I'm going to begin this chapter by talking from the point of view of the taught rather than the teacher. My subject is the effect of the teaching of Creative Writing on one's own creative work. Part of my reason for beginning with myself as Creative Writing student is to identify first hand what can be taught, and part is to pay tribute to a few outstanding teachers.

It's easy to say that craft can be taught, as many Creative Writing teachers do; it's an honourable way out, and certainly craft must be taught. But 'craft' doesn't come in isolation from something else that we also seek to teach, and learn; and the teaching and learning are as inseparable as are the craft and the art; for surely that is the word? But art is unteachable; surely that is also true?

'We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet's crust'. That's Annie Dillard (1984:97), American mystic (for want of a better word) and writer on spiritual matters – again, the language falters. Read Annie Dillard, decide for yourself what she is. But 'waking up' is definitely what there is to do, to teach, to be taught. What is literature for, if not to wake us from the sleep of habit and routine, to remove the film they place and re-place over our senses, feelings, thoughts? And so we teach students about hooking readers with their first line and not letting them go to sleep – to sleep on your feet is the thing to flee, to dream while waking is the thing to court and conjure and command. All our techniques are bent towards this, all our craft is to compel it.