often, considerations of self -expression (where the artist is a unique voice transmitting their individuality), threatens a more productive self- expression , where an artist is a disinterested expresser of human feeling. be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus. With abstract noun ending -ia. General sense of ‘unhealthy emotion or excitement’ is by 1839 (online).
{"title":"Managing hysteria: Exploring the writer’s voice through verbatim work","authors":"Craig Jordan-Baker","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.237_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.237_1","url":null,"abstract":"Dr Craig Jordan-Baker is joint course leader for English Literature and Creative Writing BA (Hons) at the University of Brighton. He has a broad academic background, having studied creative writing, English literature and philosophy. He has diverse research interests, including creative writing theory, literary criticism and the history of linguistics. He is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Creative Writing: Reading, Writing and Understanding , which considers how aesthetic cognitivism can be applied to accounts of writing craft. Craig is also a writer and critic, whose plays have been performed widely in the United Kingdom. He has published numerous pieces of short fiction in publications such as New Writing, Epoque, TEXT and Potluck. Abstract Verbatim work places a premium on the invisibility of the artist. This is in tension to Neo-Romantic conceptions of the ‘writer’s voice’, often characterized as the expression of the sovereign individual. Such a tension raises the question of to what extent an expression of self is desirable and what we can learn about artistic voice in verbatim work. This article discusses such questions through the lens of a commission to creatively respond to the National Archive’s material on mental health. This resulted in a piece of ‘contrapuntal radio’ that dramatized the voices of militant suffragettes (c. 1907–14). By consideration of the process of production, the article will argue that often, considerations of self -expression (where the artist is a unique voice transmitting their individuality), threatens a more productive self- expression , where an artist is a disinterested expresser of human feeling. be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus. With abstract noun ending -ia. General sense of ‘unhealthy emotion or excitement’ is by 1839 (online).","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41720057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.181_1
R. Edgar, F. Mann, H. Pleasance
In this article, we outline and explore a plural and flexible methodology for engaging with the contemporary music memoir. These are texts in which narrative experimentation and self-conscious interrogations of voice shape content. They are texts that blur and blend the lines between memory, storytelling and myth. They offer a literate and culturally engaged reader the opportunity to shape their own musical histories and memories. We view these titles as a new and emerging genre. Our work, which we are developing in a forthcoming edited collection entitled Music, Memory and Memoir, approaches this fluid genre with a fluid methodology. We combine scholarly rigor and critical analysis in our readings of text but these combine with an open-ended and reflexive approach to our own critical and cultural voices.
{"title":"Music, Memory and Memoir: Critical and creative engagement with an emerging genre","authors":"R. Edgar, F. Mann, H. Pleasance","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.181_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.181_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we outline and explore a plural and flexible methodology for engaging with the contemporary music memoir. These are texts in which narrative experimentation and self-conscious interrogations of voice shape content. They are texts that blur and blend the lines between memory, storytelling and myth. They offer a literate and culturally engaged reader the opportunity to shape their own musical histories and memories. We view these titles as a new and emerging genre. Our work, which we are developing in a forthcoming edited collection entitled Music, Memory and Memoir, approaches this fluid genre with a fluid methodology. We combine scholarly rigor and critical analysis in our readings of text but these combine with an open-ended and reflexive approach to our own critical and cultural voices.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44687368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The articles in this double edition emerged out of a symposium that we held at the University of Brighton in March 2017 entitled Storying the Self and it is with huge thanks to Julia Goldsmith and everyone at the JWCP and Intellect that we present this body of work.
{"title":"Storying the self","authors":"Jessica Moriarty, Ross Adamson","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.3_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.3_2","url":null,"abstract":"The articles in this double edition emerged out of a symposium that we held at the University of Brighton in March 2017 entitled Storying the Self and it is with huge thanks to Julia Goldsmith and everyone at the JWCP and Intellect that we present this body of work.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49570322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.45_1
John Kelly
This article will firstly account for the role of the graphic designer as a custodian of stories and their transcriptions into visual form. This is a mode of storying the self through the production of different graphic formats. Secondly, it will address the mixing of narratives from out of the archive: between the researcher as narrator and the archive source (in this case, Edward C. Rigg). Thirdly, the benefits of this project will consider how graphic design students engage with storytelling as a means to develop brand and content strategies. This approach examines the role of storytelling in type and image selection and its relevance within graphic design. The process will be analysed through the mechanisms of autoethnography, cultural analysis and the reinterpretation of oral, written and physical ephemera. The article argues that these are the building blocks for creating new narratives and design concepts.
{"title":"Capturing the moment","authors":"John Kelly","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.45_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.45_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article will firstly account for the role of the graphic designer as a custodian of stories and their transcriptions into visual form. This is a mode of storying the self through the production of different graphic formats. Secondly, it will address the mixing of narratives from out of the archive: between the researcher as narrator and the archive source (in this case, Edward C. Rigg). Thirdly, the benefits of this project will consider how graphic design students engage with storytelling as a means to develop brand and content strategies. This approach examines the role of storytelling in type and image selection and its relevance within graphic design. The process will be analysed through the mechanisms of autoethnography, cultural analysis and the reinterpretation of oral, written and physical ephemera. The article argues that these are the building blocks for creating new narratives and design concepts.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45365431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical analysis ofBirthday Lettersby Ted Hughes andImagined Sonsby Carrie Etter is illuminated by reading both texts against the rhetorical strategies and conventions of elegy.Birthday LettersandImagined Sonsare engaged in communicating strong feelings of grief following serious losses within lived experience, for which both construct first-person speakers. This article recognizes the presence of the conventions of elegy in both texts and suggests that despite thematic and structural similarities, there are significant differences in the ways the speakers in these texts are configured and how they address their audiences.
{"title":"‘Getting over our selves’: Elegy and rhetoric in Ted Hughes’sBirthday Lettersand Carrie Etter’sImagined Sons","authors":"Cathy Dreyer","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.9_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.9_1","url":null,"abstract":"Critical analysis ofBirthday Lettersby Ted Hughes andImagined Sonsby Carrie Etter is illuminated by reading both texts against the rhetorical strategies and conventions of elegy.Birthday LettersandImagined Sonsare engaged in communicating strong feelings of grief following serious losses within lived experience, for which both construct first-person speakers. This article recognizes the presence of the conventions of elegy in both texts and suggests that despite thematic and structural similarities, there are significant differences in the ways the speakers in these texts are configured and how they address their audiences.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46836741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.77_1
D. Simpson
The article follows writing what becomes a satirical poem about the writer’s imagined death. It is written after a cancer diagnosis brings on a fear of dying. A period of counselling poses questions to turn him towards how he might live: his compulsion to write leads him to write in a more experimental voice; challenging ‘new sounds’ are explored to help reduce a fear of dying, including a satirical ‘sound’ to sharpen the poem and narrow a gap between his poetry, cancer and himself. Writing the poem also confirms that ongoing changes in his cancer are best expressed through experiments with his poetic voice.
{"title":"How writing poetry and counselling combine to help a writer come to terms with life-limiting bone marrow cancer","authors":"D. Simpson","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.77_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.77_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article follows writing what becomes a satirical poem about the writer’s imagined death. It is written after a cancer diagnosis brings on a fear of dying. A period of counselling poses questions to turn him towards how he might live: his compulsion to write leads him to write in a more experimental voice; challenging ‘new sounds’ are explored to help reduce a fear of dying, including a satirical ‘sound’ to sharpen the poem and narrow a gap between his poetry, cancer and himself. Writing the poem also confirms that ongoing changes in his cancer are best expressed through experiments with his poetic voice.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46395625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.219_1
G. Greer
Using theory and analysis, I story my experience of being in-between ill and well as a teacher. First, I employ the work of Turner (1991), Massumi (2002) and Butler (2002) to define in-betweenness. Then I develop a tool for exploring the values of in-betweenness. Finally, I conduct discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003) on a small archive of non-fiction writing on teacher burnout in the Canadian north. I discover three possible values of in-betweenness in educational settings: (1) validation of diversity, (2) support of open dialogue and (3) development of self-reflection.
{"title":"Patient teacher: The complexity of in-betweenness in the teaching profession","authors":"G. Greer","doi":"10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.219_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP.12.1-2.219_1","url":null,"abstract":"Using theory and analysis, I story my experience of being in-between ill and well as a teacher. First, I employ the work of Turner (1991), Massumi (2002) and Butler (2002) to define in-betweenness. Then I develop a tool for exploring the values of in-betweenness. Finally, I conduct discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003) on a small archive of non-fiction writing on teacher burnout in the Canadian north. I discover three possible values of in-betweenness in educational settings: (1) validation of diversity, (2) support of open dialogue and (3) development of self-reflection.","PeriodicalId":38498,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Writing in Creative Practice","volume":" 767","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41251822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}