Lessons learned
Writer Éilís Ní Dhuibhne has a great description of what a creative-writing course is – a literary beehive. She and poet Katie Donovan give interesting views on the subject in two recent anthologies of new work by students who’ve taken the creative-writing-course route.
Ní Dhuibhne (below) coins her phrase in the introduction to Anthology, Baby (edited by Ruth Bolger, €10), a volume of the prose and poetry of the 2007/08 UCD MA in creative writing course, where she teaches.
Acknowledging the scepticism there is in some quarters about the need for university-degree courses in creative writing, Ní Dhuibhne says she never shared it.
“Even before I taught, I knew if there had been an MA in creative writing, in the dim and distant years when I was a student, I would have wanted to take it, rather than the scenic route to writing – which mainly involved not writing.”
She studied English, as many others did, motivated by the wish to be a writer, but looking back she says that bizarrely “writing the stuff seemed to have no connection with studying it”.
The texts one studied, discussed and loved seemed to have been the result of autogenesis: “So hallowed were they that human agency – especially by humans like us, the long-haired youth of Ireland drinking coffee in the Belfield canteen – seemed unlikely.”
Though acknowledging that there is a strong spontaneous element in all creative activity, learning to be aware of what you are doing and how you are doing it does no harm at all, she says.
“We don’t need to worry that examining the creative process will destroy its mysterious source, pollute the dark secret chaos from which art evolves.” When you are setting out as a writer, you need some help, she says, from someone
who has been writing for a while.
Katie Donovan (below) says the teacher of creative writing always feels like a fraud. “Certain tips can be passed along, but in reality all one is doing is providing an enthusiastic framework for the student to begin.” That’s what she’s obviously been doing at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) in Dún Laoghaire.
Her views are in the foreword to Fishing for Change: New Writing from IADT which she edited and which features work from those who’ve done creative writing as part of their English, media and cultural studies degree, as well as some who studied it extramurally and some who write for the college’s online student literary magazine, Mosaic.
How a writer begins, says Donovan, is by searching for something new and different, either from the recesses of the heart or from the outer world. “Older writers know that there are only a very few, not very many new, stories around. The trick is to fish out a new way of telling the story, of grabbing your reader and never letting go.”
Booker panel unveiled
The judging panel for next year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced this week. It is: Lucasta Miller, biographer and critic; Michael Prodger, literary editor of the Sunday Telegraph; John Mullan, academic, journalist and broadcaster, who was a judge for the Best of the Booker earlier this year; and Sue Perkins, comedian and broadcaster.
The broadcaster James Naughtie is chairman. A former chairman of the judges for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, Naughtie is an experienced hand at assisting all around the table to come up with a winning title when the day of judgment dawns.
The panel’s longlist, the “Booker dozen” the 12 (or 13) titles under serious consideration for the prize – will be announced in August.
www.themanbookerprize.com