Preposition as method: creative writing research and prepositional thinking, methodologically speaking

Abstract

New methodological approaches in creative writing are making significant contributions to the field, particularly those that take risks, such as essaying through acupuncture, the notion of ‘essayesque dismemoir', or ‘transautobiography of the becoming-body'. This essay, with working examples, explores another methodological approach or experiment, that of the affordances of prepositions in creative thinking or what could be called ‘prepositional thinking'. It begins with Ross Gibson's assertion that the experience of creative research is dynamic and complex: involving immersion, exertion, and reflection. It asks questions: What sort of experimental experience could we formulate in relation to the use of these small grammatical function words in the English language? How might prepositional thinking translate in practice? How might we preposition as method? This essay is a practical guide for the writer-researcher, with a set of working examples, as to how to think with, in, through prepositions, how to use these small words productively and creatively in writing and research. How to reach for and play with prepositions ‘in order to write our way across/over/through bodies, places, times, and wounds’. Prepositions give us language of thought, of process, they reveal what we do not know; but they also are an invitation.

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