Immersive Creative Writing

Being creative is not just a way to make personal sense of our world. It can also make that world much more interesting, for ourselves and for others. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney even floats the idea that 'the imaginative transformation of human life is the means by which we can most truly grasp and comprehend it'. That's the best-case scenario I would like us all to aim at in this seminar, as we immerse ourselves in a series of creative endeavours, prompted by wide-ranging weekly discussions of landmark literature of all descriptions. You don't need to have written anything already (poetry, short stories, screenplays, whatever), since the syllabus caters for aspiring writers as well as those already practising. But the readier you are to immerse yourself in the creative process ¿ over and above attending class and turning in assignments ¿ the greater your rewards may be. My own non-prescriptive approach as an instructor focuses on 'tools not rules', inviting active student contribution at every turn, whether the students' specific interests lie in traditional genres such as fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and playwriting, or in more hybrid forms like the verse play, the haibun, flash fiction, or autotheory. Outside the classroom the emphasis will be on writing rather than reading. But few writers at any stage of their development fail to benefit from exposure to works already in the canon, so to get the most out of each class we'll be looking at a handful of literary gems: and since the course takes place in Oxford, the small number of core texts will mainly be British, ranging from classic works including Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Shelley's Frankenstein to newer, equally innovative but maybe less familiar material across a variety of forms. The term will culminate in a different kind of learning opportunity: a Showcase Event designed for individual students to share examples of their work with the rest of the group and the wider Program cohort.