Creative Writing Theory

This Special Issue of TEXT explores the capacity of dreamscapes to function as powerful literary devices within an array of creative writing forms, while also informing and shaping creative arts practice more broadly. Its authors demonstrate diverse curiosities about creative practice as a kind of dreaming, where a practitioner's engagements might constitute a quasi dreamwork-on-the-page. In addition to this, creative thinking itself can pass via registers reminiscent of the dream and of its atmospheres and formation, broaching unconscious material, experiences, and paradigms. Suffice to say, an inherent connection between dreams, storytelling and the production of artwork more generally is tested and expanded upon in these articles. The unconscious processes that unfold during dreaming may harvest their contents and compositions from the conscious processes engaged and activated intentionally by established practitioners when working in literary, narrative and poetic forms, but also vice versa. The poietic strategies fundamental to crafting dream sequences for written forms entail far more than a simple duplication of any real dreams' narrative potential, associative chains, structures, or uncanny atmospheres: they require writers to translate dream-like elements into tangible sequences, rhythms, or scenes, to bring material substance to the oneiric.

This paper explores the dream-inspired poetry and video poetry of award-winning Brisbane poet Anna Jacobson. Jacobson’s surreal poetic narratives draw on memory, dreams, desires and destiny, using simple language and vivid imagery to evoke strong emotional responses. Her manner of exploring dreams in a number of poetic and narrative forms allows whimsical, gentle but also vigorous creative work of personal resilience and understanding. Her work is framed also by explorations of her Jewish culture and family and driven by unbridled imagination. In particular, the paper investigates Jacobson’s process of interweaving visions and memories for the purpose of tracing personal histories lost through periods of mental illness, exploring how she mines dreams for the purpose of writing and healing. It questions how her poetic process allows her to reclaim agency through unpacking experiences she wants to recover or further understand. Distilled from a series of interviews with the poet, the ...

This article focuses on dreaming and remembering as they relate to process, postulating creative writing as a form of dream-membering. I take an interest in what is going on in our brains, in creative practice, and have begun an exploratory pilot study that maps brain activity, in “real-time”, using Magnetoencephalography (MEG), while participants are engaged in a creative writing workshop (a partnership with Swinburne Neuroimaging). Reflecting upon my practice, across the development of a novel and a collection of short stories, I ponder the ramifications of deep, sensory imagining as it relates to stimulus-for and stimulus-in, in acts of narrative making – considering my engagement with the past, including pre-conscious memories and mental processes. I consider the neural conditions that are necessary for stimulus-induced activity, in my personal practice. Further, I give thought to the brain’s dreamlike capacity to trigger its own neuronal activity within the context of stimulus-...