Writer as perv: bricolage, bowerbirding, observation

ABSTRACT

Recently it was suggested that my creative method (bowerbirding, bricolage, engaged observation) might properly be described as ‘perving’. Affronted, I rejected this accusation. But the idea wouldn’t go away, a question remained. How does observation that informs a story differ from perving or voyeurism? Creative writers lurk everywhere, observing and eavesdropping for quirks and foibles to bring life to their stories. I review my creative methodology against the current discourse about the eclectic methods of enquiry through which writers interrogate the world, including thievery, plagiarism, borrowing, voyeurism, perving, to assess the validity of this charge of perversion.

KEYWORDS:

• Perving
• method
• bowerbirding
• bricolage
• observation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Pamela Greet is a Doctorate of Creative Arts student at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Having worked with displaced people across five continents she believes that a grounded sense of self, of belonging, is indivisible from the sense of place. Her fiction investigates how people and place intersect in suburban Australia. She is interested in how suburban spaces both inside and outside, shape social connection, agency and identity.