21 Christopher Leary’s “Composing the Anthology: An Exercise in Patchwriting”
Writing Spaces Volume 1
Patchwriting, or the practice of taking words and sentences from the writings of different authors and combing them together to create something new, is often associated with plagiarism and cheating. Christopher Leary, however, outlines their experimentation with patchwriting and “found poetry” to find ways to refresh and reflect upon writing. Leary argues that “One of the things you come to realize as a patchwriter is that the shifting boundaries between writing, editing, and cheating are not problems you need to resolve, but rather opportunities you can exploit.” These sentiments extend to having students create anthologies of different writers in their writing class. While the students are not actually doing the writing themselves, Leary suggests that this exercise provides students with opportunities to engage with texts in unusual and new ways, reading each carefully and meticulously curating their anthology based on how the different writings fit with one another. This chapter provides composition students with a new way of thinking about how they engage with the different texts they encounter in the classroom, as well as to rethink how those texts fit in with their own goals as writers.
“Patchwriting was a mode I gravitated toward while studying for a degree in English at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Underemployed, single, without the kind of budget that would allow me to really partake in New York’s ‘nightlife,’ without any cable TV or Internet access, I had, during much of this time, nothing to entertain myself in my bare apartment except for a bookshelf full of books.”
MLA Citation Examples
Works Cited
Leary, Christopher. “Composing the Anthology: An Exercise in Patchwriting.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 1, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 225-234.
In-text citation
“Patchwriting was a mode I gravitated toward while studying for a degree in English at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Underemployed, single, without the kind of budget that would allow me to really partake in New York’s ‘nightlife,’ without any cable TV or Internet access, I had, during much of this time, nothing to entertain myself in my bare apartment except for a bookshelf full of books” (225-226).
References
Leary, C. (2010). Composing the anthology: An exercise in patchwriting.” In Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky (Eds.), Writing spaces: Readings on writing, vol. 1 (pp. 225-234). New York: Parlor Press.
In-text citation
“Patchwriting was a mode I gravitated toward while studying for a degree in English at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Underemployed, single, without the kind of budget that would allow me to really partake in New York’s ‘nightlife,’ without any cable TV or Internet access, I had, during much of this time, nothing to entertain myself in my bare apartment except for a bookshelf full of books” (225-226).
Chicago Citation Examples
Bibliography
Leary, Christopher. “Composing the Anthology: An Exercise in Patchwriting,” in Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing Volume 1, ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky (New York: Parlor Press, 2010), 225-234.
In-text citation
“Patchwriting was a mode I gravitated toward while studying for a degree in English at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Underemployed, single, without the kind of budget that would allow me to really partake in New York’s ‘nightlife,’ without any cable TV or Internet access, I had, during much of this time, nothing to entertain myself in my bare apartment except for a bookshelf full of books” (225-226).