Culture and Creativity Seminar Series

The paper addresses the joint role of syntax and meaning in Finnegans Wake, James Joyce’s wildly experimental and strange last novel, published in 1939 and an enigma ever since. As a long line of commentators have pointed out, the Wake’s language may be bamboozling and strange but it possesses what Clive Hart referred to in the 1960s as a ‘fundamental syntactical clarity.’ Developing an argument made in fledgling form in my CCCR seminar on the Wake last year, I show that recognisably grammatical forms import two key elements to Joyce’s seemingly nonsensical work. Firstly, they make it possible to sight read the text: we know how to say strings of words like ‘the meteorpulp of him, the seamless rainbowpeel’ as if we mean them, with all the clarity of cadence that flows from that. Secondly, ‘syntactical clarity’ conveys key outlines of meaning. As Roman Jakobson incisively points out, grammar, including the subcategory of grammar known as syntax, does not just link linguistics elements; in any given language it has the further function of stipulating “aspects of experience that must be expressed.” For instance, however opaque its specific meaning, you cannot use a noun phrase in English—‘the seamless rainbowpeel’—without simultaneously making clear whether the phenomenon it refers to is singular or plural, and definite or indefinite: there is a definite rainbowpeel being referred to here.  Hence the ghostly sense that we get of knowing roughly what is being talked about when reading the Wake, even if we don’t seem to get those sentences at all. We encounter a similar effect when reading English-language journal articles in disciplines we do not understand; or when reading poems. As for the latter, the kinds of ghostly grammatical meanings Jakobson points to and the Wake evinces so dramatically provide the necessary (and necessarily musical) background for new words and phrases to arise and take on meaning. The paper proceeds to argue that in this regard, as in so many others, the extreme that is Finnegans Wake gives us insight into the workings of strangely familiar language more generally.  

Paul Magee’s most recent book is Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought, published in Rowman and Littlefield’s Performance Philosophy series in 2022. A book of verse, Later Unearthed, is forthcoming from Puncher and Wattman in April. Paul is Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra, where he directs the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. 

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to PaulMagee_Presentation.pptx

This seminar introduces the First Nations Collaborative Research Web (the Web), an innovative network of the CCCR developed to raise awareness of the need for collaborative research with First Nations peoples. The key aim of the research and the projects engaged in it is to build and grow this research web in a way that centres First Nations knowledge, people, and practices. Recruiting other First Nations researchers to conduct research is a guiding principle of the web.  

Wendy is a Jerrinja woman employed as the inaugural First Nations Research Fellow with the CCCR. She graduated with a degree in Heritage Management then undertook her honours and PhD, all at UC. She teaches through the Indigenous Studies Minor and is also the curator of the FAD Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts and Artefact Teaching Collection which she uses in her teaching. She researches with a group of First Nations and non-First Nations women from UC, Edith Cowan University and the University of Wollongong. 

The other members of the First Nations Collaborative Research Web are Dr Lisa Fuller, Ashley van den Heuvel, Andraya Stapp-Gaunt and Delephene Fraser. 

The Web was recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Research or Enterprise award at UC’s 2024 Research Excellence Awards. 

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to WendySomerville_Presentation.pptx

Cathy Hope is a Senior Research Fellow in the Health Research Institute, University of Canberra, overseeing public space activation and community engagement for the Connect Up 2617 project – a preventative health research project connecting 18-30 year olds in Belconnen and Bruce. Cathy’s work operates at the intersection of community development, placemaking and research. She has co-facilitated numerous projects with and for the Canberra community and produced multiple government and industry reports to improve people and place outcomes. Cathy led the 2019 national award-winning Haig Park Experiments with a cross-sector consortium, which transformed the once unsafe and unused Canberra green space into a loved community hub.

Kim Huynh At a carer consultation early this year, author and academic Kim Huynh suggested that the new National Carer Strategy should include A Statement from Australias Carers, and that it should be inspired by the gentle and powerful Uluru Statement from the Heart. He said that the language in the Carers Statement should shimmer and help bring the nation together around its three million caregivers. Months later, Kim was commissioned to write the Statement. Through a discussion of the drafting process he will explore the trappings, barriers and necessity for poetic words to transform politics and the bureaucracy. Kim is a politics lecturer and Deputy Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU and an ABC Radio Canberra presenter.

Barbara Walsh is a Senior Research Fellow at the Health Research Institute, University of Canberra, as the project lead for Connect Up 2617 – a preventative community health research project connecting 18-30 year olds in Belconnen and Bruce. Barbara is an educator, researcher and communication and engagement strategist with a long and varied experience in professional communication in the UK, Sydney and Canberra, and in education and research at UC’s Faculty of Arts and Design.

Jessica Kirkness is a writer and academic from Macquarie University. She is the author of The House With All The Lights On, a memoir about growing up with two Deaf grandparents. Her research straddles the intersections of life writing, health, and disability studies. She teaches nonfiction writing, and her current research explores the lived experiences and subjectivities of carers, especially women who care for an intimate partner.

Paul Collis is a Barkindji man. His early life was informed by Barkindji and Kunya and Murawarri, and Wongamara and Nyempa story tellers and artists, who taught him Aboriginal Culture and Law. This background informs Paul’s work on the Story Ground project, running workshops to elicit creative writing on Country. Novelist, poet and Director of Indigenous Engagement in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra, Paul was awarded Elder Uncle of the Year at the All First Nations Awards for 2024.

Paul Magee is Director of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (CCCR) at the University of Canberra. He writes poetry, and has also published extensively on the history, ethnography and philosophy of poetic composition, the links between orality and writing, and the relationship between creativity and traumatic thought. Paul’s long involvement in socially-impactful deployment of Creative Arts for wellbeing and repair includes his decade-long role as a Co-Investigator on the Defence ARRTS Programme and his work with Indigenous communities as a member of the Story Ground team.

Jen Crawford is a poet with an interest in collaboration. Her critical and creative work focusses on the poetics of place and cultural engagement. Jen was Chief Investigator on the major ILA project, Story Ground: Using Oral and Written Story to Engage Indigenous Community Members with University Study, and is a part of the ongoing Story Ground team, working with Indigenous communities in Barkindji, Nyempa, Ngunnawal, Ngamberi and Yuin lands.

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to Writing on Country.pptx

Vic McEwan is an artist, artistic director, and researcher, who works in collaboration with diverse non-arts partners to explore complex, and often difficult themes using sound, video, photography, installation, and performance. His artistic outcomes have toured at venues such as the National Museum of Australia, and Tate Liverpool. Some of these key projects include The Harmonic Oscillator, which investigates the adverse effects of noise in hospital environments and Face to Face: The New Normal, developed in partnership with the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic. Vic sits on the executive of the Arts Health Network NSW/ACT (AHNNA), is a Creative Producer for the Griffith Hospital Redevelopment, was a co-author of the RPA Hospital Curatorial Strategy, and in 2024 provided feedback on the NSW Health and the Arts Framework V2.0. In 2023, Vic became the first artist to complete an arts-led PhD from the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney.​​

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to Vic_McEwan.pptx