Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper details results from the author's interviews with 14 contemporary Australian poets, which he conducted as part of a pilot project investigating art's relation to knowledge. The interviews focussed on the research practices, if any, which these 14 poets engaged in the process of composition. Beginning with an account of responses to the question 'What research do you do?' the article proceeds to investigate how that research manifests at the moment of composition. Questions as to the cognitive processes enacted at the precise moment the words / researches hit the page cast light on a number of distinctive factors including the speed of composition, the relative absence of conscious control at that moment, and the relation this process bears to stage acting.'