ABSTRACT
Researchers that consider writing as a practice or process, rather than a representative space – what Barton and Papen have recently called the 'anthropology of writing' – include both Anglophone and Francophone traditions. Despite the fact that the professional writer who works with Painting Words groups their writing depending on the art work referenced, she told me in interview that one of her tasks was to judge whether a piece of writing could 'stand alone'. In interview Victoria described creative writing as 'satisfying' for its own sake. Victoria's poem is 'made' out of a series of interactions with art works, class members, herself as writer, herself as reader, her memories, her son. Even her own subjectivity, or role, shifts – she is not a stable 'self'. The scraps of paper that Victoria shared with me are private ones that are never revealed to the rest of the group.
