Hot concrete poetics: techniques for creative/academic writing with ambient heat

This article draws on – and extends – a paper from the 2025 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA) conference. I explore how a process-based approach can support creative and/or academic writers to write with/in heat, engaging with atmospheric effects that elude direct representation. In my creative practice research on literary ambiance, I have moved my focus from content (what texts describe) towards process (what texts do). As a result, my in-situ creative writing research projects make space for what arises between/around/outside words, working from encounters with subtle atmospheric effects. This approach is influenced by Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton on weathering and Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno on literary tone, among other writing that attends to what is often treated as ‘background’. This paper contextualizes this ambient writing ethos, before presenting original creative texts that demonstrate three emergent techniques for writing with heat. These texts engage with heat through conduction (tactility), convection (fluidity), and radiation (emanation). I conclude by considering how such creative techniques could apply to academic writing, especially when words seem to fail.