"The Answer, as well as a technique": A Reflection on Editorial, Creative, and Critical Labor

This article explores the way that the practices of copy-editing technical journals, composing poetry, and ecocritical research can complement one another, drawing on individual professional, creative, and academic experience. It reports on an exercise devised to generate material for a poem by collating edits from technical copy, and works through this to compose a piece based on the UK government's 2018 environment plan. Critical reflections are then offered on the resultant text and the value of the process, with some proposals for further application.