Students on the third-year module EN729 Poetry Beyond Text: Image, Installation, Performance are sharing their independent creative-critical research projects in a Creative-Critical Showcase hosted on the Writing Minds Project website.
Writing Minds, created by Dr Eleanor Perry, is a virtual space where anyone – Kent students, university applicants, and aspiring writers – can participate in, and benefit from, creative and experimental writing exercises that might provide a “pocket to breathe,” or a means to “blow off creative steam.” The Creative-Critical Showcase, which is currently hosted on the website, provides a space for some of the students on one of our third-year module Poetry Beyond Text: Image, Installation, Performance to share their work.
Contemporary poetry often invites us to think of poems as something more than just words printed on a page. During the module, students had the opportunity to examine a range of different poetic works that, in one way or another, go ‘beyond text,’ often intersecting with other art forms and media. For instance, among other subjects, students explored the intersections between poetry and music in Linton Kwesi Johnson‘s Bass Culture; between poetry and theatre in Claudia Rankine‘s The Provenance of Beauty; between poetry and performance in spoken word poetry; between poetry and sculpture, or artistic objects in Kent’s Special Collections; between poetry and memory in Allen Fisher‘s Blood Bone Brain; and between poetry and film in a range of different texts.
Students engaged with these texts, and the interdisciplinary practices that informed and created them, on both a critical and a creative level. In other words, during the module, students developed their ability to interact with, and respond, to texts both critically and imaginatively. Part of the module’s assessment involved a research project that could be either critical, creative, or a hybrid of both approaches, that challenged the notion of poetry as ‘poems.’ Many of the students went on to develop their projects after the module had finished.
The Creative-Critical Showcase includes work by Ryan McDowell, Morgan Rodway-Wing, Sophie Colclough, Emily Rafferty, all studying BA (Hons) English and American Literature (now BA (Hons) English Literature), and Kira Birch and Elle Dean who both study BA (Hons) English and American Literature and Creative Writing (now BA (Hons) English Literature and Creative Writing).
The Showcase can be viewed on the Writing Minds website, at the the link below. Please be mindful of the content warning at the bottom of the main page; many of the projects engage with issues surrounding mental health and some readers may find certain material triggering:
https://www.writingmindscommunity.com/creative-critical-showcase