My Life with the Wave

Research background Cruising, as a cultural practice that depends on observation, has been theorised and practiced in creative writing by Garth Greenwell and J Bryan Lowder. Description, as a creative methodology that depends on observation, has been practiced in creative writing at the Fitzroy Pool by Helen Garner (Aqua Profonda 1981). My Life with the Wave is creative writing that connects these two kinds of looking - the cultural practice of cruising and the writerly practice of description - through writing creative nonfiction set in the queer space of the Fitzroy Pool. Can the queer act of looking and cruising space, and the nonfictional methods of immersion and observation (e.g. as practiced by Garner), be used to comment on and change each other in a work of creative nonfiction? Research contribution Cruising is both an attentive and an ambiguous cultural practice, whereas description of place/space such as that practiced by Garner depends on fixing down details. So how does cruising take shape through language? This creative writing research describes the queer practice of cruising by evoking detail without pinning it down; it obscures aspects of space e.g. place names, character names, time stamps, instead focusing on voice, fluid time and point of view. It puts together a cultural practice and a creative methodology and thereby shows how creative nonfiction can describe an ambiguous space in which queer practices occur. Research significance This research is significant to creative writing because it suggests new methods for describing spaces with uncertain cultural meanings and thereby expands tools available to creative writers. This project was commissioned by and developed through a network of editors at Griffith REVIEW, acknowledged as the 'gold standard' of literary journals, 'Australia's most prestigious literary journal' by local and international reviews. This creative work played a significant role in an ongoing research project, which includes fictional descriptions of the same space, in the novel The Adversary, funded by the Australia Council in 2017 and contracted for publication by Penguin Random House