Reading and Writing Index Cixous: Reflections on Creative Writing Research in the Academy

This article presents a creative-critical discussion of creative writing research in the academy. It describes a multimodal research practice that employs a range of materials, technologies, and modes of reading and writing – creative, critical, and creative-critical. In addition, it reflects on being a scholar-practitioner and on the relationship between rigour and research. The nexus of the article is a creative-critical multimodal reading and writing of Index Cixous: Cix Pax (2005), a wordless book of photographs taken by Roni Horn of French writer Hélène Cixous. Through encounters with Horn’s book, creative writing research is presented as an example of Nicholas Royle’s concept of veering (2011), while also exploring its intersection with the writings of Cixous, particularly those texts concerned with seeing, not-seeing and myopia – the focus of an emerging post-doctoral research project. The poetry film presented here is a manifestation of how creative writing research might veer between different modes and media and foster ‘besideness’ to offer new insights into lived experiences of myopia.