In April we were thrilled to bring together an interdisciplinary team of researchers, thinkers and creatives from within and beyond the university, for a workshop led by poet Alyson Hallett and illustrator Edie Woolf.
The intention of the workshop was to spend time interacting with and responding to the rocks that will be returned to Aotearoa, following an agreement with a Māori tribe when they were first taken from the land and brought to the UK for research. Rather than replicating our usual methods or assumptions, in this workshop the aim was to seek new or different ways of meeting rock with a focus on listening and being receptive. What might we learn from rock if we listen to what it has to say? How can our feelings about rock inform our understandings and interpretations? While this may sound simple, it can be surprisingly difficult to step outside of routine ways of working.
To get the workshop started, Alyson invited everyone on a field trip into the depths of the Earth Sciences department, to meet the rocks in their current setting: the basement.
Can you and the rock find each other?
The group were invited to each choose a rock from the collection of dusty bags, each of which contained multiple rocks from the same location, and to spend time getting to know it. Rather than making this choice by imposing ourselves on the collection, Alyson invited us to explore how we – individual and rock – might let choosing happen between us as a way of beginning to relocate and question where agency is situated.
Rocks selected, some people chose to sit on the floor, close their eyes, and ‘listen’. Others met their rock through movement, touch, writing, or smell. We were given two three tasks: to tell the stone it would be returning to Aotearoa, to ask our rock a question, and to allow our rock to ask us a question in return. The group then had time to reflect on their experiences through writing and by sharing with a partner.
Give name to the nameless, so it can be thought
The second part of Alyson’s workshop involved integrating and responding to our ‘field trip’ to the basement through poetic writing exercises.
Inspired by Al-Husayn Ibn Ahmad Ibn Khalawayh’s From The Names of The Lion (in Rothenberg 2017), each participant was invited to create a series of names for rock. We shared these names out loud, giving voice to our experiences and bringing alive our understandings of the rocks:
The sharp
The fragile
The rough
The one who always leaves bits of itself behind
The cold one
The one who gets smoother the more it interacts with others
The one with more to it
The smelly one
The one that seems strong but isn’t
The one that is great to hold.
The muted
The metallic
The bony
The sounding one
The diviner
The knowing
The numbered
The swaddled
The light
The ludic.
The jagged edged
The storyteller
One of infinite patience
The foundation
Who cannot be human
The messenger
The grounding presence
It who moves through time
The observer of the world
The story of the world
Whose edges we meet.
Go inside a stone
To conclude Alyson’s half of the workshop the group read and discussed Charles Simic’s poem Stone, using it as a starting point to each write our own poem titled Field Trip. This was a chance to bring together our experiences of the morning. We shared our poems in a group reading, our thoughts and ideas blending and overlapping much like the chaotic fullness of the many bags of rock in the basement.
Moving to the visual
The second half of the workshop, led by Edie Woolf, focused on using collage as a technique to visualise our thoughts and feelings about the rocks.
As Edie guided us through the collage process, this part of the workshop also offered a space to chat and talk through our experiences as well as move around the room, reaching across the table for materials and physically stepping back from our work to take stock.
The collages we made ranged from neat and organised to wild and busy, each one full of layered meanings. Some focused on recreating the look, feel, or texture of rock. Others focused on the messages we had received from the rocks earlier in the workshop. And others explored more personal associations between rock and place, history, or language.
Feedback from workshop participants
How do you feel towards rocks?
I feel a deep yearning to know them better, differently.
I love them.
I think more than I feel, but I do feel drawn towards these materials.
I worry that my engagement with them is mainly through historical text and image, not a direct encounter or process of knowing.
I feel comforted by rocks.
I’m a big fan!
Different, better connected.
Excited!
What surprised you?
How the whole of me – academic, artistic, spiritual, felt welcome and had space to express itself.
Felt a heartfelt connection with the rocks I touched. It will stick with me.
The trip to the store.
Speaking to and listening to the rocks – very introspective.
How do rocks feel towards you?
Equal.
Impertinent. (today at least)
Cool. Nonplussed. Superior.
Indifferent? Maybe lightly curious.
They seem to demand attention, but I’m not tuned in to their lithic language enough to decode what they might feel.
Conclusions
In reflecting on the creative workshop we have returned to the guiding questions of this project:
- Do we respond differently to a cultural object than a natural object (eg a sculpture made out of rock versus a rock sample)?
- Do we respond differently to a rock sample depending on our ‘academic’ background / knowledge?
- Can creative methods help us capture those responses and answer the two questions above?
It was both interesting and exciting to witness and experience the different responses and relationships to rock that emerged during the workshop. While the field trip took us just a short distance away to a place within the same building, it also took us to a world apart from the everyday: to a place where the group could identify with, converse with, and listen to rock. The creative methods of poetry and collage allow for more embodied responses, supporting the group to step beyond their usual modes of practice and explore new ways of both relating with rock and expressing their experiences. We will be holding these questions close while their answers continue to grow and evolve as the project progresses.
References
Rothenberg, J. (2017) Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. University of California Press: Oakland.