‘Written Landscape: A Symposium for Scholars and
Writers’
This symposium was held at the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus in Exeter.
The aim of this second symposium was to bring together academics and the writers
with whom we had worked in our writers’ events. Several writers from the Truro
Writer’s Group and the Writing Centre attended, as did a representative from the Fire
River Poets in Somerset.
The morning of the first day was organised around small group discussions. Each
group contained a mixture of academics and writers who discussed a series of themes
that resonated with the broad themes and research questions of the project:
 Creative processes, e.g. Where does inspiration come from? Does inspiration
come from the landscape and place that you find yourself in or the opportunity
to reflect and contemplate in a quite place? Does the notebook become the
source of information and inspiration later on in the writing process? What
literary forms does your writing take? Do some forms require more drafting or
‘processing’ than others?
 Influence of landscape and place, e.g. Is place and setting important to the plot
or characters or action of a piece of writing? How is place invoked? How does
a place work its way into your writing? Do you have a preconceived notion of
place before you come to write about it? If so, where does this come from? Do
you find yourself inadvertently writing in a particular style or drawing on
popular motifs or metaphors in your writing (e.g. Cornwall as a wild place).
 Auto-ethnography, e.g. How do aspects of yourself or your life experience
enter your writing? Do you sometimes write accounts which deal with some
aspect of your own life but which are fictionalised? Have you ever tried to
write about writing?
 Methodology, e.g. What methods are effective in understanding more about
how writers write, the influence of landscape and place and the creative
process? How do we understand the process by which established or canonical
writers write? What can practising creative writers teach us about this process?
Each small group was led by a facilitator. After the workshop discussions, the group
came back together to share their ideas and thoughts. This produced a lively debate
on the nature of inspiration vis-à-vis landscape. This discussion was intriguing for the
geographers present as these issues had not been fully thought through in that
discipline. There was also a debate about the socially constructed nature of landscape
which explored the notion that our view of landscape is not natural, elemental or
organic but a product of social milieu and context. Although this was an argument
familiar to geographers, academics from other disciplines felt that this discussion gave
them significant new insights. The debate moved onto the purpose or role of the
notebook as a means of somehow capturing the moment of inspiration in the
landscape, with responses ranging from a negative view of notebooks was that they
act as a lightening conductor, stripping the ‘flash’ of inspiration of its power, to those
who noted that notebooks helped fallible memories to work! There was some
recognition and concern that language is a very limiting mode of expression. Some
writers argued that language keeps writers separate from the essential essence of what
is seen and felt. This seems to affirm our interest in focusing on the joint importance
of both the text and the writing process.
Finally, the morning’s discussion turned to methodology and to the question of how
academics could usefully research writers and their practices. It was suggested that a
sustained and longitudinal engagement between academics and writers would yield a
better understanding of the nuances, complexities and contradictions of the writing
process. However, the writers argued that they might not welcome such scrutiny,
because if the creative process is laid bare, the mystique of it would be lost and they
might not be able to capture it again.
The symposium also included two afternoon activities on the first day. The first was a
visit to the University of Exeter Special Collections to view manuscript material from
writers associated with the Southwest, including Daphne du Maurier, Arthur Caddick,
Frances Bellerby, Charles Causeley, and Ted Hughes. The viewing was facilitated by
the Head of Special Collections, Dr. Jessica Gardner. It allowed for discussion into
the creative process behind established writers and well-known texts. One highlight
was the first page of du Maurier’s notebook in which she drafted her best-known
novel, Rebecca, which provoked observations on the way in which famous opening
lines may occur much later in the drafting process and not at the initial moment of
inspiration.
The second was a workshop hosted by researchers from Brighton University as part of
the AHRC-funded project on ‘Writing the everyday landscape of the home garden’,
which is also part of the Landscape and Environment programme. This was
constructed as a Mass Observation workshop, with each participant producing a piece
of writing in response to the Mass Observation directive on writing about gardens. A
discussion followed about the nature of the Mass Observation project and the group
also discussed the kind of gardens that are produced by the exercise – public, private,
domestic. The writing exercise highlighted the selective qualities of writing, most
clearly visible in the writing about childhood but also evident in writing about
contemporary activities. Being directed to write about the garden seemed to draw out
some useful observations on the development of memory and its role in the creative
process.
The symposium included a range of papers from various disciplines, including
geography, literary studies, landscape architecture, and environmental psychology, as
well as from scholars who also identified as creative writers. For example, Sue
Edginton (Goldsmith’s College) spoke about her own novel set on a remote Shetland
Island. Edginton explored both the research and imaginative processes involved in
writing this piece and the search for self-love through the imagery of landscape. Other
creative writer/scholars included Andrea Mason (Pacific Lutheran University) and
Jolie Kaytes (Washington State University), Mason read from her unpublished novel
and reflected on how her writing is connected to environment, and how examining her
connection to different kinds of environment has, over time, changed her connection
to environment. Kaytes provided a fascinating discussion interspersed with readings
of her own poetry, called ‘geotropes’ because they have been inspired by keywords in
geomorphology, and which combine scientific terminology with lyrical description,
thus translating the vocabulary of science into the vocabulary of lived moments and
the spatial, temporal, physical, cultural, sensory, and perceptual landscapes in which
those moments are lived. The day ended with Herbert Gottfried’s presentation of his
landscape and poetry project, based on a line of latitude across the entire state of
Massachusetts. Gottfried, Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, collaborated with
photographer Frank Gohlke. They drove, walked, and even paddled Massachusetts
using a hand-held GPS to locate the latitude. Once in the line, they explored that mile,
responding independently to what was found, with the intent of making the
abstraction real by juxtaposing the image and the poem across the land. The result
was a selection of images and poems juxtaposed with each other. Gottfried’s
performance, with its magical lyrics and simple, beautiful images, was a fitting end to
the symposium, reiterating the emphases on creative process, auto-ethnography, and
interdisciplinarity.