Craft Consciousness and Artistic Practice in Creative Writing by Ben Ristow (review)

Reviewed by: Craft Consciousness and Artistic Practice in Creative Writing by Ben Ristow Katy Mahood Craft Consciousness and Artistic Practice in Creative Writing. By Ben Ristow. (Research in Creative Writing) London: Bloomsbury. 2022. xi+191 pp. £85. ISBN 978–1–350–12068–6. In this rigorous and engaging monograph, Ben Ristow argues for a more capacious definition of craft as a way of opening the door to a diverse generation of writers. In the outcome-focused and professionalized world of the MFA (Master of Fine Arts), the literary artefact is afforded a higher value than the process of writing. Within these programmes writing is critiqued through the workshop, an established format in which writers bear silent witness to discussion of their work. Craft is judged against the literary conventions of canonical texts. Such focus on texts, Ristow says, narrows the artistic process, since it sustains the oppositional relationship between craft and knowledge. The first chapter of Craft Consciousness reviews existing research to explore how craft historically aligns with the messier 'feminized' world of process. The arts and crafts movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries positioned craft as a radical political challenger to the aesthetic status quo. Although this radicalism is complicated by the privilege of its flag-bearers, Morris and Ruskin End Page 249 hardly disrupted the procession of educated men in the world of fine art. However, a process philosophy, in which craft is valued as part of literary creation, rather than simply a means to the end-piece, might destabilize the contemporary creative writing course. Ideas of genre and form, and even the notion of what a writer is, can be radically reshaped when we shift our attention from outcome to process. Or to put it another way: instead of teaching students how to write certain kinds of text, we should teach them how to practise as writers. What most MFA programmes teach as craft, says Ristow, is technique, the values and conventions of which are learnt through the study of literary texts. These conventions carry a vestige of neutrality, but on closer inspection they are revealed as not neutral at all. This materialist focus on canonical texts limits ideas about what craft is and should be, since it is defined through the lens of the dominant literary discourse. When craft is defined in these terms it excludes students whose practice reflects racialized, genderized, or differently abled experience. Craft consciousness is the answer that this book proposes. Ristow is clear that he raises more questions than answers—but, then, to offer too much certainty would be to perpetuate the kind of oppositional thinking that Craft Consciousness seeks to disrupt. Instead, Ristow's expansive exploration enacts the argument that the book is making: namely, that craft is a process of consciousness, an act of becoming, and not a Haynes Manual for writing. With six thought experiments the book begins a conversation about the way craft has been marginalized in higher education, exploring its philosophical grounding and offering a historical reframing that realigns literary values. 'To create an alternative to dominant craft,' Ristow writes, 'writers have to see differently' (p. 189). In its third chapter, Craft Consciousness offers a qualitative study of artistic experiences, including those of songwriters and furniture makers. The book is careful not to fall into the trap it has identified. It sets out to widen the definitions of craft, to recognize its revolutionary potential, and to show how this might be practically achieved within higher education. The fact that it is a book and not, say, a series of workshops makes this an impressively tricky feat to pull off. Nevertheless, in the integrated structure of personal story, meticulous research, and eclectic real-life case studies, Ristow models the kind of academic dynamism that might indeed inspire a new way of seeing, teaching, and writing. Katy Mahood University of the West of England, Bristol Copyright © 2024 The Modern Humanities Research Association