addressing the ‘anCient quarreL’We will return to this below but want to stress the point that this, like so many other
practice- led research projects, is committed to gathering data from a range of places
and through a range of methods – the bricoleur- bowerbird approach – and using the
material to create ‘a world’, a way of feeling as well as rationally considering how people
live together.
more pragmatically (and, more measurably), creative writing research has also, and
continues to, contribute to national research priorities, and especially those that address
creativity. it is increasingly being recognized that creativity is not only fundamental
to human experience and personal satisfaction, but is central to the development of
science, business and governmental actions, as well as a tool for promoting a nation
and its economic interests. in this, to be creative is not just the ability to make beautiful
or engaging works or to express a personal and/or ‘artistic’ vision. many contemporary
creative writing researchers, for instance, concentrate on how creative ideas can be
generated and developed, and trace the processes of thought that led to innovation.
This often includes such practical outcomes as knowledge about how to foster
creativity, how to teach creativity, and how to rationalize the relationship between
creative output and the institutions associated with it.
Finally, creative writing research is frequently directed towards the better delivery of
ways of reading as well as ways of writing. Both are valued practices, as is evidenced in
formal programs of compulsory literacy and education in many nations. Reading fiction
remains a surprisingly popular pursuit, and there is evidence that even those who rarely
open a book value the fact that their country has a body of national literature. Better
knowledge about the professional aspects of writing, including audiences, genres,
processes of dissemination, review culture and writing experiments, will contribute
valuable knowledge about a field of practice that has economic, personal, national and
pleasurable outcomes.
Concluding remarks: limits and possibilitiespractice- led research is galvanizing schools and departments in universities around
the world, and reshaping practitioners’ understandings of their own identity and of the
meaning and value of their practice. increasingly, creative writers understand their
work as part of the knowledge domain, and not part of the autonomous world of art.
There is a certain loss here – plato’s ‘sweet friend’ is being displaced in its pure form,
and replaced by a two- headed creature that bears within its being both poetry and
philosophy. however, there is considerable gain in this shift: not only in the personal
and institutional capital associated with the move into the knowledge domain, but also
in a heightened focus on ethics, meaning, rigour and value that is likely to result in
more thoughtful and resolved literary works in the years to come.
despite this, there is a need to continue observing and analysing what is meant by
‘practice- led research’ in creative writing, and what sort of contributions can be made
utilizing this form of research. Tess Brady’s model of the bowerbird researcher has great
resonance for many practitioners, who know that their own practice involves ranging
widely across fields and disciplines. But not all such practice is necessarily ‘research’.
it can be, rather, a matter of writers informing themselves about well established areas
of knowledge that they will draw on to make their creative work. To paraphrase an