Professor Nicholas Jose

The work is a piece of creative writing that combines essay and poetry as it moves between literary studies, crosscultural writing and translation, and creative pedagogy and practice, with a specific focus on contemporary Asian Australian writing and what that concept means and does in terms of cultural transformation.

Research Contribution

Not only is the argument and approach new (based on scholarly and archival research, interpreted for a general readership), the articulation of this new field of Asian Australian writing is innovative in itself (and my work here and elsewhere has played a significant part in identifying and advocating for this field). Further it generates new knowledge by investigating creative practice experimentally in the context of the classroom, in an international comparative frame. Finally it tests this new knowledge about ‘Writing Asian Poetry in English’ in practice in terms of my own creative writing by generating a set of English sijo (a formal Korean verse form) in relation to my experience teaching Australian literature at Harvard University.

Research Significance

Originally presented by invitation at the Australian Association of Writing Programs annual conference at Byron Bay in 2011 and later at the University of Adelaide ECW staff colloquium, the workshopped final version was accepted for publication in Mascara Literary Review, an online journal based in Australia that represents a leading edge in contemporary writing, especially in relation to poetry in and of the Asia-pacific region. It led to an invitation to speak at the launch of the groundbreaking Contemporary Asian Australian Poets anthology (2013) at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and has resulted in many positive responses from readers, as well as requests to present on this subject at conferences and seminars (University of Stockholm, University of the Philippines etc).
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Record created at source: 21 November 2014