Migrating Rocks: Creative Workshop with Alyson Hallett & Edie Woolf

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:

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?