Living on the Edge: Creative writers in higher education

Abstract

This paper focuses on creative writing and considers how we might write across and beyond boundaries between genres, between disciplines and between audiences. Using principles from action research and practice-led research as jumping off points, it suggests that rather than making absolute statements, writing research can also be about 'surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 4-5). This paper goes on to examine WH Auden's poem 'Musée des Beaux Arts' (composed 1938) to demonstrate this approach. Then it introduces Heinz Insu Fenkl's theory of 'interstitial' works (Fenkl 2003: 1) and considers how it relates to fluid conceptions of research in the 21st century that can reinvigorate writing as well as teaching. It concludes that writer-teachers do not need to offer students rigid templates; they can encourage them to see research methodologies as if they were travel guides, enabling them to explore new frontiers themselves.