From the ground up: Perspectives from “Thinking Writing” classrooms on the critical creative nexus

The “Thinking Writing: Theory and Creativity” postgraduate course at the University of Melbourne asks creative writing students to consider, and practice, the critical-creative nexus. The core questions of the syllabus are: what is the relationship between ideas and practice, between critical and creative, between thinking and writing? Running since 2009, the course sits among many Australian university creative writing programs that aim to equip their students with knowledge of cultural and literary theory. But why is this necessary? And why do many creative writers still find their encounter with capital ‘t’, Theory, so challenging? Our paper explores some of these encounters through a polyvocal enactment, using the experiences of three instructors of “Thinking Writing” to unpack the problematics, inadequacies and fears raised by attempting to be critical theorists and creative writers at the same time. Focussing on historical and personal anecdote as its primary site of elucidation, we map different moments when clarity struck as we find models for how creativity should interact with theory neither singular nor linear.