Creativity, Language and Creative Writing

Dates

Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 18:30 to 20:30

Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - 17:30 to 19:30

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - 17:30 to 19:30

Seminar Series – Autumn 2017

DATES: 17^th October – 14^th November – 5^th December

TIME: All meetings take place on Tuesdays 5.30-7.30pm

Venue: Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Venue map for Senate House.

This series will explore the meaning of ‘creativity’ in creative writing. The term ‘creativity’ has become something of a cliché of modern times. But it’s a fundamental property of human expression, and examining what it is, how it works, and what it’s used for can help us better understand the creative process. The series will look at creativity from various different perspectives, including storytelling in words and pictures, the importance of creative constraints for writing, and what language studies can offer the practice of creative writing.

SEMINAR 1: October 17, 2017

The craft of creative writing

This seminar will look at creative writing from the perspective of language studies, and consider the creative possibilities of playing with genres and media.

Listen here

And here are Jeremy Scott's slides from his presentation

Speakers:

Jeremy Scott

Jeremy Scott is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the University of Kent. He teaches and researches on the border between language and literary studies. Specifically, he teaches in the areas of literary stylistics, narrative and narratology, critical linguistic, literary and cultural theory, and also teaches creative writing. His current research interests are in fictional technique, literary representations of dialect, the relationship between narratives and identity and stylistics-based approaches to creative writing and creativity in general. He has published on contemporary British and Irish fiction, on literary stylistics, travel literature, and also his own creative work. 

Monique Roffey

Monique Roffey is an award-winning Trinidadian-born writer. Her erotic novel The Tryst, was published in the summer of 2017. Her novel House of Ashes, 2014, was shortlisted for the COSTA Fiction Award, 2015, as well as the OCM BOCAS Award 2015. Archipelago won the OCM BOCAS Award for Caribbean Literature in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Orion  Award 2014. In 2010, her novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, 2010 and the Encore Award. Her erotic memoir With the Kisses of his Mouth caused controversy and critical acclaim in 2011. She is a Lecturer on the Novel MFA at Manchester Metropolitan University and has also taught creative writing and mentored emerging writers in Trinidad for several years, for COSTAATT, the OCM Bocas Literature Festival, and privately in Port of Spain.

SEMINAR 2: November 14, 2017

The visuality of creative writing

This seminar will look at the art and dynamics of storytelling in words and pictures, with a focus on graphic novels.

Listen here

Speakers:

Myrrh Domingo

Myrrh Domingo is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literacies and Academic Head of Learning and Teaching in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. Her interests, publications and recent projects focus on language and literacies research; multimodal and ethnographic methods; and technology mediated learning and teaching. Within each of these areas, she has been involved in a variety of funded research from a range of bodies, including the Economic Social Research Council, National Academy of Education and Carnegie Foundation.

Nye Wright

Aneurin (Nye) Wright is a Brighton based, US expat illustrator, animator and graphic novelist. His graphic memoir 'Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park...When You’re 29 and Unemployed' was published in the UK by Myriad Editions and in the US by Penn State Press. He is at work on a next graphic novel about Greek mythology and physics for which he was awarded an Arts Council Grant. Nye lives in Brighton with his wife, graphic designer Lyndsay Lucero, daughter Aurelia, 5, and her 2 year old brother, Bixby.

SEMINAR 3: December 5, 2017

Experiments in constrained creativity

This seminar will consider the importance of formal constraints for creativity, looking at the work of the Oulipo group as well as modern experimental writing.

Listen here

Speakers:

Dennis Duncan

Dennis Duncan is Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge University where he is researching a history of the book index, from medieval times to the digital age. Recent academic articles have looked at Italo Calvino and writing machines, Mallarmé and jugs, and James Joyce’s influence on mid-century French pornography. He has published translations of Michel Foucault, Boris Vian, and Alfred Jarry, as well as an edition of the Surrealist little magazine, Le Grand Jeu. Meanwhile, Book Parts, a history of paratexts (indexes, errata lists, page numbers, etc.) co-edited with Adam Smyth, is due out with Oxford University Press next year.

Emily Critchley

Emily Critchley has poetry collections with Boiler House, Barque, Intercapillary, Corrupt, Holdfire, Torque, Oystercatcher, Dusie, Bad and Arehouse presses and a selected writing: 'Love / All That / & OK' (Penned in the Margins, 2011). Her most recent manuscript is due for publication with Shearsman Books in 2018. The present focus of ‘translating’ Shakespeare’s sonnets into contemporary English is a project she started in 2011, but has recently taken up again in collaboration with Eric Langley. She has also published critical articles on poetry, philosophy and feminism and is the editor of 'Out of Everywhere 2: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK' (Reality Street, 2016). Dr Critchley is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Greenwich, London, where she specializes in contemporary experimental writing and American literature.

Eric Langley

Eric Langley is a lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at UCL, and has published academic monographs and articles on Shakespeare and narcissism, early-modern attitudes to suicide, period conceptions of disease and infection, C16th erotica, and the reception of Lucretius. All of these disparate interests in some way feed into his poetry, which has been published by Carcanet (Raking Light, 2017, nominated for the Felix Dennis award for Best First Collection at this year's Forward Prizes), PN Review, New Poetries VI, and Blackbox Manifold. Therefore, his current collaboration with Emily Critchley - taking inspiration from Shakespeare's sonnet sequence - bridges the gap between his poetic and scholarly practice.