Abstract

This book offers an in-depth study of the poetics of creative writing as a subject in the dramatically changing context of practice as research, taking into account the importance of the subjectivity of the writer as researcher. It explores creative writing and theory while offering critical antecedents, theoretical directions and creative interchanges. The book narrows the focus on psychoanalysis, particularly with regard to Lacan and creative practice, and demonstrates that creative writing is research in its own right. The poetics at stake neither denotes the study or the techniques of poetry, but rather the means by which writers formulate and discuss attitudes to their work.

Dominique Hecq is Associate Professor in Writing at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Dominique is also Editor of Bukker Tillibul: The Online Journal of Practice-Led Research.

Without Contraries is no progression, says William Blake. And Dominique Hecq agrees, demonstrating how she sets theory and creative practice into active, often disruptive but always productive relation. Hecq’s meditations are at once personal and compendious – through their ultimately deeply pragmatic inquiries and insights, many readers will find, will begin to feel, a way forward, into more significant and thoughtful creative engagements.

How might we conceive of a poetics of creative writing? This study explores the possibilities of such a poetics with wide-ranging rigor, mobilising selected critical theory, philosophy, literature and the author’s extensive knowledge of psychoanalysis to link the epistemologically-neglected subjective processes of creativity in the practice and research of creative writing. An impressive intervention, extending contemporary debates about creative writing research.