Welcome to Creative Critical
The twenty-first century has seen the erosion of any sharp distinction between the ‘creative’ and the ‘critical’. Can criticism itself aspire to be creative? Does creative writing have a critical force? Or should we dispense with these terms altogether?
Such questions come to the fore as creative writing embeds itself in the academy, demanding fresh thought about the forms and languages of criticism, and new kinds of literature more attentive to their own critical force. This website aims to be a forum for all such forms of writing, thinking, and teaching.
Welcome to Creative Critical
The twenty-first century has seen the erosion of any sharp distinction between the ‘creative’ and the ‘critical’. Can criticism itself aspire to be creative? Does creative writing have a critical force? Or should we dispense with these terms altogether?
Such questions come to the fore as creative writing embeds itself in the academy, demanding fresh thought about the forms and languages of criticism, and new kinds of literature more attentive to their own critical force. This website aims to be a forum for all such forms of writing, thinking, and teaching.
The Dark Path / There and Here
By David Miller with an introduction by Matt Martin.The UK poetry scene has lately become increasingly interested in interdisciplinary modes like creative criticism. The time seems right for a reminder that David Miller has pioneered such practices. The Dark Path meditates on contemporary poet Fanny Howe’s articulation of ‘negative theology’, the tradition of considering the divine in terms of what God is not, rather than what God is. There and Here addresses 19th-century French writer Gérard de Nerval.
Found Poem
By Tim MacGabhann. 'Found Poem' is a text that tries to blur the borders between autofiction, the critical essay, and poetry. By examining misquotation and redrafting in detail — with successive drafts of ‘the same poem’ presented as a demonstration of these practices — the text opens itself outwards towards the argument that forgetting and remembering are not opposites, but aesthetic strategies that aid and abet one another.
Creative Writing as Research: an Annotated Bibliography
By Gabriel Flynn. The emergence of PhD programs in creative writing poses questions about the nature of writing, research, and knowledge, some of which have complex histories that long predate the disciplines of creative writing and English Literature. This bibliography is aimed primarily at those who are interested in pursuing a PhD in creative writing and wishing to gain some knowledge of how such a possibility came about and find answers to some of the questions it raises.