The Knotweed Factor: Non-Visual Aspects of Poetic Documentary

This thesis is an inquiry into the creative processes of poetry and poetic expression in documentary. The practice-based element is a 60 minute video about a poet living in Exeter, UK, called James Turner. The documentary is entitled, The Knotweed Factor. This written element of the thesis contextualises the investigation as a discourse on blindness and visual impairment. There are few representations of blindness and/or visual impairment (VI) in The Knotweed Factor. Rather, the documentary is concerned with how visual information (e.g., filming a poet) is translated non-visually (e.g., the sound of the poem being recited). It also addresses the issue of how the non-visual is translated into the visual. I argue in this text that blindness/VI is marginalised in visual studies/culture. This is unfortunate because blindness/VI studies provides valuable context for understanding the dynamics of sound and vision in creative media, which is a central concern of The Knotweed Factor. The rationale for taking this approach is as follows: During the editing, it was noticed that Turner (who is sighted) provides a kind of unprompted audio description (AD) of events in