Towards a whole riverbed of what may or may not be

Head, Billy (2023) Towards a whole riverbed of what may or may not be. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis is a presentation of the formation of my writing practice as a poet; and of the profound imprint on that practice of spending much of my life between 2007 and 2023 living and working in Antananarivo.

The main body of the thesis comprises writing derived from a notational practice that I established during this period. It is divided into four parts: lohataona, fahavaratra, fararano, and ririnina (Malagasy names for the four seasons in Madagascar). Each of these parts features writing in a variety of registers, drawing on experiences of various kinds, including as a journalist and as a teacher of creative writing in the Anglophone Department at the University of Antananarivo. Across these multiple registers, the writing is also conscious of itself as a working-through of the many questions arising naturally out of its own conception.

Alongside this work, the thesis also features my translations of texts—or of fragments of texts—by five writers whose own practices, in some way or other, have also passed through Antananarivo: Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo’s Nadika tamin’ny alina / Traduit de la Nuit; Jean-Luc Raharimanana’s triptych Enlacement(s); Julia Sørensen’s Cocon-fort; Johary Ravaloson’s Antananarivo intime: carnet de crise; and a Facebook post by Joey Aresoa. These translations are presented as an extension of my writing practice. They also offer an oblique commentary on my own encounters with Antananarivo in lohataona, fahavaratra, fararano, and ririnina.

The thesis presents a collection of photographs; setting up another strand of dialogue with the writing and bringing a reader who is unfamiliar with Antananarivo a touch closer to the origins of the writing.

The thesis also explores what it experiences as a lack of fit, epistemologically speaking, between the above writing as research and the language of the institutional framework into which it is placed here for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. The section away from Descartes looks at work by a handful of contemporary Western writers whose unease with a Western rationalist orientation speaks to this lack of fit. This section includes reflections on some of the potential pitfalls in moving away from this orientation in academic writing. The section [un]ethical matters locates and critiques that same orientation in the language of two procedural checkpoints that this thesis has journeyed through: Probationary Review and Ethical Clearance. This section adopts a mode of inquiry via negative space that is omnipresent in Antananarivo.

The thesis opens with some lyrical writing in the present tense from a stretch of the river Dart in the UK. Written between July 2022 and April 2023, this work is self-consciously experimental in exploring what happens when my writing is disconnected—geographically, at least—from Antananarivo. Interwoven between introductory remarks, it also serves to link the thesis with my notational practice up front; it serves to link the thesis with its title; and so it introduces, too, the fundamentally performative nature of the thesis, which is essential to its functioning. The thesis is not divided into “creative” and “critical”.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	04 Nov 2024 13:56
Last Modified:	04 Nov 2024 13:56
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97458
DOI:

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