essay, essai, assay

The essay, for many, exists as a form of writing associated with assessment and examination that bears little resemblance to its original literary expression of risk-taking: to "essayer" (from "essai"), to take thinking on an adventure, to "assay" truth however contingent. Writing an essay 'is mastering an art -- and it is an art -- which ought to be valued as highly as poetry and short story writing, an art that sometimes appears to be a poor relation but is in fact at the root of all the other literary arts, and of their evaluation.' (Michael Schmidt, PNR & Carcanet) At Dundee we've started teaching creative essaying, and as we're all learning to write essays again, here are some marvelous work all produced by our creative writing students essaying.

Wanting: Essay Fragments (Winner of the 2022 PNR prize for Creative Essaying at the University of Dundee)

Burden Goldilocks produces prophesied curls, Snow White becomes a pearly corpse, Thumbelina never grows beyond her moniker. “What’s my name?” The Queen speaks the legendary word and Rumpelstiltskin, crooked imp, boils. Hops on stilt-thin legs, hide splitting. Repel-stilt-skin. I gobble fairy-tales like chocolates, plump with self-appointed expertise. Evil girls pretend to be princesses, masquerade as Read More

Secrets found in the deep by Thomasin Collins (Winner of the 2020 PNR prize for Creative Essaying at the University of Dundee)

‘The story opens when I go to the gallery with you.’ I walked in with you. We were chatting, but I was only half-listening. I was distracted by the sculptures in the cabinets and the brightly painted mural on the wall. They faded behind me as we continued to walk and as I stepped up Read More

Unpacking by Jamie Cameron

I have a box of memories. It’s a square brown box – one of those used for moving to a new house, ‘memories’ scrawled on one side in black ink. For years it moved with me and my partner from flat to flat, accumulating a little more in weight each year as we collected little Read More

Essay Fragments by Elisabeth Husum

Mirror Love I stare at the stolid girl in the mirror. Her long, dark, hair hangs awkwardly over a warm face with blue eyes. Exactly like her mother’s. As the years go by, she looks more like her mother and less like the little girl who walked around hand-in-hand with her daddy, dancing with her Read More

Essay Fragments by Kristyn Leonard

Corn Feverfew III, 1960 You have to search to find this painting. In a gallery full of large pieces and overbearing color, it takes a backseat. Its message is dulled, pushed down, overpowered by others. The greens are smeared with brown and gray, highlights few and far between, yet the more you look, the deeper Read More

Living Between Places by Amy Turnbull

The grand spectacle of a sweeping external stone stair adorns the outside of the McManus galleries. Its aging sandstone watches over me as I move towards it, only to be guided to the side entrance. At first, the McManus appears as another conventional art gallery, but now something more seems to be lurking inside. Modern Read More

Essay fragments by Liam Wright

Displaced Drifting through a little hall of renaissance pieces, the frames of gold, green and grey only hold me briefly. There, on the left-hand side of the gallery from the entrance. Untitled, 1975. Four or five brush strokes create a curtain-thick concrete wall of translucent paint. Over it, a spill. Deeper black, latching on with Read More

Archaeological Dig by Sienna Taggart

Archeology or Archaeology /ˌɑːkɪˈɒlədʒi/ noun. the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites, and the analysis of artefacts and other physical remains. . . . The wind blows and whittles away at the earth. Invisible tendrils leave behind dust to settle and coat the forgotten layer upon layer in powdery particles. Read More

‘Reconstruction’ by Alice Winterburn

Bullet Point Are all repeated acts what make me who I am? It seems so, with the changes I make just being added to the list. Even if I scratch one off, there are always more to add. The clothes I won’t throw away The perfume I rarely use The overused baking tray and my Read More

‘Colours’: A lyric memoir-essay by Rebecca Arthur

If I were a painter I should paint these first impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green. (Virginia Woolf) [1] Blue I can paint my earliest memory in blue – my memory of the jam jar I dropped at my parents’ feet after being so certain I Read More