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

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 Daydreams and Solitude: Working the silent spaceLuke M. Thompson PART 2: History and Traditions Restored to his Kingdom: Reading the silences of medieval narrative Simon Heywood Silver Threads of Fear: Restoring the agency of female protagonists in Jewish women's storytelling traditions Simon Heywood The Roaring Ghosts: Depictions of female silence and its oppositionsMoy McCrory Re-Witching Writing: Emerging out of silenceMaude Casey PART 3: The Poetry of Silence Strange AffiliationMatthew Clegg A Poor Poetry: Silence and stillness in Thomas A. Clark's Moschatel poemsAled Ganobscik-Williams Making Worlds out of Silence: A text-world analysis of the unspoken in Not an Ending by Andrew WaterhouseNigel McLoughlin Firstly, into Silence: Openings into PoetryAdrian Buckner PART 4: Silence as Structure: Prose, Script, and the Unsaid Silence and the Short Story FormMoy McCrory Graphic Novels as Works of Translation: working as an illustrator Bob Moulder Silence and Filmic ProseGregory Heath Q.A.Q. Matthew Cheeseman PART 5: The Waiting Game The Silence of Peer ReviewAilsa Cox Appendix 1: Text World Architecture of ‘Not an Ending’

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.