1st Edition

Strategies of Silence Reflections on the Practice and Pedagogy of Creative Writing

Edited By Moy McCrory, Simon Heywood Copyright 2021
    206 Pages
    by Routledge

    206 Pages
    by Routledge

    This unique book takes silence as its central concept and questions the range of meanings and values which inform the idea as it impinges on the creative process and its content and contexts.

    The thematic core of silence allows a consideration of silencing and silence as opposite ends of a spectrum: one shutting down, the other enabling and opening up. As a multidisciplinary collection of essays derived from the teaching and implementation of Creative Writing at university level, the contributors consider silence as strategic, both through the need for silence and as something which compels resistance. They explore how writing has employed images and tropes of silence in the past, and used silence and gaps technically. In considering marginalised and forgotten voices, this book shows how writers bring their diverse range of backgrounds and experience to work with and against silence in Creative Writing Studies.

    The first theoretical work on silence in Creative Writing, this field-shifting book is an essential read for both practitioners and students of Creative Writing at the higher education level.

    Introduction: On Silence in Language and Writing
    Moy McCrory and Simon Heywood

    PART 1: Silence, Solitude, and Imagination

    1. Daydreams and Solitude: Working the silent space
      Luke M. Thompson
    2. PART 2: History and Traditions

    3. Restored to his Kingdom: Reading the silences of medieval narrative
      Simon Heywood
    4. Silver Threads of Fear: Restoring the agency of female protagonists in Jewish women's storytelling traditions
      Simon Heywood
    5. The Roaring Ghosts: Depictions of female silence and its oppositions
      Moy McCrory
    6. Re-Witching Writing: Emerging out of silence
      Maude Casey
    7. PART 3: The Poetry of Silence

    8. Strange Affiliation
      Matthew Clegg
    9. A Poor Poetry: Silence and stillness in Thomas A. Clark's Moschatel poems
      Aled Ganobscik-Williams
    10. Making Worlds out of Silence: A text-world analysis of the unspoken in Not an Ending by Andrew Waterhouse
      Nigel McLoughlin
    11. Firstly, into Silence: Openings into Poetry
      Adrian Buckner
    12. PART 4: Silence as Structure: Prose, Script, and the Unsaid

    13. Silence and the Short Story Form
      Moy McCrory
    14. Graphic Novels as Works of Translation: working as an illustrator
    15. Bob Moulder

    16. Silence and Filmic Prose
      Gregory Heath
    17. Q.A.Q.
    18. Matthew Cheeseman

      PART 5: The Waiting Game

    19. The Silence of Peer Review
      Ailsa Cox

    Appendix 1: Text World Architecture of ‘Not an Ending’

    Biography

    Moy McCrory is Senior Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Derby, UK.

    Simon Heywood is Senior Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Derby, UK.