Collab. writing group

The collective biography workshop, with Suzanne Gannon at Ammerdown (organized by the wonderful Jane Speedy at The Centre for Narrative Enquiry, GSOE, University Of Bristol) was productive and fruitful. Using auto-ethnography as a method of enquiry created a sense of stepping back and distance from intimate memories and here the power of the auto-ethnographic process seems to reside. It allows a constantly shifting and changing of focus from macro to micro, like adjusting a camera lens, and the changes in focus are framing and re-framing the experience. These shifts are contiguous and require constant reflexivity and analysis. The workshop was also an opportunity to experiment with aspects of collaborative practice and a place to test strategies for expanding communication and connection for collaboratively investigating entanglements of subjectivity, discourse and materiality in lived experience through memory and the messiness that suggests. I find them such an inspiring bunch to be around and I feel I want to write as lyrically as possible to deserve to keep such good company.