AustLit

'The collaborative poetry project ‘Borrowings’ investigates and theorises some of the processes of poetic composition. Two collaborators, by making use of incepts from each other's work, have generated new poems by exploring the nature of intertextual genesis. This paper presents key ideas generated by this activity and, in doing so, applies Deleuze's analysis of games to its consideration of the nature of poetic composition, along with his contention that ‘[t]o pass to the other side of the mirror is to pass from the relation of denotation to the relation of expression … It is to reach a region where language no longer has any relation to that which it denotes’. The project explores some of the ways in which poetry makes ‘sense’, both to the writer and reader; as well as questioning the extent to which poetry depends on its author's ‘decision’ about what to write. It also teases out some of the implications for how we understand authorship if authorial decisions may be generated by incepts of one kind or another that occur to the poet apparently randomly, or may be given to them by a line or phrase that they encounter while reading. This paper's ultimate wager, and one put to the test in the project itself, is that limitation has an expansive effect on the generation of creative work.' (Publication abstract)

'The Western writing craft workshop has been dominated by a narrow conception of ‘reading as a writer.’ An overview of Creative Writing as a discipline in Australia and China suggests that a broader conception of ‘reading as a writer’ would enrich teaching in both the Anglophone countries and Asia while it improves expression and enhances cultural understanding. A comparison of courses that focus on nonfiction at Flinders University in Australia and Sun Yat-sen University in China demonstrates how reading that takes into account a variety of subject aims and outcomes and reflects diverse cultural experiences can benefit native speakers, those who come from non-English speaking backgrounds and second-language learners. Sharing strategies to facilitate language learning and craft knowledge will improve expression and broaden cultural perspectives. In addition, the teaching of nonfiction, which must be pursued at a critical, craft and ethical level, highlights the social responsibility not only of professional writers who are studied but of apprentice writers as they work towards critical and creative competence.' (Publication abstract)