Writing is a dirty enchantment, but you know that. It can bring about change in the world, certainly, and this is something which these students know only too well. Writing is what they have done on their loan application, their visa application, their job applications, their application to join us here, and can we really say that any of these were less important than what they’ve written with us, especially if those writings made it possible for them to write with us?

We have learnt a lot together. Reading, and talking, and listening, mainly listening, to one another, to how a life might be lived, and how a comma within a sentence might open enough of a pause so that that life can be drawn in with one’s breath. When the American writer bell hooks remarked that the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy she was right, of course she was, even if the classroom now extends across kitchen tables, and makeshift desks.

The writing here gathered responds to the world, and in so doing brings about a world to which it can respond, a burnished infolding of wants and needs. You need to read it.

Jeremy Millar
Acting Head of Programme

Twitter: @RCA_Writing
Shop: cwadrca.bigcartel.com
Arc Magazine: arcmagazine.org, @arcmagazine1
Study Writing at the RCA: www.rca.ac.uk