“Conceptual writing is a fusion of art and literature. This process-based practice involves works where the idea is the writing and the writing is the idea. It is a non-expressive poetry, a poetry of intellect rather than emotion. Non-conceptual writing involves old-fashioned ‘creative’ prose and there’s more than enough of that material in the world already. Conceptual writing appreciates the wealth of text in the world — from the highfalutin to the everyday — understanding that new meaning can be generated through re-framing extant material. Conceptual writing produces a critical relation to non-conceptual writing, and in so doing opens a space of possibility for new forms of readership. We write through the work of others, comfortable in the knowledge that all writing draws on a host of influences. As James Joyce famously remarked: “I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description.” In conceptual writing the references are explicit rather than implicit.”

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