| York St John University | University in the Heart of York | Search | Site Map |

We use cookies on our website to provide you with the best possible user experience. Disabling these cookies may prevent our site from working efficiently. To find out more about our cookies read our privacy policy.

Creative Writing - Research informed

Staff research interests and expertise underpin the entire Creative Writing programme. Staff have published in the genres of poetry and the novel – there are modules at Level 2 dedicated to poetry and to prose, while the Level 1 module Writing to Order draws in part on the experience of published writers in meeting deadlines and other requirements that publishers and/or the form of writing chosen may impose. Students on the programme can expect learning and teaching to be informed by these experiences. However, staff also have academic research qualifications – one member of staff was one of the first to gain a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at Sussex University. The need which all staff recognise for creative writers to be self-critical is something which is explored in the Level 3 module Critiquing Writing – again, staff have both experience and research into this.

 

Tanka&Art

Creative Writing staff were involved in a project in which students worked with York St John’s Japan Project Officer to create English-language versions of a range of Japanese poetic forms, such as the well-known haiku and less familiar forms such as tanka. A group of interested staff and students participated in a ‘nijuuin renga’, a kind of poetic collaboration resulting in the production of a twenty-verse poem. This event was held in the picturesque gardens of York’s medieval Treasurer’s House, a short walk from the University.

 

Abi Curtis

Abi Curtis specialises in creative writing, and has research interests in psychoanalysis, fiction and poetry. She was one of the first to gain a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Sussex, and went on to teach there until 2010 when she joined YSJ. In 2004 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors for poets under 30, and her first collection, Unexpected Weather, was a winner of Salt Publishing’s inaugural Crashaw Prize, and shortlisted for the London Festival Fringe Poetry Award 2010.

 

 

Visiting Professor Jack Mapanje

Jack MapanjeMalawian poet Jack Mapanje joined the Department of English at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, in 1975, first as a lecturer, then as Head of the Department of English. He has a BA and Diploma in Education from the University of Malawi, an M.Phil. in English and Education from The Institute of Education London, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from University College London. His first collection of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods, was published in the UK in 1981 and withdrawn from bookshops, libraries and all institutions of learning in Malawi in June 1985. He was imprisoned without trial or charge by the Malawian government in 1987, and although many writers, including Harold Pinter, Wole Soyinka, Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky, campaigned for his release, he was not freed until 1991. The poems in The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) were composed while he was imprisoned, as well as most of his third collection of poetry, Skipping without Ropes (1998). He has edited the introduction Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002) and has also selected and edited with introduction the poetry of David Rabadiri, An African Thunderstorm & Other Poems (2004). His book, The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New & Selected Poems was published in 2004, and his latest poetry collection is Beasts of Nalunga (2007).