AustLit

'This essay looks at my own learning as a writer in order to ask what constitutes creative practice and then takes particular examples to create a paradigm for examining practice-as-research in the academy: risk + constraint + play = change. I use creative readings of particular cultural encounters I have had during my own writing life – with Cornelia Parker, and Kathleen Jamie and Bridget Collins, for instance – to illustrate these ideas. Practitioners working in academia are increasingly required to defend practice-based-research and in this essay I use one of practice-research’s key facets – reflective practice - to provide one answer to a pressing concern. I set out to ask how higher education institutions might best support practice-research, with the aim of developing it, increasing outputs, and deepening its investigations. Throughout I ask the question: how can we resist essentialist positions and reductive structures that do not fit the authentic, process-led version of practice?' (Publication abstract)