There is very often a sense of anxiety when one starts something new. Perhaps this is why, for all of the possibilities that they offer, the painter might dread the blank canvas or, more appropriately for us, the writer might fear the empty page.

What, then, of these students as they joined our new twelve-month MA programme? A little nervousness would be expected, perhaps even hoped for: concern is a mark of care, after all. Of course, the programme was not entirely new — its ethos would be familiar to any of our graduates now working around the world, publishing books, editing journals — and the students were hardly just starting either. We’ve always already begun.

The canvas is never really blank, the page never really empty. We are always working in history’s wake, and even if its marks are not always apparent upon the surface, its tow guides our hands nonetheless. There are times when it must be fought, and there are times when we must let ourselves drift, but always we are being carried, and we never quite know — never quite — what we might do next.

What that might be is not for us to say but for these writers to find out, and they shall. Our role, instead, is to allow them the space in which this will happen, a space not to make their own but to share with others. And here you are. Pass it on.

— Jeremy Millar, Head of Programme, Writing MA

A reading by students of extracts from their work will take place on Saturday 1 July, at 15.00, in the new RCA Studio Building, Battersea, Room STU.01.003.

The launch of Extending Family, a publication made with the Foundling Museum, will take place on Tuesday 4 July, at 19.00, at the Water Rats, W1X 8BZ.