Applying for Funds

In order to support applications to the AHRC and other funding bodies, we will be publishing examples of successful proposals provided by individuals and institutions who are kindly agreeing to share this information. We believe that this open forum will, in due course, assist in raising the standard of applications and therefore the degree of overall success within the field of creative writing.

Anyone willing to share successful models (anonymously) in this way, should contact Paul Munden.

Here, below, is the first example we have received.

Research Questions: I have completed six months of my PhD, exploring poetry’s roots in myth and ritual; an understanding of the dichotomy between the ‘natural’ world and cultural forms that seem to define us as humans. Central to these issues is the apparent paradox that language both describes and synthesizes the interlocking realities that make up our experience of the ‘natural’ world. I am now examining: how poetry modulates between actual and virtual realms; how imagined space impacts on our perception of ‘real space’; how the perceived world is interpreted and projected through this dynamic aspect of poetry. I am also examining the role of poetry in relation to ecocritical thinking. In what sense are poems themselves ‘places’ comprising temporal and spatial layers? In what sense is a collection of poems an environmental entity and what is the significance of its constituent parts?

Research Context: I shall expand work begun by Bate, who explores the idea that poetry itself is an environment (Song of the Earth, 2000). Other relevant critical works that address the agency of human imagination and the role of poetry in constructing actual, virtual and intellectual space include: Yi Fu Tan who examines the idea of ‘space and place’; Ecocriticism by Greg Garrard; Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard; Building, Dwelling, Thinking by Martin Heidegger (from Poetry, Language and Thought), The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney. Poets whose work I shall draw on include Gary Snyder, Eavan Boland, the Romantic poets, John Clare, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Garcia Federico Lorca and contemporary poetry by indigenous poets: Joy Harjo and Joseph Bruchac et al.

Research Methods and Critical Approach: 80% of the PhD is the creation of a new poetry collection and is defined as ‘research through practice’. My research questions will be addressed through writing new poems and reflexive strategies encompassing creative and critical readings. This method synthesises formal aspects of research ?" critical reading, interviews, field work, annotation - with the rigorous compositional process of editing, drafting and re-drafting. Responses to that process form entries in my Writing Journal and I will draw upon these in writing my Critical Reflection (20% of the PhD).

My poetry has an affinity with harmonic and percussive aspects of jazz in its structure and transformative trajectory and I am exploring structural aspects of composition through analysing patterns of vocabulary, meaning, motifs and refrains. My critical study is a close analysis of my own praxis in relation to musical form and my themes of ecological awareness, drawing initially upon poets and critics listed above, widening my frame of reference as my study requires. I am also keeping a Reading Log and Bibliography. I have arranged interviews with poets whose work also explores the issues I am engaged with. In May I am taking part in an International Women’s Arts Festival, participating in a panel discussion, exploring the issues of ‘Our Landscape/Our Selves.’