Queer space and place

Friday 25th February 2022 11:00-12:30 | Online (zoom)

Declan Wiffen

What is queer space and how do we cruise through it? How can we think queerly about space as creative writers and teachers of creative writing? Kent University lecturer Declan Wiffen presents his own research on writing queer space and place, and leads a short writing workshop that explores the relationship between queer ecologies and creative writing pedagogy.

Declan Wiffen is Lecturer in Critical Theory and Contemporary Literature at Kent University. Declan’s recent research is aligned with the environmental humanities and queer ecologies, with interests in literature related to marshlands, lichens, plants, and the other-than-human. Current projects include: editing the fifth edition of Litmus, a magazine exploring the interaction between poetry and science, on the cultural repre-sentation of lichen; an article provisionally titled 'Conspiring with Sea Kale: Derek Jarman's unnatural pedagogy' which explores critical plant studies, queer ecologies and staying with the trouble of the environmental crisis; a collaborative essay on masculinity, literature and pedagogy for a collection called The Affects of Pedagogy in Literary Studies edited by Hilary Emmet and Christopher Lloyd. Declan recently designed and led a series of creative writing workshops entitled 'Cruising the Estuary', as part of the 2021 Estuary Festival. The workshops played on the double meaning of cruising—sailing on water & searching for sexual encounters. Disrupting the idea that queer identities are ‘unnatural’, exploring resonances and entanglements between queerness & estuaries, asking what cruising ‘nature’ could look like?

Series Overview

Creative writers teach in schools, universities and the community, on retreats, in theatres and in workshops. Teaching is often a key part of a writer’s career, and there are rich possibilities creative arts education across a huge range of contexts. But how do you teach creative writing? Can you? How can the field be made more accessible? This series offers anyone considering teaching creative writing as part of their career development the opportunity to look in detail at the theory and practice of creative writing pedagogy in a variety of institutional and community settings.

Following on from last year, the series will address the historical principles and contemporary critiques of creative writing pedagogy, and how these are responding to wider institutional and societal developments. It will consider in detail the theory and practice of employing these pedagogical skills both within and outside higher education. Attendees will be invited to reflect on future possibilities and challenges for the development of creative writing teaching, enabling a deeper awareness and knowledge of creative writing as a subject of study, a future career, and a creative practice.

Students are not expected to attend all the sessions, but the series has been designed to allow for an arc of learning from theoretical principles to practical engagement.

The sessions will take place online via Zoom, once a month for the 2021/22 academic year.