The effect of embodied knowing in walking essays and a writer walking : a critical and creative thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 16th March 2028

Abstract

This Master’s thesis has two components, a creative part and a critical essay. In the critical essay, I explore Nic Low’s Uprising and Kathleen Jamie’s “Airds Moss” through an ecocritical lens informed by postcolonial theory. In particular, I read the texts closely to examine how Low and Jamie represent nature, wilderness and the wild in their work and to what effect. Both Low and Jamie incorporate themselves into nature through the bodily experience of walking. I argue that the embodied activity of walking in a specific place allows the walker writer to accurately observe and depict environmental complexity, avoiding generalised or idealised nature writing. Jamie and Low closely observe the natural world in order to render the environment accurately. They also employ metaphor to defamiliarise what they describe with the effect that the reader sees or senses that world anew. The creative component of the thesis, A Writer Walking, is a collection of five personal essays linked by the theme of walking in Aotearoa and two mini essays that develop some of the more personal threads in the walking essays. My essays explore the ways in which walking fosters noticing and noticing is a form of resistance to the loss of history and to the lack of care for the natural world.