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Paul Magee

University of Canberra, Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, Faculty of Arts and Design, Faculty Member

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Paul Magee is a poet and researcher in poetics, who works on the intersections between epistemology and aesthetics. He is author of Stone Postcard, Cube Root of Book and the prose ethnography From Here to Tierra del Fuego. He is currently working on a monograph in the philosophy of composition entitled A Window of Two Seconds: On the Composition of Poetic Thought and a third book of poems, The Collection of Space. Paul is Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra.
Address: Australian Capital Territory, Australia

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Papers by Paul Magee

How do we read Finnegans Wake in silence

James Joyce Quarterly, 2017

The article notes the frequency with which commentators suggest that Finnegans Wake is best exper... more The article notes the frequency with which commentators suggest that Finnegans Wake is best experienced when read aloud. The assumption seems to be that the book is not heard when read in silence. I turn to the science of silent reading to show that many of the most salient features of the book’s soundscape are of the sort found likely to elicit active subvocal rehearsal when read in silence. Having made that case, I proceed to consider the fact that the voice with which we read in silence is also the voice with which we think. What does it mean to have Finnegans Wake accompany us there?

Excerpt of poems from Stone Postcard

Stone Postcard (John Leonard Press: Elwood, 2014), 2014

Excerpt of poems from Cube Root of Book

Cube Root of Book (John Leonard Press: Elwood, 2006), 2006

How can each word be irreplaceable? Is Coleridge's claim absurd?

Philosophy and Literature, 2017

The article considers Coleridge’s comment that in the best poetry one cannot change a single word... more The article considers Coleridge’s comment that in the best poetry one cannot change a single word. It compares Kant’s seemingly opposed insistence that ideas of perfection have little role in our judgments of beauty. Proposing that Coleridge’s and Kant’s positions are in fact compatible, I suggest that this is due to the “thingly quality” (Heidegger) that pertains to the best work, its mysterious sense of finish. We have no ultimate idea what such a thing is or might do, such that it could be perfect at it. Or changed. Anne Carson’s Nox, a book-length reworking of dictionary entries to each single word of Catullus Poem CI (“Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus. . . ”) is cited as an illustration, but also in query. Is the presence of this irreplaceable, thingly quality any less a matter of taste than beauty itself?

‘We do not know exactly what we are going to say until we have said it’: interview data on how poems are made

New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing , 2016

My paper reflects on 28 in-depth interviews with celebrated Anglophone poets, most from Australia... more My paper reflects on 28 in-depth interviews with celebrated Anglophone poets, most from Australia and the U.S.A. In particular, I reflect on responses to a question that split that field into two opposing camps. It concerned the function of spontaneity in poetic composition. The majority said yes, often quite enthusiastically, to Auden's proposition in Secondary Worlds (1968) that when we 'genuinely speak' we are unaware of what we are about to say; and many also seemed happy to affirm his intimation that this is a key source of poetic value. Those who rejected these ideas were often passionate on the matter as well. The article attempts to account for the causes of their split.

Poetry and risk: On the similarities between recital and composition

Text: The Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , 2015

'Every time,' Brazilian director, teacher, writer and erstwhile politician, Augusto Boal claims,... more 'Every time,' Brazilian director, teacher, writer and erstwhile politician, Augusto Boal claims, 'an actor plays a character, he or she plays it for the first and last time. Like we play every minute of our own lives' (Boal 2002: 38). This article concerns the experiment of making by heart recitals of canonical twentieth century poems a compulsory assessment item in a creative writing unit. It details some surprising results of that experiment. One is that students demonstrated more capacity to develop a confident aesthetic about the rights and wrongs of their peers' recitals than when engaging in similar group discussions about those same students' verse compositions. The paper suggests that this disparity had to do with the students' broad literacy in relation to acting, compared to their relative illiteracy in relation to what can be done in verse. It makes the further claim, with reference to Boal's Games for Actors and Non-Actors (Boal 2002), Stephen Berkoff's I am Hamlet (Berkoff 1989) and other texts, that this situation might not be as hopeless as it sounds. Could it be that by heart recitals brought these students closer to that form of creativity they actually already well know from film, stage and life, but need to get on the page: the one to do with inhabiting the tensions of the moment, and acting them out? For they also seemed to be writing much better poems.

"Something you've already done in the sleep of your life": The relation between poetry writing and acting

Writing in Education, 2016

What distinguishes scholarship from art?

New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing , 2014

The paper concerns Michael Biggs and Daniel Büchler’s 2010 claim that the creative arts doctorate... more The paper concerns Michael Biggs and Daniel Büchler’s 2010 claim that the creative arts doctorate is a contradictory amalgam of two discursive modes, one aimed at translating a research experience into a ‘single, unified answer’ to a problem, the other at eliciting a plurality of responses in diverse audiences through an evocative artifact. I set forth the lines of this critique, and then compare the analysis of scholarly method it is based upon with Jacques Lacan’s fascinatingly similar account of what he calls ‘the university discourse’. My discussion diverges from Biggs and Büchler’s, however, when it comes to considering Lacan’s own writing style, which seems far more geared to eliciting a plurality of responses than presenting a ‘single, unified answer.’ Lacan is, of course, a psychoanalyst. But many of the authors broadly associated with him in this stylistic regard (Derrida, Foucault, Serres, Deleuze, Barthes, among others) are academics. By Biggs and Büchler’s analysis, they write as artists. This is curious, given that we cite them as our pre-eminent academic authorities. I reflect on how we might have to nuance Biggs and Büchler’s distinction to accommodate this paradox, and further consider its implications for the style of humanities scholarship an exegesis might best assume, to satisfy critiques like theirs.

Poetry as extorreor monolothe: Finnegans Wake on Bakhtin

Cordite Scholarly , 2013

This paper considers the distinctive voicing of scholarly prose. It does so via reflection on Jam... more This paper considers the distinctive voicing of scholarly prose. It does so via reflection on James Joyce’s caricature of scholarly style in Chapter 5 of Book 1 of Finnegans Wake (‘If the proverbial bishop of our holy and undivided with this me ken or no me ken Zot is the Quiztune havvermashed had his twoe nails on the head we are in for a sequentiality of improbable possibles though possibly nobody after having grubbed up a lock of cwold cworn aboove his subject probably in Harrystotalies or the vivle will go out of his way to applaud him on the onboiassed back of his remark’). Joyce’s figuring of the scholar’s aspiration to monologue provides a new angle on Mikhail Bakhtin’s relatively little-discussed, highly pejorative theory of lyric poetry. For Bakhtin, lyric creativity is in fact, and nowhere moreso than in the avant-garde, an aspiration to monologue (‘No matter what ‘agonies of the word’ the poet endured in the process of creation, in the finished work language is an obedient organ, fully adequate to the author’s intention’). I argue, with help from the Joycean text, that what Bakhtin has really done in his writings on the topic is to confuse the lyric I with the academic one, the bearer of his own analysis.

‘Human canvas’, a review essay on Invention in the Real: Papers of the Freudian School of Melbourne, Vol. XXIV, Ed. Linda Clifton (London: Karnac, 2012)

Australian Humanities Review , 2012

Poetry as a physics of power

Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Culture, 2009

Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach were written in Brussels in 1845. They occupy just three pages of the ... more Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach were written in Brussels in 1845. They occupy just three pages of the fifty volume Collected Works, and comprise Marx’s call for an exit from philosophy and an embrace of revolutionary agitation. A series of terse formulations, the Theses begin in the highly abstracted language of idealist philosophy, and become increasingly shorter, and closer to the directness of political rhetoric. Thesis XI, the final and most famous, states:

Beyond Accountability, co-editor’s Introduction to Beyond Practice-led Research

Beyond Practice-led Research, Special Issue of Text: The Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , 2012

The scholarly affair is self-love

Out of the Ruins, The University to Come, Special issue of Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies , 2012

Is poetry research?

Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2009

This paper details results from the author's interviews with 14 contemporary Australian poets, wh... more 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.

John Howard's Body

Cultural Studies Review , 2007

Do we really need to work more creatively?

Arena Journal, 2007

Quartet: On the theme of to portray is to betray

Cultural Studies Review, 2004

Introduction: foreign cookbooks

Postcolonial Studies, Jan 23, 2005

How do we read Finnegans Wake in silence

James Joyce Quarterly, 2017

The article notes the frequency with which commentators suggest that Finnegans Wake is best exper... more The article notes the frequency with which commentators suggest that Finnegans Wake is best experienced when read aloud. The assumption seems to be that the book is not heard when read in silence. I turn to the science of silent reading to show that many of the most salient features of the book’s soundscape are of the sort found likely to elicit active subvocal rehearsal when read in silence. Having made that case, I proceed to consider the fact that the voice with which we read in silence is also the voice with which we think. What does it mean to have Finnegans Wake accompany us there?

Excerpt of poems from Stone Postcard

Stone Postcard (John Leonard Press: Elwood, 2014), 2014

Excerpt of poems from Cube Root of Book

Cube Root of Book (John Leonard Press: Elwood, 2006), 2006

How can each word be irreplaceable? Is Coleridge's claim absurd?

Philosophy and Literature, 2017

The article considers Coleridge’s comment that in the best poetry one cannot change a single word... more The article considers Coleridge’s comment that in the best poetry one cannot change a single word. It compares Kant’s seemingly opposed insistence that ideas of perfection have little role in our judgments of beauty. Proposing that Coleridge’s and Kant’s positions are in fact compatible, I suggest that this is due to the “thingly quality” (Heidegger) that pertains to the best work, its mysterious sense of finish. We have no ultimate idea what such a thing is or might do, such that it could be perfect at it. Or changed. Anne Carson’s Nox, a book-length reworking of dictionary entries to each single word of Catullus Poem CI (“Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus. . . ”) is cited as an illustration, but also in query. Is the presence of this irreplaceable, thingly quality any less a matter of taste than beauty itself?

‘We do not know exactly what we are going to say until we have said it’: interview data on how poems are made

New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing , 2016

My paper reflects on 28 in-depth interviews with celebrated Anglophone poets, most from Australia... more My paper reflects on 28 in-depth interviews with celebrated Anglophone poets, most from Australia and the U.S.A. In particular, I reflect on responses to a question that split that field into two opposing camps. It concerned the function of spontaneity in poetic composition. The majority said yes, often quite enthusiastically, to Auden's proposition in Secondary Worlds (1968) that when we 'genuinely speak' we are unaware of what we are about to say; and many also seemed happy to affirm his intimation that this is a key source of poetic value. Those who rejected these ideas were often passionate on the matter as well. The article attempts to account for the causes of their split.

Poetry and risk: On the similarities between recital and composition

Text: The Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , 2015

'Every time,' Brazilian director, teacher, writer and erstwhile politician, Augusto Boal claims,... more 'Every time,' Brazilian director, teacher, writer and erstwhile politician, Augusto Boal claims, 'an actor plays a character, he or she plays it for the first and last time. Like we play every minute of our own lives' (Boal 2002: 38). This article concerns the experiment of making by heart recitals of canonical twentieth century poems a compulsory assessment item in a creative writing unit. It details some surprising results of that experiment. One is that students demonstrated more capacity to develop a confident aesthetic about the rights and wrongs of their peers' recitals than when engaging in similar group discussions about those same students' verse compositions. The paper suggests that this disparity had to do with the students' broad literacy in relation to acting, compared to their relative illiteracy in relation to what can be done in verse. It makes the further claim, with reference to Boal's Games for Actors and Non-Actors (Boal 2002), Stephen Berkoff's I am Hamlet (Berkoff 1989) and other texts, that this situation might not be as hopeless as it sounds. Could it be that by heart recitals brought these students closer to that form of creativity they actually already well know from film, stage and life, but need to get on the page: the one to do with inhabiting the tensions of the moment, and acting them out? For they also seemed to be writing much better poems.

"Something you've already done in the sleep of your life": The relation between poetry writing and acting

Writing in Education, 2016

What distinguishes scholarship from art?

New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing , 2014

The paper concerns Michael Biggs and Daniel Büchler’s 2010 claim that the creative arts doctorate... more The paper concerns Michael Biggs and Daniel Büchler’s 2010 claim that the creative arts doctorate is a contradictory amalgam of two discursive modes, one aimed at translating a research experience into a ‘single, unified answer’ to a problem, the other at eliciting a plurality of responses in diverse audiences through an evocative artifact. I set forth the lines of this critique, and then compare the analysis of scholarly method it is based upon with Jacques Lacan’s fascinatingly similar account of what he calls ‘the university discourse’. My discussion diverges from Biggs and Büchler’s, however, when it comes to considering Lacan’s own writing style, which seems far more geared to eliciting a plurality of responses than presenting a ‘single, unified answer.’ Lacan is, of course, a psychoanalyst. But many of the authors broadly associated with him in this stylistic regard (Derrida, Foucault, Serres, Deleuze, Barthes, among others) are academics. By Biggs and Büchler’s analysis, they write as artists. This is curious, given that we cite them as our pre-eminent academic authorities. I reflect on how we might have to nuance Biggs and Büchler’s distinction to accommodate this paradox, and further consider its implications for the style of humanities scholarship an exegesis might best assume, to satisfy critiques like theirs.

Poetry as extorreor monolothe: Finnegans Wake on Bakhtin

Cordite Scholarly , 2013

This paper considers the distinctive voicing of scholarly prose. It does so via reflection on Jam... more This paper considers the distinctive voicing of scholarly prose. It does so via reflection on James Joyce’s caricature of scholarly style in Chapter 5 of Book 1 of Finnegans Wake (‘If the proverbial bishop of our holy and undivided with this me ken or no me ken Zot is the Quiztune havvermashed had his twoe nails on the head we are in for a sequentiality of improbable possibles though possibly nobody after having grubbed up a lock of cwold cworn aboove his subject probably in Harrystotalies or the vivle will go out of his way to applaud him on the onboiassed back of his remark’). Joyce’s figuring of the scholar’s aspiration to monologue provides a new angle on Mikhail Bakhtin’s relatively little-discussed, highly pejorative theory of lyric poetry. For Bakhtin, lyric creativity is in fact, and nowhere moreso than in the avant-garde, an aspiration to monologue (‘No matter what ‘agonies of the word’ the poet endured in the process of creation, in the finished work language is an obedient organ, fully adequate to the author’s intention’). I argue, with help from the Joycean text, that what Bakhtin has really done in his writings on the topic is to confuse the lyric I with the academic one, the bearer of his own analysis.

‘Human canvas’, a review essay on Invention in the Real: Papers of the Freudian School of Melbourne, Vol. XXIV, Ed. Linda Clifton (London: Karnac, 2012)

Australian Humanities Review , 2012

Poetry as a physics of power

Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Culture, 2009

Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach were written in Brussels in 1845. They occupy just three pages of the ... more Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach were written in Brussels in 1845. They occupy just three pages of the fifty volume Collected Works, and comprise Marx’s call for an exit from philosophy and an embrace of revolutionary agitation. A series of terse formulations, the Theses begin in the highly abstracted language of idealist philosophy, and become increasingly shorter, and closer to the directness of political rhetoric. Thesis XI, the final and most famous, states:

Beyond Accountability, co-editor’s Introduction to Beyond Practice-led Research

Beyond Practice-led Research, Special Issue of Text: The Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , 2012

The scholarly affair is self-love

Out of the Ruins, The University to Come, Special issue of Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies , 2012

Is poetry research?

Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2009

This paper details results from the author's interviews with 14 contemporary Australian poets, wh... more 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.

John Howard's Body

Cultural Studies Review , 2007

Do we really need to work more creatively?

Arena Journal, 2007

Quartet: On the theme of to portray is to betray

Cultural Studies Review, 2004

Introduction: foreign cookbooks

Postcolonial Studies, Jan 23, 2005