In the early 1990s, creative writing programs in Australia were ‘thrust’ into the university domain by the Dawkins amalgamations. Prior to that, there was no established national focus: no national peak body, no discipline-based research agenda, no political or academic networking, and no statistical analysis to portray the nature of the activity advancing apace on isolated campuses. Compared with the visual and performing arts disciplines, creative writing programs were unorganised and separatist, but they were aware of their potential for the future. This article reviews advances made by Australian university creative writing programs to date and considers some aspects of the situation after 2000 related to teaching and research.

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The delights in ‘explaining again’ about a creative work can be equal to the delights of actually writing it - a point Winterson only subtly admits to, but which Poe initiated, Greene embraced, Nabokov extemporised upon, and Barth is making a career out of. Exegetic activity provides opportunity for postgraduate writers to ‘speak twice’ about the literary nerves of their work, about the creative mechanisms driving it, and about the personal and cultural orientations that inform and frame and guide it. Current student exegetical activity reinvigorates the territory of the preface - a significant territory of information, perspective and debate.

In contemporary literary studies, the term ekphrasis refers almost exclusively to a poem created by a poet looking at a painting. In the visual arts and music it is used more broadly to describe intermedial creative processes where, for example, a painting is inspired by a piece of music, or the composition of a piece of music is inspired by a poem. The ekphrasis concept is based on the ancient Greek ἔκφρασις, which were rhetorical 'description' exercises considered important for developing written and perceptual skills. This article considers the gradual recognition by creative writers, and especially novelists, that ekphrasis is a key aspect of their practice. It examines the original purpose of ekphrasis as a rhetorical exercise, then considers how this was interpreted in the time of the first novel writers. It assesses how the technology that changed the way we see-photographyinfluenced prose writing in the modern era. It looks at how neuroscience and cognitive psychology have attempted to explain what goes on in our minds when we do ekphrasis. And it reports on what writers themselves have said about their visualizing techniques. Overall, this article analyses ekphrasis as a key element in the creative writing process.

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